Troops in Reform Schools?

By Keith Monroe

In Scouting's early decades, some erroneously believed the movement could not help lawbreakers and delinquents because such boys were irredeemably deficient both morally and mentally.

"The Chief wants to charter four Scout troops in a reformatory," people in the BSA national office told one another in late December of 1921. "Is he off his trolley?"

The New Jersey State Home for Boys in Jamesburg had in fact started four troops--and wanted charters in order to buy uniforms and badges. George W. Ehler, registration head and assistant to Chief Scout Executive James E. West, took the applications to West for a yes or no.

Approval would be a bold break with the past. The Boy Scout movement, just enter ing its second decade in the United States, was esteemed for the good character of its members.

"The movement was never designed for the prevention of delinquency," wrote BSA historian Will Oursler in The Boy Scout Story. Scouting was "not for poor boys mainly, nor boys from bad environments or broken homes...," Oursler noted, and "Someone on the Executive Board during the first decade of Scouting did not believe that this type of boy had a place in the movement."

James West was inclined to think otherwise. But would he openly defy a member of his executive board? What would Scouters across the nation think?

Reform versus detention

In the early 1900s people had hoped young offenders could be reformed. Job training and religious instructions came into the reformatories. Grim old cellblocks gave way to "cottages" where small groups lived with earnest counselors.

New juvenile courts (which West, before he joined the BSA, had prodded President Theodore Roosevelt to help establish) handled delinquents as wards of the state, rather than criminals. First offenders were often sentenced to flexible terms, with hope for early parole.

Then hope faded. The system became plagued by what one historian described as "spreading public apathy, weak administration, poorly trained staffs, and inadequate funding."

Worse yet, a book by psychologist Henry H. Goddard helped rouse the public against reform schools. Goddard, who designed intelligence tests for Army recruits, tested 56 youngsters on parole from a New Jersey penal institution and classified all but four as "feebleminded." He then tested 100 inmates in a Newark juvenile detention home and found 66 of them similarly lacking in intelligence.

Goddard's conclusion was that "feeblemindedness" was the root cause of crime. He popularized his dogma in a book, The Kal- likak Family. It implied that delinquents were born bad, could never reform, and should be kept in custody. Sensing the public's alarm, juvenile courts, probation officers, and reformatories toughened up to ward off charges of coddling.

Nobody wanted to go 'over the wall'

So West knew he would flout public opinion if he welcomed delinquents into Scouting. But he had grown up in an orphanage in which boys were beaten for misbehavior, and as a young lawyer he had defended tough kids, helping them find jobs. He didn't believe they were mentally deficient.

He also didn't believe the troops in the New Jersey reform school were doomed to failure. Eight Princeton undergraduates had started them and were running lively meetings.

The school's superintendent, John Derrick, warmly endorsed the troops, and West invited him to a meeting at BSA headquarters in New York City. There, some staff members resisted Derrick's plea as "dangerous and almost radical." How could any troop succeed without family support? Without camping? Without money?

"Scouting won't work in a hostile environment" had long been the accepted wisdom. Failure of the Jamesburg experiment could prove to be a major black eye for the BSA.

Superintendent Derrick retorted that the experiment wasn't failing. It had begun in September as one troop, but 160 boys flocked to join. For months now they had been planting trees, making toys for poor children, practicing first aid, playing strenuous games, discussing the Scout law.

"Always before, during the Christmas season, quite a number of boys tried to go over the wall," the superintendent said. "This month there wasn't a single attempt to escape."

West offered his own observations: "A boy may glory in the fact that an organization is sufficiently interested in his future to give him a program for his leisure time...Scouting's key is to keep boys in close contact with men of good character."

The latter was an idea that Elbert K. Fretwell, a famous Columbia University educator who helped shape Scouting, often summed up as "Character is caught, not taught."

West's remarks settled the argument, and the applications were approved. The decision was announced in a bulletin to Scout executives, and councils were encouraged to consider similar projects. (There is no record of the executive board's reaction on the matter.)

Success stories everywhere

At the Jamesburg school, Scouting thrived for decades. By 1954, it had two Cub Scout packs, six troops, and four Explorer posts. "Letters arrive at Jamesburg constantly from former boys discussing what Scouting meant to them," Oursler reported in 1955.

Meanwhile Scouting sprang up in other reform schools, organized by the institution or by outside groups. The Rotary Club of Nashville operated 12 units in the Tennessee Industrial School. The American Legion post of Niles, Ohio, formed a Scout drum and bugle corps. Police in Detroit staffed several troops.

In 1936 a BSA study recorded that nearly 200 councils maintained troops for troublesome boys, some in reformatories and others in gang-infested slums. Total membership of these troops came to 4,431 Scouts, including155 Eagles.

A reformatory troop in Watertown, N.Y., led the council in advancement. In Woodstock, Va., a troop was made up of boys with court records, and none had ever reappeared in court. A reformatory troop in Waterman,Colo., had "changed boys and leaders," its superintendent reported.

A sense of adventure and belonging

How "bad" were the boys in these troops? Some were guilty of violent assaults. Many had perpetrated car thefts, burglaries, or shoplifting. One, according to his commitment papers, had "burglariously, feloniously, and maliciously broken into his stepmother's pantry and stolen a jar of jam."

Why did such troops succeed? One theory is that juvenile crime was caused by the same youthful thirst for adventure that in earlier eras led boys to sea or the frontier; Scouting might offer the adventure they craved. Another theory holds that youngsters needed "a feeling of belonging," which a troop sometimes gave them.

James E. West never forgot the eight young men from Princeton who first planted Scouting in a reform school. When the time came, he sent his own sons to Princeton.

A regular contributor to Scouting magazine, Keith Monroe lives in Santa Monica, Calif.

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Copyright © 1996 by the Boy Scouts of America. All rights thereunder reserved; anything appearing in Scouting magazine or on its Web site may not be reprinted either wholly or in part without written permission. Because of freedom given authors, opinions may not reflect official concurrence.