The Lost Boys of Tryon

clipped from nymag.com The Lost Boys of Tryon Inside New York’s most infamous juvenile prison, where troubled kids—abused and forgotten— learn to become troubled adults. By Jennifer Gonnerman Tryon's youngest resident, age 12.   (Photo: Eugene Richards) Two hundred miles from home, a 12-year-old boy wakes up in a tiny locked room. Outside, eight inches of snow hides everything but the sixteen-foot fence that surrounds him. The boy is from Brooklyn, but he’s serving time as a juvenile delinquent here in Fulton County, an hour northwest of Albany. The room next door belongs to a 14-year-old, also from Brooklyn. Down the hall are more kids from New York City: Harlem, Brownsville, Flatbush. Opened in 1966, this place used to be called the Tryon School for Boys; it’s best known as the reform school where 12-year-old Mike Tyson first learned how to box. Today the official name is Tryon Residential Center, but that’s a euphemism: Tryon has become a penal colony for kids.