Castaways : the Penikese Island experiment /

In fall 1973, ex-marine Cadwalader and three of his friends began to build a community-based school for juvenile delinquents on Penikese Island, a former leper colony off the coast of Massachusetts. This book details the rough beginning, the attempts to teach on-the-job skills and accountability to young adults whose only constancy was instability, and the evolution of the Penikese experiment from a six-week program to a year-round residential school, still in operation. Cadwalader writes with selfless honesty, compelling insight, and humor; the often recalcitrant youths he depicts come across clearly and poignantly, with a clear veracity of language and action. Here hope is not blind but tinged with a sorrow born of reality, as Cadwalader follows up on some of the ``graduates'': ``How do you measure success in this business? If Penikese has managed to defuse a potential murderer to the point that he limits his crimes to car theft, is that not success?'' A moving and highly readable story of successes, failures, and, especially, the courage to attempt an alternative to a system that doesn't work. ELK.

On Penikese Island off the Cape Cod coast, Cadwalader, an ex-marine, developed a program to rehabilitate delinquents. The program is more humane than the old ``training school'' model, but sadly, it has not had much impact on recidivism rates. The castaways of the title, ``appear incapable of love, driven by unfocused anger.'' But Cadwalader and his staff continue to work with them, demonstrating that acting for humane considerations is sometimes the means that justify the end, even when the statistics do not. Useful to anyone interested in working with or reading about streetwise juveniles. John Broderick, Stonehill Coll., N. Easton, Mass. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

The ""fall from innocence"" of the head of a kind of Boys Town experiment designed to turn teen-age delinquents into law abiding, self-reliant citizens Via ""survival training"" on a remote island in Massachusetts' Buzzards Bay. Cadwalader, who had seen ""misfits"" shape up during Marine Corps boot camp, believed at first that a four-month summertime exposure to construction work, crop growing, animal husbandry, carpentry, and boat-building would give young offenders a better chance to make it in the real world than the traditional reform school. When the school began operating year-round, job-skills training and apprenticeships in established mainland businesses were added. But, despite the best efforts of Cadwalader and his dedicated staff, the boys tended to fall apart after leaving the school's structured environment. In 1980, Cadwalader followed up the first 106 of his students to find that only 16 had not been involved with the police. The others had collectively committed 309 violent and 3082 nonviolent offenses. The problem, he contends, is that delinquents usually come from such chaotic environments, with ""so many contradictory messages,"" that they do not realize that destructive, impulsive actions can lead to dire consequences. He also faults ""the profoundly confusion, American ethos which glorifies violence."" At book's end, Cadwalader soldiers doggedly on, hoping to salvage at least some of the boys trained in his program. Raunchy, often wildly funny, despite the sobering message that too-little, too-late intervention to turn delinquents around is little better than a Band-Aid. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.