Burning Down the House : The End of Juvenile Prison (9781595589668) by Nell Bernstein Page A

were right there in the blueprint from the very start.
    Once it had established the need for its services, the society successfully petitioned for a more secure funding stream, augmenting its annualallotments with a supplement of $40 “per head” (or child, as they are otherwise known). Tying funding to population created a built-in incentive for growth, and from then on the charitable endeavor known as the House of Refuge operated under an unspoken maxim that would characterize prison growth well into the next century: if you build it, they will come —in ever greater numbers, willingly or not.
    By 1860, the New York House of Refuge had gone from nine residents to 560, some as young as eight, and momentum showed no sign of slowing. Having obtained a thirty-plus-acre tract of island land in the East River, the society raised upwards of $400,000 to build a massive institution intended to contain more than twelve hundred children.“The boys’ house,” per the Times , was “an imposing edifice, having a main building, 80 by 100 feet, 3½ stories high, with two wings, each 255 feet in length, making an entire front of 590 feet. The main building, and the terminal buildings at the end of the wings, are each crowned with a dome.”
    Maintaining an institution of this magnitude was a costly endeavor, but those in charge soon found a way to fund it: they put the kids to work. The “boys of more vicious character, and who would be most likely to contaminate those with whom they might associate” rose at dawn and went to school for thirty to sixty minutes before reporting to work making chair frames, sieves, and rat traps—all “under contract,” creating a steady cash flow for the institution. More schooling followed dinner, and then it was off to bed. The “younger and better boys” had a slightly better deal—they were made to work only six hours a day, allowing for an extra hour of education.
    The eight- to seventeen-year-olds working these long hours were kept in line by a system of rewards and punishments that bears a striking resemblance to the level systems and behavior modification programs in use to this day. The children were divided into five categories, based on their perceived character (“Class No. 3 are vicious, but a grade better in behavior than No. 4”). On the rewards front, the best of the lot could aspire to a “distinctive badge.” The punishment system was more elaborate, ranging from loss of already scant “play hours” to a bread-and-water diet and solitary confinement to “lastly, if absolutely necessary, corporeal punishment.”
    Only toward the end of its account does the Times introduce concerns regarding certain aspects of the newly minted institution.
    While some of the children . . . undoubtedly become attached to the superintendent and teachers, it is unquestionably true that a large majority are not restrained, by any affection, from acts of violence and insubordination; they regard themselves as prisoners, and as a matter of prudence submit to what they cannot help. . . . The system . . . requires for its highest measure of success what is evidently an impossibility: that one or two men shall become . . . so fully acquainted with the character, disposition and impelling motives of each of 450 boys, as to be able to adapt their instruction and conduct to them in the way most effectually to call out what is good and to subdue what is evil in their natures. . . . If the same number of boys could be broken up into twelve or fifteen families . . . each of those heads of families could attain a far more thorough knowledge of the character, habits and passions of each boy in his charge than can now be done. He would know what temptations assailed each boy with the greatest power, and what influences would be most effective in combating them, and we might hope for a still larger percentage of reformations.
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