Huck Finn, J.D.

The roofed-over raft spent a leisurely month making its way down the Mississippi from Minneapolis to St. Louis, manned by 14 teen-age boys and three congenial supervisors. It hardly seemed probable that on such an idyllic summer expedition, the boys were there only because a court said they had to be. But that was indeed the case. All 14 were juvenile delinquents -- two-and three-time offenders from chronic truants to an armed robber.

Normally such case-hardened kids would probably be slapped in a juvenile reform school. Instead, these were committed by Minneapolis judges to an imaginative program conceived ten years ago by Paul Keve, then director of court services for the Minneapolis area, now Minnesota's commissioner of corrections. Keve's basic concept was that a person cannot be taught to live in society if he is removed from normal social situations. So Keve devised a program for a small group of young offenders who stay at home and in school on weekdays, and on Friday afternoons are delivered by bus to a near by country cabin, where they must spend the weekend together. There they play ball and hike under careful supervision by a staff more interested in rehabilitation than in punishment. Every night there are group discussions of problems at school or at home. Each year the high point of the program is the raft trip.

Huffin' Butts. Last week the eighth trip landed in St. Louis. Some of the kids conceded that it was a success--although one insisted that he would rather have stayed home "huffin' butts and goin' to parties." But they had learned the advantages of cooperation and shared work. Each night the boys helped to dig the latrine or cook the chow; everyone put up tents. The kids did most of the planning too--wrote for permission to use recreational facilities, estimated provisions, got clothes ready. On the trip, there were warm receptions in river towns by the mayor or a police escort--a welcome change from being rousted by police back home.

Most common complaint of the travelers is that the trips are too long. But Probation Officer David Cook, director of the program, points out that it is only during the final week or two that real unity develops. "The raft is perfect for group therapy," he says. "You can control almost all the pressures on the boys." After the only incident of trouble on the latest journey--some swearing in a Y.M.C.A.--the guilty boy was made to feel so unhappy about letting his buddies down that he punished himself by standing alone for an hour in the corner of the raft.

Longer-term results are more difficult to gauge. After release, program members commit far fewer offenses than others. But Cook admits that "sometimes we can only cut down the type or frequency of crime." In any case, he has high hopes for the current group, will recommend that half be taken out of the program immediately and given full freedom.

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