PBH Will Work with Parole Board In Delinquent Rehabilitation Study

Phillips Brooks House will provide 12 volunteers to the Massachusetts Youth Service Board next week to work with delinquent boys recently released from the Lyman School, a correctional institution in Westboro.

The volunteers will be part of a larger parole board study designed to prove to state legislators that intensive follow-up work with delinquents will greatly reduce their rate of return to these schools. Total cost to the state of maintaining these schools would thereby be reduced.

Tutors and Big Brothers

Working under the supervision of a state parole officer, each Harvard student will serve as either a tutor or a big brother to a 14-15 year-old boy.

The Lyman Committee of PBH, which now provides tutors and activities leaders at Lyman School, is recruiting the additional volunteers.

This program, which will run on a trial basis this semester, will be evaluated during the summer by a research analyst at the Youth Service Board and by psychiatrists and lawyers at the Boston University Law-Medicine Research Institute.

Both PBH and state parole-board officials hope to expand this pilot program. If the evaluation is favorable, a new PBH committee to work with the Youth Service Board may be instituted next year, John Strucker, '66, co-chairman of the Lyman Committee, said yesterday.

The 12 parole officers who will supervise the volunteers are now enrolled in an 18-week social work course at the B.U. Law-Medicine Research Institute. Their tuitions and the salary of the analyst who will evaluate the whole program are being financed by a $20,000 grant from the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

The Massachusetts legislature has created these new parole-officer positions specifically in order to carry out this study. It will run for three years and use about $260,000 from general state revenues to pay their salaries.