NCJ Number
110703
Date Published
1988
Length
193 pages
Annotation
The founder of the Penikese Island School, a Massachusetts wilderness program for serious juvenile offenders, describes its history, the lessons learned, and his personal conceptual adjustments regarding the school's cost effectiveness.
Abstract
Founded in 1973 by George Cadwalder, an ex-marine and Viet Nam vet, the school has been an experiment in rehabilitating hardcore delinquent boys. The staff recruited by Cadwalder consists of well-educated social 'drop-outs' without professional clinical credentials. The island in Massachusetts' Buzzards Bay, which was abandoned many decades before the school's founding, provides the setting for residents to engage in construction, boat-building, nature study, and farming. Residents are responsible for providing their own food and comforts, and they are held accountable for their actions. The intent of the program is to provide the boys new social and vocational skills as well as a rational outlook on life that enables them to assess the consequences of their actions and gain confidence and a sense of self-worth. The school was begun under the concept that kids' attitudes and behaviors would change when exposed to a positive environment and normative behavioral conditioning. Cadwalder discovered, however, the tenacious power of heredity and early environmental emotional and physical deprivations in determining behavioral and attitudinal patterns. He has adjusted to the 16-percent success rate as an acceptable achievement when dealing with the most serious juvenile offenders. The cost is justified when the cost of not rehabilitating that 16 percent is projected.