Meet the teens in lockup - reforming juvenile offenders at the Ethan Allen School for Boys in Wisconsin - Crackdown on Kids - Cover Story

Progressive, The, Feb, 1996 by Ruth Conniff

Short of prison, the last stop for young males who commit serious crimes in Wisconsin is the Ethan Allen School for Boys. Set in the pretty, rolling countryside outside the town of Wales, it was originally built as a tuberculosis sanitarium. Ethan Allen, or Wales, as it's commonly called, could easily be mistaken for a prep school, except that the grounds are surrounded by tall, chain-link fences and razor wire.

At the most remote end of campus, a new, maximum-security building has coils of razor wire wrapped around the roof, on top of the fence outside, and above the basketball courts in the backyard. A guard in a riot-proof central control booth monitors the building and opens the automatic doors so kids who become violent or suicidal can be hustled in here. During my visit, three men arrive with one such kid - a short, black teenager with cornrows - and take him into a chamber to be stripped and showered, then into a holding cell across the hall, where a heavy door closes behind him.

Hoots and wails emanate from other cells along the hallway. A couple of kids are lying limply on mats on the floor. One pudgy white boy is placidly brushing his teeth and staring into space. "He's doing real well," the guard in the control booth tells me. "He's just waiting here while his room is cleaned. Pretty soon they'll come and take him back to his cottage."

Ethan Allen has a capacity of 340. Right now there are 505 boys in the facility. The boys live in residential cottages, where they sleep in bunk beds or, because of overcrowding, on extra mats on the floor. During the day they attend school, go to therapy sessions, and hold down campus jobs.

"In the adult system, prisoners are just there to do time - to pay a price," says superintendent Jean Schneider. "That's not true here." Education, treatment, and skills development are a big part of the program, he tells me. "We're still trying to raise kids. We believe that people can change."

Nobody believes that adult criminals change for the better in prison. And given the increasingly punitive tone of public policy toward juvenile offenders, it's hard not to be cynical about the concept of juvenile reform. Ethan Allen has a particularly forbidding aura. The whole place is currently being transferred out of the Department of Health and Human Services and into the Department of Corrections. School kids and teachers around the state will tell you the worst boys in Wisconsin go to Wales. I wanted to meet some of these kids and find out what they were like. I was prepared to see some disturbing sights. What I wasn't prepared for was that many of these kids would share Schneider's belief in changing their lives.

Beyond the maximum-security facility - "the hole" as the kids here call it - I meet a lot of very polite young men in the school's classrooms, wearing white shirts and ties. They shake my hand when we're introduced, and seem eager to talk. Boosterism for the school, and for the whole concept of reform, is a common theme.

One young man named Gordy greets me shyly and explains that he is working on a video about sports at Ethan Allen, which might be used to promote continued funding for the athletic programs. He shows me the script he wrote, called "Champions of Change," extolling the virtues of discipline and teamwork: "It starts with determination, and determination is usually connected to a goal. The sports programs offer several goals you can achieve ... developing leadership skills ... developing a positive attitude ... learning to take instructions from authority figures. Each of these goals can help you focus your determination. You must be determined to be a champion of change."

Kids who come to Wales are all considered a danger to their communities. They've committed crimes like battery, armed robbery, and aggravated assault. There is a special cottage for the serious sex offenders, who are kept separate from the general population. With some trepidation, I visit a group-therapy session in this cottage. Ten young men, eight of them African-American, one white, and one Hispanic, are sitting around the room with a counselor. Gordy, it turns out, is one of these kids. They listen intently to my introduction, and are quick to warm up and tell me about themselves.

"Nobody wants to be in here. Everybody misses their mom," one lanky seventeen-year-old says. "But this has helped me. You learn you can change. When I first came here, I went in the hole three or four times. But now I've got my anger under control. You learn there's consequences for your actions, and you get more freedoms as you progress."

"We talk about what we did, and the pain and fear we put our victims through, about putting yourself in the other person's shoes," another kid explains. "We can say anything we want to in here. It gives you an opportunity to find out who you really are."

A fifteen-year-old with a frizzy Afro and athletic socks pulled up to his knees raises his hand anxiously. "He said nobody wants to be in here," he says, indicating the first kid who spoke. "But around here people know me. I'm recognized. People see me and they tell me I did a good job."