Crime School

Frankie Warren is the hard-nosed leader of an inner-city gang of teenage toughs that plays hooky while engaging in shoplifting and petty theft. Frankie's sister Sue unsuccessfully struggles to right her kid brother but becomes embittered when the gang almost kills their pawnbroker fence after he cheats them and attacks Frankie. They are sentenced to two years in a "reform school", actually a repressive Dickensian prison run by corrupt, cruel officials who embezzle the funds designated to help rehabilitate their charges. Fortunately for the boys, crusading reformer Mark Braden has been appointed to reform the dysfunctional institution, but Frankie and his friends are suspicious of his motives.