The White House: An American Tragedy (2009) is a recounting by Roger Dean Kiser, a one-time inmate of the Florida School for Boys, of his experiences at the reform school and in “the White House”.
He tells, for example, of how the beatings of boys which took place in “the White House” were so brutal that it made some of the boys unrecognisable.
He also says that, although “the White House” was originally intended for ‘serious’ offences like absconding, in fact boys were beaten mercilessly “for smoking, talking back, cursing…”, even coughing.