How Did Jerome Miller School Reform

As an alternative to adult prison, reform schools were opened to detain youth who were found guilty of crimes. The punitive and harsh nature of prison called for the establishment of the first publicly funded reform school in Massachusetts in 1848. After 125 years, the institution found it-self compromised and was closed to reform the juvenile correctional institutions. The actor behind this debatable decision was Jerome Miller. There is now a divide between the people who believe Miller was a courageous reformer and the ones who believe he was an irresponsible administrator.
Jerome Miller had ambitious goals when he was appointed commissioner of the Department of Youth Services (DYS). He attempted to humanize the treatment of the youth who

He started by transferring the youth who were a high risk to a single institution, the Roslindale detention center Gould, 1972, (p.6). The rest of the youth were put on probation, in foster homes or in placement. After the transfers were put in place the institutions were closed one by one. Part of Miller’s strategy was to sell the properties and teardown the buildings which was unsuccessful. The purpose of making those buildings undisposed was to ensure that they would not be reopened in the future as well as to fund the newly array of community services that were offered through the reformed

The main problem revolved around funding. Many of the programs that were implemented went bankrupt while waiting for budgets to be approved (Gould, 1972, p.4). The effectiveness of the Massachusetts experiment was largely compromised by the fact that many of the services went bankrupt before being able to make a difference for youth delinquency. The effectiveness of the project was also difficult to measure since it could not be judged by successes or failures (Gould, p.5). Since Miller mainly focused on the task of humanizing the system it was hard to evaluate whether recidivism rates or costs were reduced (Gould, p.5). The data that was assembled from the program was found inconclusive and conflicting (Gould, p.5). Recidivism rates seemed to remain the same while the perception that the youth had of their treatment improved but those results didn’t appeal to the public (Gould,