Last One over the Wall Last One over the Wall THE MASSACHUSETTS EXPERIMENT IN CLOSING REFORM SCHOOLS Winner of the 1990 Edward Sagarin Prize in Criminology Second Edition JEROME G. MILLER OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS Columbus Copyright © 1991,1998 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Miller, Jerome G., 1931­ Last one over the wall: the Massachusetts experiment in closing reform schools / Jerome G. Miller. p. cm. "Winner of the 1990 Edward Sagarin Prize in Criminology/' Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8142-0758-8 (alk. paper : pbk.) 1. Reformatories—Massachusetts. 2. Juvenile delinquency— Government policy—Massachusetts. I. Title. HV9105.M4M54 1991 365'.42'09744—dc20 90-28677 CD? The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992. 98765432 1 to Adam .. a present death Had been more merciful. Come on, poor babe: Some powerful spirit instruct the kites and ravens to be thy nurses! Wolves and bears, they say, Casting their savageness aside, have done Like offices of pity. Shakespeare Contents PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION ix PREFACE XV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XXi I Going to Massachusetts 1 Juvenile Justice Rhetoric 3 2 A Preview of Deinstitutionalization 16 3 Background 23 4 The Invitation 32 5 Punishment vs. Restoration 43 II A Brief Tour 6 Waiting Rooms 55 7 Warehouses 61 III Reforming Reform Schools 8 Finding a Direction 83 9 Reverberations 108 10 Anticipating the Worst 117 11 Doing Least Harm: Humane Institutions 132 IV The Alternative System 12 Deinstitutionalization 153 13 Community-based Alternatives 177 viii / Contents 14 The Myth of "Violent" Teenagers 191 15 Side Effects: The County Training Schools 199 16 Backlash 204 17 Results: After Almost All Is Said and Done 218 V Ponderings on Criminals and Criminologists 18 Of Psychopaths and Allopaths 229 19 In Search of Aliens 240 NOTES 249 BIBLIOGRAPHY 263 INDEX 271 Preface to the Second Edition A Vision for the Future or a Memoir? I t has been seven years since I wrote the first edition of Last One over the Wall. I wrote it to memorialize a personal journey and a radical experiment in juvenile justice reform from two decades earlier. For whatever reasons, the book has developed a following around the country, and it continues to be read by those interested in alternative approaches to dealing with juvenile offenders. Ohio State University Press has therefore decided to reissue the book. Aside from this new introduction, I have made no changes or edits. Indeed, the experiences I described cannot be changed, and the policy implications of the reforms are as obvious and valid today as they were then. But really, that doesn't matter much. Results have never driven juvenile justice policy, nor has decency. It is therefore a matter of whether the "Massachusetts Experiment" will be studied and emu­ lated as another way of handling troublesome and troubled young­ sters, or whether it will fade into obscurity—an isolated fluke from a time long past. This year, thirty years will have passed since I was invited by Re­ publican governor Frank Sargent of Massachusetts to join his cabinet as commissioner of the newly created Department of Youth Services. Over the next 3V2 years, we closed all of the state's reform schools— scattering the kids and dispersing the budget to an array of humane options, both cautious and quirky, for the truly delinquent. Nationally, rehabilitation in juvenile justice has now been pretty much replaced by retribution. Whatever vestiges of treatment remain are hidden in the doublespeak of "alternative punishment," "conse- IX x / Preface to the Second Edition quences," and "discipline." Winning sound bites shape the facts, and political rhetoric prescribes the solutions. Lessons Would I do things differently today were I confronted with a similar juvenile correctional system with its attendant array of reform schools? Definitely. But not in the way the reader might surmise. Given the times, I'd attempt to close the reform schools more quickly and defini­ tively and I'd shy away from involving many credentialed profession­ als (particularly M.S.W. social workers) in the process. In Last One over the Wall I noted that as the department became more professionalized, there emerged "the hurtful side effects" that inevita­ bly accompany certain behavioral and medical models when practiced on delinquents. They showed up in the reintroduction of isolation cells in some of the small secure settings (this time in order to "set limits") and the pandemic use of psychotropic drugs to control the recalcitrant. It was a reiteration of the role professional helpers continually play in brutalizing settings: providing a means to avoid dealing with the profound personal, social, or institutional sources of the "unreason­ able" demands of the delinquent. Having since run similar agencies in other jurisdictions—Illinois, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia— I am convinced that the bars to substantive change in these systems grow exponentially with the number of human service professionals involved. This is not surprising. It has always been the case in agencies with captive (e.g., juvenile corrections) or semicaptive clientele (e.g., child welfare). A dependence upon traditional models of help inevitably dulls the reform impulse, seeing it as a threat to the status quo. In Last One over the Wall I cited Erving Goffman's description of the role of the helping professional in these kinds of agencies as being similar to that of a con artist's confederate. He or she is expected to "cool out the mark/' Goffman's analysis has become even more com­ pelling as we have entered a more punitive era. When I wrote Last One over the Wall in 1991, the country was already well down this road. Preface to the Second Edition / xi The Punitive Society In the adult systems, lengthy and mandatory prison sentences have become the rule. The death penalty is being administered more effi­ ciently and liberally The narrative is increasingly being expelled from our courts—both adult and juvenile. It is now routinely characterized as "the abuse excuse/' and its exclusion has robbed lives of meaning and deprived all of us of social instruction. The transfer of thousands of adolescents into the nation's adult courts and prisons is symptom­ atic of this trend. Most significant, in relation to the thesis of this book, reform schools have made a comeback. Overflowing this time with black and Latino teenagers, they are the vanguard of juvenile justice in America—proudly trumpeting discipline, punishment, and "conse­ quences." A new sense of one-upmanship drives juvenile justice planners and administrators. Who can label their young charges as the most preda­ tory? Who can be the most detached in administering punishment? How can we disguise viciousness as treatment? How can we couch inhumane policies in moralistic terms? For obvious reasons, the "Mas­ sachusetts Experience" stands more isolated today than it did a quarter century ago. But won't this pass? Criminal justice prescriptions for handling ob­ streperous or dangerous juvenile offenders have waxed and waned greatly over the years. In the past, however, each new cycle tended toward a certain progressivism. It suggests that if we can wait out this unusually neglectful period, we can anticipate a swing toward more humane and decent juvenile justice policies and practices. Sadly, I think not. I fear that this time things will be different, primarily be­ cause of the changed racial makeup of the system's clientele. A Familiar Dilemma I wonder not when but whether we will emerge from this dark period in juvenile justice history. The untamed punitive impulses of those who run American juvenile justice systems stem less from concern over in­ creased crime and violence than from a realization regarding those who are likely to be the beneficiaries of retribution. The juvenile justice system has succeeded in resurrecting that great "American Dilemma" xii / Preface to the Second Edition described by the Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal fifty years ago, one that has plagued us for two centuries.1 As the destructive "drug war" defined crime and increasingly filled the prisons and reform schools, race came to define the criminal. He is likely to have a black or brown face. We are now at a point where, when we hear predictions of a coming explosion of "superpredator" youths, we all know who they are. We've learned the code. Fear of the Young A second contributor to the culture of retribution in juvenile justice is related to a renewed fear of young people in general—a contempt unequaled in recent years. It was reflected in a 1997 national poll that showed that the American public had the lowest opinion of teenagers and children ever measured in national polls. A symbol for this emerged for a few weeks in 1995 when the nation seemed transfixed by the flogging of an American teenager in Singa­ pore. Most supported the practice, often described in exquisite detail. Although the ostensible purpose of the debate was to consider whether we should use similar corporal punishment for recalcitrant teenagers, sadistic titillation was never far from the agenda, the kind Emile Durk­ heim no doubt had in mind when he described "moral indignation" as a kind of "disguised envy." The prospect of publicly flogging our teenagers tapped a flood of previously unexpressed possibilities— whippings, stocks, solitary lockups, shackles, handcuffs, and assorted paramilitary rituals—largely indistinguishable from sadomasochistic fantasy. How Many Kid Killers? Perhaps the most controversial chapter of Last One over the Wall was chapter 14, "The Myth of 'Violent' Teenagers." I wrote, "Of the 20,000 persons arrested for [homicide], approximately 2,000 were juveniles.