The Florida School for Boys, which was renamed the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys sometime after the 1960s, is a juvenile detention facility for underage male offenders. Michael O'McCarthy and Robert Straley were inmates in the 1950s and 1960s.

Offenses that could land boys as young as five years old in the facility include truancy and running away from home. Marianna, FL is the home of the facility in the heart of the deep south, home to slavery more than a century earlier. 

There were two locations at the Florida School for Boys that struck fear in the heart of every boy who stayed there: the "White House" and the rape room. The rape room was underground, and boys were brutalized there in the dark of night. The "White House" was a small white structure in which boys were brutalized with a leather whip that was embedded with metal. Some boys were beaten to death. Although it was termed "discipline" by the administration, it was hard to find a reason why some boys were taken there. Michael and Robert want the world to know what went on at the facility so that it does not happen to any other boys.

The Boys of the Dark: a Story of Betrayal and Redemption in the Deep South by Robin Gaby Fisher, 2010

There have been various efforts to reform the juvenile justice system, many of which were directed at improving the treatment of the inmates at the Florida School for Boys. Time and time again, reforms aimed at eliminating some procedures used at the school, such as hog-tying 11-year-old boys and leaving them for long periods of time in dark, dank cells, failed. Conditions did not seem to improve. However, at this time, the "White House" has been sealed, and the dilapidated structure is no longer used.

The United Nations defines solitary confinement as torture; for teens, the effects are even more deleterious than they are for adults.

• Robin Gaby Fisher's web site
• Books abut juvenile justice
• Stanford Prison experiment
• The White House Boys Organization