This episode is from the WNYC archives. It may contain language which is no longer politically or socially appropriate.

"The conviction of this offender was for stealing a radio valued at $40. And the penitentiary is indefinite."

In this installment of the New York Department of Corrections series ("aimed to enlarge your understanding of that department's work!") a young boy—voiced by Rod Serling—steals a radio. A board of "medical experts," the listeners are told, will review his social, medical, and psychological records in order to create a program for his penitentiary term. "The object?" the announcer declares, "Rehabilitation. The subject is regarded as a person in need of readjustment to a useful niche in society. No steps in this direction are overlooked."

The stage is set with a dramatization of the boy's crime. It is early morning, and a young man walks quickly down a quiet street.

BOY: I figured I could get away this time. Far away. All I had to do was sell a radio and buy a train ticket for as far as I could go. I figured if I just walked along with a radio under my arm, anybody'd think it was mine. This time I was gonna make it. But the cop on the corner was smart—had a good pair of eyes.
COP: Where you going with that radio, young fella?
BOY: Me? Home.
COP: Where do you live?
BOY: Down the block.
COP: Kind of late to be lugging a radio around, isn't it?

The exchange continues, with the boy pretending he was at a party and insisting that his mother is waiting, but the scene eventually fades to a courtroom. The policeman who arrested the boy details his crime.

COP: Then he told me he'd come out on the fire escape from the roof, jimmied open the window and entered the apartment.
BOY: (aside) I'd cased the place good.
COP: He knew the occupants were away for a weekend. He offered no resistance to arrest after his first denial.
BOY: (aside) The judge kept looking at me, and when he heard I was eighteen he kept rubbing his chin. That's because my face looks older, I guess. And he got a jolt when the probation officer told him I registered for the draft when I was fifteen and a half. I wanted to get away and the army was shipping guys all over the world. That probation officer had everything down in writing. Even some stuff I didn't know myself.

The probation officer describes the young boy's life, interrupted by frequent asides from the young man for the benefit of the radio audience. The boy is the youngest of five. When his mother died, his father remarried a woman with two other children. His father was an alcoholic, and his step-mother could not control the seven children under her care.

"Yeah," comments the boy, "She was always treating her own kids good."

Eventually, he began to leave the house for long periods of time—he explains in a sidebar that he slept in the subway—and then was taken to children's court for stealing a handbag from a car. He was sent to an institution, ran away, was picked up for breaking a restaurant window… After some burglary and some "loafing," he went to the Warwick Training School to learn plumbing but wanted to get away, so he stole the radio.

A gavel bangs, and then the boy gives the listener a summary of his life after the court case. He was sentenced to three years in reformatory school, where he picked a lot of fights. He was eventually summoned to the superintendent's office for the iodine and razorblades found in his room. He felt he was being "soft-soaped" by authority figures, and the actor claims that this made him so angry that he punched the superintendent.

He was transferred to Riker's Island as a result.

"Where do I go from here?" the boy asks.

The members of the classification board are assembled to determine the answer to that question. (They are Charlotte Carr, Executive Director of the Citizens' Committee on Children in New York; Captain Joseph A. Cukas, in charge of in-service training, Department of Correction; George E. Mears, Probation Officer, Kings County; Herman K. Spector, Director of Education and Recreation, Department of Correction; Dr. Bertram Pollens, Executive Secretary, New York Consultation Center; Norman M. Stone, Correction Department Executive Secretary.)

Stone moderates the conversation, questioning each member of the board in turn. He begins the meet with a statement about the boy's upbringing, declaring his abnormal home and his hostility towards his father as the root of his problems.
Ms. Carr states that the boy has a right to be hostile to all of society. "We had an opportunity with this radio broadcast to get inside his mind," she says, "And probably no one has before this."

Mr. Mears agrees that the boy has a right to feel hostile, and suggests that the boy must be informed of that right. The boy only acts out his hostility, he claims, because he is ashamed of it and believed it to be wrong.

"How can we return him to the normal state he had, perhaps, when he was three years old?" asks Mr. Stone, reiterating that the boy's hostility is learned.
Dr. Pollens answers that he saw only one hopeful sign in the case summary—the fact that the boy was often close to tears. "I believe if we can succeed in bringing him to actual tears, not just on the verge of tears, we will have succeeded in cracking that armor that he has built up."

The board goes on to discuss the boy's education and his recreational activities, but agree that he must first be kept in semi-isolation and reach some personal insight before he can pursue such a course. They suggest spiritual guidance as well as intensive study with a regular psychological caseworker.

Ms. Carr interjects, commenting that all the money spent on these specialists would have been better spent on public schools. She also worries that the guards at Riker's will not be particularly sensitive to the man's psychological state, and that his time with psychological caseworkers will be too limited in comparison.

Mr. Stone reassures her that the employees will have a deep knowledge of the man's case, but the board nevertheless decides to put the man in the "reception company," since the officer in charge has been specially trained to "handle men from a psychological standpoint."

The board agrees, and Mr. Stone summarizes their findings. An announcer reads the credits for the program.

Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection

WNYC archives id: 8279
Municipal archives id: LT925