Remains of 55 bodies found near former Florida reform school

[jsr]

Source: Reuters

(Reuters) - Excavations at a makeshift graveyard near a now-closed reform school in the Florida Panhandle have yielded remains of 55 bodies, almost twice the number official records say are there, the University of South Florida announced on Tuesday.

"This is precisely why excavation was necessary," said USF professor Erin Kimmerle, head of the research project. "The only way to truly establish the facts about the deaths and burials at the school is to follow scientific processes."

On a hillside in the rolling, tall-pine forests near the Alabama-Georgia border, a team of more than 50 searchers from nine agencies last year dug up the graves to check out local legends and family tales of boys, mostly black, who died or disappeared without explanation from the Dozier School for Boys early in the last century.

The school, infamous for accounts of brutality told by former inmates, was closed by the state in 2011.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/28/us-usa-florida-school-idUSBREA0R1ZH20140128

[TBF]

1. Wow. nt

[bemildred]

2. Remains of 55 found at notorious former Florida reform school

http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-dozier-reform-school-bodies-20140128,0,4502419.story

[azurnoir]

8. The last sentence just takes the cake

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement concluded in 2010 that, although it found dozens of graves, there was insufficient evidence to pursue criminal charges.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-dozier-reform-school-bodies-20140128,0,4502419.story#ixzz2rk4xZbPv

[bemildred]

12. Yah.

"Justice for all", right?

[Auggie]

3. As late as 1959 … that means some of these reform school workers could be living

Heinous story

[shraby]

4. I was just thinking about that the other day and wondered how the investigation was going. Thank

you for posting this. It's time to start finding the perps.

[Owl]

5. Horrible!

[Scuba]

6. Don't doubt that such abuses are still occurring.

[Solly Mack]

7. K&R

[frwrfpos]

9. sickening

unbelievable racist cruelty

[riverwalker]

10. it was called Dozier School for Boys

the place where they were beaten to death and tortured was called "The White House"

the survivors of the house of horrors and created a website

http://www.officialwhitehouseboys.org/


http://justin-caldwell.blogspot.com/

[lunasun]

28. Everyone should look at this Thank you

What would they say?
The kid ran away I bet-
I will look the links over later but just the home page !
and Justin Caldwell too
http://www.officialwhitehouseboys.org/

he Department of Justice found:

• Staff used excessive force on youths, including choking and mechanical restraints. It documented incidents caught on tape in which guards violently pushed youths to the ground, and struck and choked youths. Staff unlawfully shackled youths with mechanical restraints as a first response to youths who did not respond to verbal commands. One youth was held face-down on the floor for 48 minutes and placed in mechanical restrains for an additional three hours and 17 minutes.
• Youths were often disciplined for minor infractions through inappropriate uses of lengthy and unnecessary isolation without due process. The report documented one case in which a boy was kept in isolation — inside a small cell with a concrete-slab bed and thin mattress — for two weeks. And shortly after he was released, he was sent back to isolation• Staff were not appropriately trained and had a generally "laissez-faire attitude" toward suicidal youth. The report noted that average pay for direct-care staff fell below $12 an hour, well below the nationwide median hourly wage for correctional officers of $18.78.
• The safety of youths was compromised as a result of their relocation to the Jackson Juvenile Offender Center (a more restrictive and punitive facility on the Dozier campus).

• The state failed to provide necessary and appropriate rehabilitative services to address addiction, mental health or behavioral needs, which served as a barrier to the youths' ability to return to the community and not reoffend.
• Youths were subjected to unnecessary and unconstitutional frisk searches. Dozier youths were frisk searched more than 10 times per day. One told investigators, "Some staff rub on your privates." Another said staff "touch too much."

"The failure to address these concerns not only harms the youth, but has a negative impact on public confidence and public safety," the report said. "The critical role of the juvenile justice system to correct and rehabilitate is being abdicated and youth may well be leaving the system with additional physical and psychological barriers to success."

[maindawg]

11. the criminals live

More than 500 men have come forward with similar stories of being abused by staff at the school, according to a lawyer with Masterson & Hoag, the St. Petersburg firm representing the men.

So the bad guys are out there.

More importantly is the focus on the juvenile penile system. America imprisons children at an alarming rate. Imposing harsh punishment such as solitary confinement is common. That part of Florida is the deep south. But all of America is the deep south when it comes to prison politics.

[ReRe]

13. K&R

Thank you for bringing this to our attention! It wouldn't surprise me if there are more bodies, if not in the exact place they are digging, then somewhere near that spot. Hell can be anywhere, and evidently is was at the Dozier School for Boys. I so wish I was younger. I would go volunteer to do research on the investigation. Damn!

[ElsewheresDaughter]

14. k&r

Lots of sad stories in Florida's abusive treatment of it's wards.

[WCLinolVir]

15. Horrible. Girls were also housed there for a while.

This was covered up/ignored through the old boy network. They know who the living perps are, and do nothing. They need the feds to go in and assess. The stories are awful. They fabricated lies to incarcerate kids to get money from the state to house/imprison these poor souls. Many AA children as they were not as able to question authority and demand the release of their children. Sociopaths.

[Judi Lynn]

16. Thank god they just keep at it. People have known these children were there.

Hope they won't stop until they know everyone has been accounted for who was murdered there.

What an unbearable shame the monsters were allowed to do this unchecked, and no one to save these precious young people from them.

What a sad, sad end for helpless children.

[Scruffy Rumbler]

17. My heart goes out to these children.

The hell they must of endured prior to their deaths.

[3auld6phart]

20. The bone yard

Being an ( inmate ) for 12 years in a nun run home for boys, my heart goes out to those kids. Our conditions were never ever that bad by far. Although i did see a couple of the black robed skanks beat the crap out of Native kids.Several times over the years. They loved playing mental games on some of us. Gawd, that is inhumane treatment. It sounds so much like the Jefferson Bass ( novel ) book " THE BONE YARD " More truth than fiction there. After 65 years plus it still bothers me. I could go on, but i won't.

[Scruffy Rumbler]

21. I had friends that attended a state run school for the deaf

and the stories he and his friends tell. What is it about the position that draws the kind of people that would do this. Or changes them during their tenure?

[happyslug]

29. The biggest reason for the practice was to keep costs down

Last edited Wed Jan 29, 2014, 05:41 PM - Edit history (2)

Remember the rule in most public institutions is to keep costs DOWN, anything else is secondary. One of the advantages of the use of Corporal Punishment is that it is cheap and will often reduce "problems" till someone else is in charge of the victim.

Now this is complicated by the fact that Corporal Punishment has been a part of education since the time of the Ancient Greece. The Catholic Church did not invent such punishment, but when it took over the education of people the Church ended up embracing the same norms that previous providers of education had used, and that included Corporal Punishment.

Opposition to Corporal Punishment first appeared in the 1800s as compulsory education became the norm. The poor and working class parents of students objected to their children being so punished. Upper Middle Class and rich parents did not make such objections, for they had gone through the same system and fully accepted it as a necessary part of any education process. After 1900, this started to change, but effectively did not change till the 1950s when Corporal Punishment started to be abolished in most school districts. Catholic Schools kept it longer, again going back to their tradition continuing from Ancient Greece, but by the 1970s Corporal Punishment was passe even in most Catholic Schools.

The replacements for Corporal Punishments also show why Corporal Punishment was so much liked by people who worried about costs. Suspensions and expulsions were as cheap, but the courts stepped in and demanded that such actions be limited do to the hard effects they had on children. Thus that left in school and after school "Suspensions" i.e. not being able to go out with other children during any break period AND being held after school. Both required someone to watch the children and to keep the School open after hours, both cost money.

When it came to these institutions, Suspensions and expulsions were not an option, for this is where you were expelled to. Costs had to be kept low so special holding cells supervised by an adult can run into money. Corporal Punishment and Solidarity confinement are cheap, no one needs to watch the student. With Corporal Punishment, you hit the kid and that is it (even if that means the student had to go to a special place for such punishment). With Solitary confinement, you just threw away the key, no need to someone to watch the student.

When the people in charge of the outfit went to the State Legislature the first thing they tended to be asked is what had they done to control costs. The State Legislature did not want to hear of anything that would increase operating costs, just ways to cut costs. If the Institution could come up with a way to cut costs and improve the conditions of the children that was approved of, but anything that would increase costs (even if court ordered) was refused by the State Legislature unless it was clear they had no other option (and even then it took years for them to get around to spending the money).

Sorry, the options in the case of most such institutions were quite limited, for they had to either match or be less then the cost of Corporal Punishment. Furthermore, once you start of the road of Corporal Punishment, you end up in a situation where it must be increased to have any effect on the victim. Solitary Confinement did meet these requirements, i.e. as cheap as Corporal Punishment.

Remember most of the Students in these institutions were they because they did had not respond to "correction" by use of Corporal Punishment in their old schools. Thus they were already willing to be spanked as an acceptable cost to do what they wanted to do. Thus some sort of increase punishment had to be given them but do to budget concerns at the same costs as Corporal Punishment. Thus you see a tendency to an increase in the level of such punishment and the use of Solitary Confinement. Increased level of physical punishment and the use of Solitary Confinement did not have any real increase in the cost to operate the Institution and thus acceptable to it and the State Legislature.

Thus the tendency to the use of violence or Solitary Confinement, both were cheap and thus the use was driven by concerns as to costs.

[Scruffy Rumbler]

31. Thank you for the great response.

Again profit wins, children lose.

[happyslug]

32. After I wrote the above I remembered the "Auburn" and "Pennsylvanian" prison theories.

After 1800, the US looked into how to improve punishment of criminals. Under the common law, the general rule was to execute them, or make them pay a fine. Imprisonment was not an option, except to hold someone for trial. Flogging, exile, being sold into slavery were all used in pre-1800 period. All had problems. In Pennsylvania the Quakers became upset as the rough treatment of convicted prisoners and decided to do something about it. The solution is what we now call "Prisons".

Yes, it was the Quakers who came up with the idea of holding a person for a period of time as punishment. Now, the Quakers also wanted to reform these criminals and decided the best way is to force them to do "Penance" thus these new prisons were called "Penitentiaries". The first such Penitentiary was "Eastern State Penitentiary".

http://www.easternstate.org/

Eastern's seven earliest cellblocks may represent the first modern building in the United States. The concept plan, by the British-born architect John Haviland, reveals the purity of the vision. Seven cellblocks radiate from a central surveillance rotunda. Haviland’s ambitious mechanical innovations placed each prisoner had his or her own private cell, centrally heated, with running water, a flush toilet, and a skylight. Adjacent to the cell was a private outdoor exercise yard contained by a ten-foot wall. This was in an age when the White House, with its new occupant Andrew Jackson, had no running water and was heated with coal-burning stoves.

In the vaulted, skylit cell, the prisoner had only the light from heaven, the word of God (the Bible) and honest work (shoemaking, weaving, and the like) to lead to penitence. In striking contrast to the Gothic exterior, Haviland used the grand architectural vocabulary of churches on the interior. He employed 30-foot, barrel vaulted hallways, tall arched windows, and skylights throughout. He wrote of the Penitentiary as a forced monastery, a machine for reform. But he added an impressive touch: a menacing, medieval facade, built to intimidate, that ironically implied that physical punishment took place behind those grim walls.

Eastern State was a noble idea, but soon ran across some problems, all to do with how to contain costs. The isolation that was the key to Eastern State's design just cost to much on a per prisoner basis. The need to do actual rehabilitation, a key to the Quaker's concept, also cost to much, for most prisoners had no skills and thus had to be trained as part of their rehabilitation and that all costed money.

The Auburn system

The "Auburn System" was a modified Pennsylvania system. The main difference was the prisoners were forced to work together during the day time, but kept separate at night. They also could NOT speak to each other. Phyiscal punishment was the rule for any violation of any rule. This became the preferred system for it made money for the prison, something the Pennsylvania system never did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auburn_System

After 1900, these two systems were replaced by other concepts but most prisons to this day tends to follow the Auburn System, while rejecting the Pennsylvania system, but more on costs grounds then any other factor.

Notice the key difference, while both systems said they supported reform, the Pennsylvania System made it the central theme of that system. How it was to be achieved failed, but it remained a key to the system. The Auburn System was an attempt to make the Pennsylvania System profitable, and as such reduced the costs of running such prisons. The Auburn system quickly replaced the Pennsylvania System even in Pennsylvania do to its much lower costs.

This same attitude to costs is what drives prison funding to this day, While it is politically popular to build more prisons and to have prisoners sentence to longer times in Prison, rehabilitation of such prisoners is a back seat to containing costs. Some states have even closed prisons to cut costs (preferring to leave the prisoners on the street then to pay to keep up the prisons). On the other hand most States have maintained all of their prisons, looking at other ways to cut costs, mostly cutting back on anything other then maintaining the prison (i.e. recreation is cut, education is cut, rehabilitation is cut etc).

These states also complaint about various Federal Court Orders that said they have to spend money on the prisoners, the one thing the States do NOT want to do even if it is constitutionally mandated.

Control of cost is important in any organization, but it can NOT be the main reason for an organization, and when it comes to public institution, schools, reform schools, prisons, etc containing cost becomes the main concern and with that concern the cheap price in corporal punishment and solitary confinement comes into play.

History of US Prison System:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_United_States_Prison_Systems

More on San Francisco Jails # 2 and and 5, the most recent trend in Prison design, a complete rejection of the Pennsylvania System and the Auburn System.

http://www.sfsheriff.com/jail_info.html

[warrant46]

30. I like your comments about the black robed ones

It fits these criminals to a "T"

[myrna minx]

33. It's unimaginable.

[treestar]

18. Wow, creepy

Where was the community, the law? Terrible.

[alato]

19. swamp water

quit drinking that shit, floridians

[tabasco]

22. A real life horror story

SHAME!

[Jesus Malverde]

23. Ghosts of the Past

[progressoid]

25. Horrible. eom

[adirondacker]

24. This is disturbing on a third world level. Ugh! nt

[kentauros]

26. Reminds me of the film Brubaker,

as well as the true events and people (Tom Murton) upon which it was based.

From the Wikipedia entry on Tom Murton:

In early February 1968, Murton ordered excavations on the grounds of the Cummins prison farm. Three bodies were uncovered before the excavation was halted, although 15 to 25 depressions were clearly visible. Murton's inmate informant told him that as many as 200 bodies had been buried there; also, the number of prisoners listed as "escapees" since 1915 was reported as "more than 200."

According to the informant, Reuben Johnson, most of the men had been killed after refusing extortion demands from the "trustie" guards. Their deaths were either falsely recorded as successful escapes; or recorded as deaths, but under false pretenses. Johnson, a lifer, gave details of murders and burials on the prison grounds dating back for decades, including a mass murder of about 20 inmates around Labor Day of 1940. Johnson was backed up by at least one other inmate, James Wilson. Wilson also asserted that returning escapees were routinely murdered.

[Niceguy1]

27. reminds me of the us mental health system

Up until the late 70/s early 80/s

[mackerel]

34. there was a reform school in Wales like this too.