Glen Mills Schools

The Glen Mills Schools was a youth detention center for juvenile delinquents located near Glen Mills in Thornbury Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, United States,^[1] for boys between 12 and 21 years of age. The school was founded in 1826^[2] and was the oldest surviving school of its type in the United States until all residents were ordered removed on March 25, 2019, by the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services.^[3] The school's licenses were subsequently revoked for not complying with the state's Human Services Code and regulations.^[4]

Previously, Glen Mills had been lauded as a "pathbreaking concept for modernizing failing reform schools in the United States".^[5] The St. Petersburg Times in 1996 called it "the country's most radical and, some say, its most effective answer yet to juvenile crime".^[6] and the New York Times praised its "culture that encourages self-discipline and a sense of mutual respect and responsibility".^[5] Juvenile courts in other states, such as California and Texas, along with various Pennsylvania jurisdictions, sent boys adjudged delinquent to Glen Mills Schools.^[7] Even troubled boys from other countries, such as Bermuda and Germany, were also sent there.^[5] Bermuda's Department of Child and Family Services, for example, sent boys to Glen Mills for more than 35 years between 1982–2017,^[8] paying almost $1.6 million to the school between 2001 and 2019.^[9] On the school's 125th Anniversary, it described itself as having "500 court-adjudicated male youth on an open residential campus, providing students with academics, vocational programs, character and leadership skill development, behavior services, athletics and recreation".^[10]

The school denied allegations of mistreatment and appealed the revocation of its licenses to the Pennsylvania DHS Bureau of Hearings and Appeals,^[8] but settled a class action lawsuit in 2023.