A political appointee with a checkered past tries to institute constructive changes as the deputy commissioner at a cruel reform school but gets pushback from a sadistic warden and a suspicious judge who doesn't trust his motives.

Five members of a teen-age gang, including leader Jimmy Smith, are sent to the state reformatory, presided over by the melodramatically callous Thompson. Soon, Patsy Gargan, a former gangster appointed deputy commissioner as a political favor, arrives - complete with hip flask and blonde. Gargan falls for activist nurse Dorothy and, inspired by her, takes over the administration to run the place on radical principles. But Thompson, to conceal his years of graft, needs a quick way to discredit Gargan.—Rod Crawford <[email protected]>

Young juvenile delinquents are sent to reform school in the hope that they will get an education and mend their ways. What they find when they get there is a quasi-military regimen with the facility's superintendent beating boys for the slightest infraction. They are served bad food and the environment is anything but educational. When ward boss Patsy Gargan is given a political appointment as deputy commissioner for the area, he decides he's going to shake things up. He treats the boys with respect and gives them some authority over their own lives. The superintendent isn't keen on the changes however and works to dismantle everything Gargan puts in place.—garykmcd