do you think I’m spooky?

Stringtown Offers No Solution

By JOANNE GORDON

Of The World Staff

They call them "training schools" now — a euphemism for what used to be known as reform school.

Many counties in Oklahoma, hard-pressed to know what to do with their juvenile delinquents, simply dump them into training schools and forget them. What happens to them during their stay and after they get out is of prime unconcern until some of these same kids wind up in prison.

Then the hue and cry goes up. The offender was no good to begin with, a "bad apple,” a blight on society who should have been locked up for good when he first got into trouble.

The noted Judge Samuel Leibowitz recently visited one of these state institutions and came away with the shocked observation that “These so-called correctional institutions are mere dumping grounds, human junk yards where the good, the bad, and the indifferent are herded together."

It is to the credit of the Tulsa county juvenile court and the benefit of this city that juvenile delinquents here are not summarily dispatched to Stringtown, Tecumseh or Boley when they get into trouble.

This doesn't mean that Dorothy Young, judge of the juvenile court, simply slaps a young lawbreaker on the wrist, smiles and sends him back into society with the admonition to go and sin no more.

Kids who come before the court are judged on the merit, or lack of it, of their individual cases. Many more factors than are evidenced in, say, a newspaper account of a juvenile crime, enter into the final disposition of the case.

Before a hearing is ever scheduled, an investigation has been made in three areas —psychological, sociological and medical.

The psychological examination and testing show what the youth thinks of himself and how he feels he fits into the community and home as an individual; the sociological examination discloses what others — school, church, home, community — think of the child, and the medical examination, of course, shows the youngster's state of health.

"We have a pretty good picture of the child and what makes him tick," Fred Woodson, court director, explains.

What happens when it becomes necessary to commit a juvenile delinquent to the state training school?

To begin with, experts say training schools should create a relaxed atmosphere, not necessarily a permissive one, wherein a child has an opportunity to develop inner controls which do not permit freedom of choice, self-direction and self-confidence.

There are other standards but let's see how Oklahoma's Stringtown, for instance, measures up to just that one.

A week or so ago on a cold, snowy day, Judge Young, counselor Bob Talbutt, psychologist Sarah Allison and I made the trip to Stringtown, the training school for state white, male juvenile delinquents. The purpose of the trip was to take 16-year-old Mike to the school where be had been committed by the juvenile court after violating his probation on a robbery charge.

Mike was in the backseat of the car with Talbutt and me. Dressed in tight-fitting blue jeans, his shirt open to the waist, his hair growing down his neck in a duck-tail and sweeping out in a peroxided pompadour in front, Mike's appearance was everything calculated to irritate the average adult.

Attempts to draw him into conversation were unsuccessful. Questioning him proved worse. Sample: "What kind of a job would you be interested in when you get out of school?” Answer: “Anything as long as it isn't work."

When Sarah offered him a cigaret, he made a point of refusing. A few minutes later, he fished one out of his pocket and lit it.

We stopped at a filling station and Mike mumbled, "I'm hungry. Guess I'll get a candy bar." He started to climb out of the car, hesitated and then looked at us. For an instant, he wasn't a defiant juvenile delinquent; he was a teen-age boy who was remembering his manners.

"Do any of you want one?" he asked.

Stringtown doesn't look bad from the outside. The cluster of trim buildings set starkly on a hill give no hint of the school's turbulent and shameful history that, for the most part, has been a blot on the record of the state of Oklahoma.

This institution, created to reform and rehabilitate, has been (and still is) a political pawn. Every time the administration changes, so does the philosophy of dealing with wayward boys.

In years gone by, boys committed to Stringtown have been subjected to sadistic and brutal punishments, time on the rock-pile, filthy quarters, and program [sic] that, at best, have been weak and ineffective.

Our first stop at Stringtown was the kitchen — a big, warm, clean room that looked like the well-run kitchen of a first-rate hotel. We had lunch. The food was good and there was lots of it.

But midway in the meal, Mike started to shake. He said he was cold. We knew he was scared.

We were late and the boys were finishing their lunch, filing past the dishwashing area, with their dirty dishes. Bringing up the tail end of the line was a row of little boys who looked no older than 9 or 10. You would expect to see them in a Cub Scout troop, not in a reform school.

Dub Wheeler, the superintendent, came in. A big, superannuated athlete who used to be a police officer, he is said to be doing the best job that has ever been done at Stringtown.

While Wheeler took Mike to the front office to check him in, we went into the dayroom. It was an abrupt change from the warm, well-run kitchen.

Rows of beds line each side of the room. Bright-colored spreads failed to hide the fact that the mattresses are thin and sag in the middle. The room was very cold. A blanket, tacked over a window that either was broken or open, billowed out in the icy wind.

All the boys wore jackets or coats to ward off the cold. Huddled in groups, they sat around talking, smoking or just staring into space. At a table in the middle of the room, six or seven youngsters were using dominos to shoot craps.

We were told the boys were not in school because the teacher was away attending a funeral.

In the superintendent’s office in the main building, Wheeler said he thought corporal punishment should be reinstated at the school.

“We can’t control some of these boys unless we have the right to paddle them,” he told Judge Young.

It was mentioned that some kids in the school still bear the scars of brutal whippings permitted during former administrations. Wheeler said he did not believe guards should be allowed to administer corporal punishment but it “should be done in the superintendent’s office.”

A statement of standards for juvenile institutions adopted by the United States Children’s bureau last year said disciplinary methods now used by various schools “cannot be condoned.” Corporal punishment was specified particularly.

Experts believed too few adults have the judgment to know when and how to use corporal punishment and those who do have such judgment “don’t need to resort to paddling.”

During a tour of the school, we looked in on the infirmary. Gay, pink cafe curtains at the window did little to lessen the gloomy atmosphere. Wheeler said the two or three boys in the infirmary had “fever.” None of them even looked up when we came in.

The room seemed fairly well equipped but it, too, was very cold, I noted that, of the places we visited, the rooms where the staff worked were warm; the rooms where the boys were (with the exception of the kitchen) cold.

Stringtown is fortunate in having the services of a staff psychologist, Morris H. Craig, who is highly respected in the field of juvenile work. I asked him about the 10-year-olds.

He went to a file and handed me a letter from the grandmother of one of them, a youngster named Terry who had been committed to Stringtown from a county, not Tulsa. The letter was well written, the spelling was perfect and the meaning unmistakable. It was in answer to a plea by Terry that he be allowed to come home during the Christmas holidays. It said:

"I am his maternal grandmother. Terry lived here until he was sent to Stringtown. He wishes to come home for the Christmas holidays. I don’t want him here at all. I think he wants to come home so he can smoke cigarets all the time and stuff his stomach. He is a very greedy boy and quite lazy. We just can’t afford to keep him here with us. I’m sorry but Terry gets on my nerves so bad I can hardly bear him.”

The subject of Stringtown is too big to cover in one article and it is not fair to make sweeping generalizations on the basis of one, brief visit.

But it is obvious that Wheeler is handicapped by a staff of political appointees who do not have the training or the experience to deal with the children committed to the school.

Children in training schools are not normal children. They need mature, sensitive and understanding treatment from adults who know how to deal with their problems and how to handle them. Too often, these youngsters are at the mercy of men and women who, themselves, are emotionally twisted. The net result is that the kids often leave the training schools more mixed up than they were when they came in.

I also got the impression that Stringtown could do with a stronger vocational training program. The school has a well-equipped hobby shop but, unfortunately, there isn’t much of a market for some of the items the boys learn to make — things like decorated garbage pails. The majority, if not all, the boys at Stringtown will have to earn a living.

It's hardly fair to turn them out with little more than a handshake and a “good luck, sonny,” into a highly competitive business world where it’s hard enough to get a foothold when you’re not a graduate of reform school.

And as long as very young boys continue to be committed to Stringtown (and they will be until some counties in Oklahoma change their archaic methods of dealing with juveniles) there should be some provision for segregating them from the older boys.