HonorYourOath Civil Rights Investigations | Government Accountability Is Illegal! (HYO Retro Video) @HONORYOUROATH | Uploaded August 2024 | Updated October 2024, 8 hours ago.
This is an HYO Retro Video originally published back in 2014. youtu.be/3ivdGYOShFs?si=vY4O74nZiPhtpMGK
dunnhistory.com/the-infamous-dozier-school
The Infamous Dozier School, by Dr. Marvin Dunn
The Florida School for Boys, also known as the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, was a reform school operated by the state of Florida in Marianna, Florida from January 1, 1900, to June 30, 2011. For a time, it was the largest juvenile reform institution in the United States. A second campus was opened in the town of Okeechobee in 1955. Throughout its 111-year history, the school gained a reputation for abuse, beatings, rapes, torture, and even murder of students by staff. Despite periodic investigations, changes of leadership, and promises to improve, the allegations of cruelty and abuse continued. Many of the allegations were confirmed by separate investigations by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in 2010 and the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice in 2011. State authorities closed the school permanently in June 2011. At the time of its closure it was a part of the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice.
In 1929, an 11-room concrete block detention building containing two cells (one for white, and one for black students) was constructed to house incorrigible or violent students. It was eventually nicknamed “The White House”. After corporal punishment at the school was abolished in 1968, the building was used for storage. In 2008, in response to the allegations of beatings and torture that took place there, state officials sealed the building in a public ceremony, leaving a memorial plaque, and it has remained empty since that time.
At the time of the Justice Department investigation in 2010-2011, shortly before the closure, Dozier was a fenced, 159-acre “high-risk” residential facility for 104 boys aged 13 to 21 who had been committed there by a court; their average length of stay at Dozier was nine to twelve months. They lived in several cottages, with each boy having an unlocked room. Next door was the Jackson Juvenile Offender Center, a “maximum-risk” facility for chronic offenders guilty of felonies or violent crimes, which housed residents in single, locked cells like a prison.[
According to the 2010 abuse investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the school was first organized under an 1897 act of the legislature and began operations on the Marianna campus on January 1, 1900, as the Florida State Reform School, under the control of five commissioners appointed by the governor, who were to operate the school and make biennial reports to the legislature.
In 1914, the name was changed to the Florida Industrial School for Boys and in 1957 to the Florida School for Boys. In 1955, the Okeechobee campus opened. In 1967, the name of the Marianna campus was changed to the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in honor of a former superintendent of the school. In 1903, an inspection reported that children at the school were commonly kept in leg irons. A fire in a dormitory at the school in 1914 killed six inmates and two staff members.
A 13-year-old boy sent to the school in 1934 for “trespassing” died 38 days after arriving there.
In 1982, an inspection revealed that boys at the school were “hogtied” and kept in isolation for weeks at a time”, and the ACLU filed a lawsuit over this and similar mistreatment. By this time, the school was housing 105 boys aged thirteen to twenty-one. Lawsuits concerning the school led to federal control of Florida’s juvenile justice system from 1987 onward.
In 1985, it emerged that young ex-inmates of the school, sentenced to jail terms for crimes committed while there, had subsequently been the victims of torture at the Jackson County jail. The method of torture was for the prison guards to handcuff the teenagers and then hang them from the bars of their cells, sometimes for over an hour. The guards stated that their superiors approved the practice and that it was routine.
In 1994, the school was placed under the management of the newly created Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, which operated the school until its closure in 2011. By this time, the school had facilities to house 135 inmates, and many of the boys sent there had been convicted of rape or of committing “lewd acts on other children.
This is an HYO Retro Video originally published back in 2014. youtu.be/3ivdGYOShFs?si=vY4O74nZiPhtpMGK
dunnhistory.com/the-infamous-dozier-school
The Infamous Dozier School, by Dr. Marvin Dunn
The Florida School for Boys, also known as the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, was a reform school operated by the state of Florida in Marianna, Florida from January 1, 1900, to June 30, 2011. For a time, it was the largest juvenile reform institution in the United States. A second campus was opened in the town of Okeechobee in 1955. Throughout its 111-year history, the school gained a reputation for abuse, beatings, rapes, torture, and even murder of students by staff. Despite periodic investigations, changes of leadership, and promises to improve, the allegations of cruelty and abuse continued. Many of the allegations were confirmed by separate investigations by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in 2010 and the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice in 2011. State authorities closed the school permanently in June 2011. At the time of its closure it was a part of the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice.
In 1929, an 11-room concrete block detention building containing two cells (one for white, and one for black students) was constructed to house incorrigible or violent students. It was eventually nicknamed “The White House”. After corporal punishment at the school was abolished in 1968, the building was used for storage. In 2008, in response to the allegations of beatings and torture that took place there, state officials sealed the building in a public ceremony, leaving a memorial plaque, and it has remained empty since that time.
At the time of the Justice Department investigation in 2010-2011, shortly before the closure, Dozier was a fenced, 159-acre “high-risk” residential facility for 104 boys aged 13 to 21 who had been committed there by a court; their average length of stay at Dozier was nine to twelve months. They lived in several cottages, with each boy having an unlocked room. Next door was the Jackson Juvenile Offender Center, a “maximum-risk” facility for chronic offenders guilty of felonies or violent crimes, which housed residents in single, locked cells like a prison.[
According to the 2010 abuse investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the school was first organized under an 1897 act of the legislature and began operations on the Marianna campus on January 1, 1900, as the Florida State Reform School, under the control of five commissioners appointed by the governor, who were to operate the school and make biennial reports to the legislature.
In 1914, the name was changed to the Florida Industrial School for Boys and in 1957 to the Florida School for Boys. In 1955, the Okeechobee campus opened. In 1967, the name of the Marianna campus was changed to the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in honor of a former superintendent of the school. In 1903, an inspection reported that children at the school were commonly kept in leg irons. A fire in a dormitory at the school in 1914 killed six inmates and two staff members.
A 13-year-old boy sent to the school in 1934 for “trespassing” died 38 days after arriving there.
In 1982, an inspection revealed that boys at the school were “hogtied” and kept in isolation for weeks at a time”, and the ACLU filed a lawsuit over this and similar mistreatment. By this time, the school was housing 105 boys aged thirteen to twenty-one. Lawsuits concerning the school led to federal control of Florida’s juvenile justice system from 1987 onward.
In 1985, it emerged that young ex-inmates of the school, sentenced to jail terms for crimes committed while there, had subsequently been the victims of torture at the Jackson County jail. The method of torture was for the prison guards to handcuff the teenagers and then hang them from the bars of their cells, sometimes for over an hour. The guards stated that their superiors approved the practice and that it was routine.
In 1994, the school was placed under the management of the newly created Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, which operated the school until its closure in 2011. By this time, the school had facilities to house 135 inmates, and many of the boys sent there had been convicted of rape or of committing “lewd acts on other children.
