Bill Steals a Topcoat
The exact date of this episode is unknown. We've filled in the date above with a placeholder. What we actually have on record is: 194u-uu-uu.
This episode is from the WNYC archives. It may contain language which is no longer politically or socially appropriate.
"The present offender was arrested while attempting to steal a topcoat from a department store in the city. The sentence is indefinite."
In each episode of Toward Return to Society—a show produced with the New York Department of Corrections—the Riker's classification board considers an inmate and tries to determine the best possible program for his time in penitentiary. Because they read the documentation surrounding each inmate, concerning his education, social situation, previous record, and psychological personality, the narrator tells us that, "the offender becomes real to the members of the classification board."
The offender is made real to the audience in a radio dramatization of his life, which begins after some music. Bill, the man in question, is talking with his sister. He's just left reform school and has come to live with them. They reminisce about their mother.
BILL: It'll be like old times again.
MARY: Almost like when mom was alive.
BILL: She was a good woman, our mom.
MARY: They don't come any better, Bill. I hope I'll be as good of a mother to my kids when they come.
BILL: Remember how she was always watching out for us, and the way she always took us to church, Sundays.
MARY: Things would have been different if Mom had lived.
BILL: You mean, I wouldn't have gotten into trouble that first time. And been sent to the reform school.
The play is used to establish various facts about Bill. He was shipped from home to home as a child, but did well in the various mechanical classes he took at reform school. As the dialogue continues, he worries about his prospects, and introduces his worries about his physical appearance.
BILL: Oh, I'll get some kind of job, I guess.
MARY: Sure you will. But what do you think you'd like to do, Bill?
BILL: Gee, I dunno. Some kind of mechanical work, I guess. But you have to be trained for that kind of work. Maybe I'll get a job helping on a truck or being a dishwasher. Guess I'm more of the laborer type. All muscle and no brain.
MARY: That's not true, Bill! You're just as smart as the next one.
BILL: I guess the trouble with me is, I'm too self-conscious. But a guy feels embarrassed, going around looking for work with half of his front teeth missing.
MARY: Gee, Bill. I wish Joe and me could lend you the money to get some false ones. But, you know how it is. Joe just starting a new job and on commission, and-
BILL: Gosh, Mary! I know how it is! You and Joe are doing enough just giving a place of my own to live in. Golly!
Music plays, and we move forward in time. Mary is pregnant, and Bill feels he must stop "sponging" off of her. He decides to move to New York, but, as he tells the listeners in a narration, it does not go well.
BILL: It's not so easy, getting a job when you don't know anyone in town. Two months. I looked everywhere for work. Then it got cold, and I needed a winter coat, the way the weather was. I'd have bought and paid for one if I'd had the dough. But all I had left was twelve dollars, and you can't get a winter coat for that kind of money. Even if I didn't need food money. Maybe I shouldn't have come to New York.
The music swells again, and the narrator presents the classification board. (Warden Edward F. Johnson, of Riker's Island Penitentiary; Dr. Bertram Pollens, Executive Secretary, New York Consultation Center; Dr. Harold R. Fox, Psychiatrist, Riker's Island Penitentiary; Captain Jerome Adler, Captain in charge of classification and assignment at Riker's Island; George E. Mears, Probation Officer, Kings County; Milton B. Lewis, Assistant Director of Education, Riker's Island; Norman M. Stone, Correction Department Executive Secretary)
" The boy is a severe behavior disorder type of case," Dr. Fox says, beginning the conversation, "who shows a considerable emotional immaturity, and he's in need of psychotherapy."
Mr. Mears summarizes the boy's life, noting that he didn't finish the 6th grade. The board discusses his education and intelligence tests. In one set of tests, he was classified as "dull-normal," while in the other he was "a superior person." Dr. Pollens explains that the first test required more of an educational background, while the second only measured performance. Over the course of the conversation, they determine that he needs further schooling in spelling, math, and basic English.
Once he has gained these skills, they say, he should take classes in the machine shop. They hope that knowledge of a trade will replace his insecurities.
"The penal institute can substitute for a mother or a father," Dr. Pollens says, "by assigning him to a program and, an administrative official or instructor who will replace that need."
Dr. Pollens argues that he should not, however, be limited to an assistant position. "His tests show that he has never accomplished up to the max of his capacity," he says, and suggests that with high intelligence and low achievement, he has become frustrated and insecure.
Mr. Lewis lists some addition leisure time activities that Bill might be a part of. The season calls for indoor activities, and there are current inter-inmate competitions in shuffleboard, ping-pong, checkers, chess, and dominoes.
The board then enters an extensive discussion about the possibility of plastic surgery for the boy, due to his insecurity about his "thick lips and prominent nose," as well as his missing front teeth. The surgery must wait for three months, since the prison does not have such facilities, but there are some concerns voiced about the necessity of such an operation. Mr. Stone suggests that his facial features may be the entire root of his problem.
The warden mentions Jimmy Durante, a performer with a prominent nose who makes the most of his facial features.
"This brings us back to Adler's theory of the organic inferiority complex," replies Dr. Pollens, "Uh, "Schnozzle Durante" took a liability and turned it into an asset and made a fortune out of it. However, for each Schnozzle Durante, we have a thousand men like him who cannot capitalize on it, who take it as a mark of inferiority."
Mr. Stone tells a story about a former inmate whose attitude changed radically after nose-alteration surgery. He left the prison and did not return.
They ultimately decide that nothing should be done until the inmate has received extensive psychotherapy, in order to realize his problems and work on them. Mr. mears worries that such psychotherapy will be seen by the other inmates as "buggy" or as a road to the "bughouse," but Dr. Fox reassures him that much has changed since psychotherapy was introduced in the prison system in 1935, and that the inmates understand it is helping them.
Dr. Stone summarizes the situation. Bill, he says, "contracts to go ahead, learn a trade, and to increase his education. And we, on the other hand, contract to help him with his personality through the psychiatrist, through medical services, and so forth."
Music plays, and the credits are read.
Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection
WNYC archives id: 8610
Municipal archives id: LT923
