Submitted by Sylvia Honig, Dec 23, 2007 11:34

His long time leadership hasn't improved the educational results. What's most annoying is that Mills is well aware that the approximate 3,000 juveniles locked up in state run detention centers like Brookwood, Tryon, Goshen attended "on campus" schools that are not accredited, and probably most of the faculty are not fully accredited, if at all; that nearly 90 percent of these "graduates" have a nearly 90 per cent recidivism rate, and end up in state prisons. It costs over $150,000 to keep each kid in these max lockups, these "prepschools for prison" and most of them don't even earn their GED. Mills ignores letters about this. During the 13 years I worked in these juvenile prisons (social worker), no one ever had homework! The classes were generally chaotic, few vocational courses, an abject failure over all. It's agreed that without a decent education, just high school at least, these kids will probably rarely make it without further failures and worse in their troubled lives. Outstanding examples: Willie James Bosket, Jr., NYState's most dangerous killer and Ralph "Bucky" Phillips, both spent a full year at Brookwood and both took lives, even though both had high I.Q's and deserved better. Both were 14 at the time. Bosket never even had to attend school during the entire year. The administration let him work in the maintenance department, where he carried big tools that he used to beat his peers, but he was honorably released, against my pleas to make significant changes. Phillips, who gunned down the three state troopers, was the best kid, but got beaten up repeatedly by aggressive street kids and then punished for running away. (Read All God's Children, the Bosket story by NYTimes writer, Fox Butterfield, who took information from me and then wrote a book that omitted all the missteps by Brookwood, then-director Peter Edelman and other high officials who knew about it, but didn't do a thing.) Happily, a book is in the works now about Phillips. Perhaps some of this disgraceful stuff will come out, not just about Brookwood, but about Goshen and other juvenile prisons that do far more harm than good.

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