A red bandanna is pinned over his bed, but 17-year-old Richard C. does not hang with the Bloods anymore. After five arrests and a probation violation, Richard was taken away from his gang a year ago and sent to a residential treatment facility called the Edwin Gould Academy.
Now the onetime gang member, tall and lanky with delicate features that disguise a hair-trigger temper, is a peer group leader. His 12 new ''brothers'' are a lot like the guys he knew on the street: truants and graffiti makers, drug dealers and addicts, car thieves and shoplifters. But the new group is striving to reform. And while staff members at Edwin Gould Academy support their efforts, it is the students who lead.
''If you have kids who are growing up like you, telling you what to do, it makes more sense,'' said Richard, who plans to join the Marines after graduating in June.
Conversions like Richard's have won national praise for the Edwin Gould Academy, home to about 175 troubled New York City adolescents from 12 to 21. About a quarter of the students were charged with one or more misdemeanors. The remaining students were sent there by the city's Administration for Children's Services, at a cost of $79,000 a year per child, average for a residential center.
Most of the youngsters were placed on an emergency basis, after their parents or guardians died, or because they were abused or neglected. Others had already been in foster care families, other group homes or juvenile detention centers. They were placed at the academy by social workers as a final option before being sent back to a detention center or a psychiatric institution.
Last month, the academy, which opened eight years ago in a cluster of hills here in Rockland County, was one of 10 programs to win the Innovations in American Government Award. The honor, which includes a $100,000 prize from the Ford Foundation and Harvard University, recognizes government programs that have developed new ways to fight America's most critical problems.
The academy's work has been praised by advocates, who say that the city's system of looking after abused and neglected children, from investigating charges of abuse to finding permanent homes, is abysmal. The situation was so dire that advocates sued the city, and last week, the city agreed to have a panel of experts examine foster care records and policies and devise alternate ways to manage the caseload.
While most residential treatment homes in the country have two staffs and two directors, for education and for social services, Edwin Gould has just one. Drug counselors, child psychologists and educators are joined in one agency, under the direction of Tom Webber, whose title is superintendent and executive director.
''This way, turf battles don't get in the way of serving the kids,'' Dr. Webber said.
The other strategy is that the students run their own group counseling and motivational sessions.
On a recent Wednesday, Edgar M., 16, who lives in Malcolm X House, a campus dormitory, asked the group there for help to recover from a phone call from his mother, who had abused and abandoned him.
The last time Edgar saw her, he was 4. She had left him at an aunt's house and said she would be back after running a few errands. He never heard from her again.
Edgar, a native of Guatemala, told the group that he thought he was over the pain. But a few weeks ago, he said, his mother called. She was living in California, and now has a 4-year-old daughter.
The call sent him into a depression. He felt sad and did not want to go to his Narcotics Anonymous meetings.
Otis R., 18., said, ''Maybe you are mad because your mother is able to raise her, and she didn't have nothing to do with you.'' His idea was echoed by others in the group. Because most of the residents are juveniles, they are identified only by their first names and last initials.
The room turned silent. Edgar rocked back and forth, as if trying to dodge the theories being tossed around him.
''You're just going to have to let this go, because there's nothing you can do about it,'' advised Otis, who was sent to the academy after a couple of arrests, and who worries about his own 9-year-old brother, who lives with his abusive father.
Administrators at Edwin Gould said that although they did not have the money to track what percentage of their graduates go on to become self-sufficient adults, the majority at least make a promising start.
Within the first eight months, the average student improves reading and math skills by more than 1.2 years. More than 50 percent of those who get high school diplomas here go on to college.
And each year, Edwin Gould administrators said, the situation on their campus improves. From 1992 to 1993, students injured staff members 66 times, and half of the girls became pregnant. Last year, staff injuries were down to eight and pregnancies down to three.
''We need to get to the point where we have more Edwin Goulds out there,'' said Nicholas Scoppetta, Commissioner of the Administration for Children's Services.
The Edwin Gould campus is surrounded by trees, and swarms with Canada geese. There are no security guards, bars or barbed wire.
The 45 girls live in two whitewashed three-story dormitories. The campus for the 128 boys, set on a hill to the west, is a series of two-story red brick cottages named for figures like Muhammad Ali, Tito Puente and Malcolm X.
There are proms, assemblies and holiday meals, although the students say ''the food stinks.'' There are basketball, track and football teams. At the end of each year, the school publishes a yearbook and holds a graduation.
Each dormitory's residents, 12 or 13 students, gather in their living room each day for a meeting students call ''group,'' focusing on the person who seems to be stumbling the most. A counselor speaks only to keep the discussion going.
During the day, students can also call informal meetings to confront someone who is misbehaving or who seems withdrawn. They do not go easy on one another. The sessions are blunt and serious.
''It's something new to me,'' Onasia B., 15, said of the peer sessions. She came to the academy last year after living in a group foster home on Staten Island, where she was sent by her mother for smoking marijuana, skipping school and staying away from home for days at a time.
The Malcolm X House, home to 13 adolescent boys from 15 to 19, is a microcosm of the school.
One resident is Sean B., of Queens, a freckle-faced 17-year-old with a goatee who said he was sent to Edwin Gould because he was ''addicted to writing on walls.'' Julio N., 17, of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, was arrested last year for assaulting a police officer. His parents are dead.
Shaddid M., 18, said he and his six brothers and sisters had been separated since they were small, and were in and out of foster care. His mother, a drug addict, died of AIDS last year.
William Aulet, homeroom teacher for the Malcolm X House, said that if life had been a little different, he could have grown up just like his students. He, too, was abandoned by his parents, who were drug addicts. But Mr. Aulet had the good fortune to be taken in by his best friend's parents.
Dr. Webber, the school administrator, a wisp of a man who says he grew up the only white child in his East Harlem neighborhood, once ran a storefront high school for dropouts and gang members kicked out of other schools. Those are the kinds of young people he wants at the academy, he said, although the school is not equipped to treat adolescents who are suicidal, heavily addicted to drugs or suffering from severe mental illness.
Jeffrey Erickson, 19, is one of the academy's most celebrated stories. After running away from one foster home after another, Mr. Erickson was sent to Edwin Gould five years ago.
''Restraint was my middle name,'' he said, referring to the many times he was held down by staff members to stop him from fighting.
Today Mr. Erickson, clean cut and confident, is studying business administration at Rockland Community College and works part time as a salesclerk at a music store. In the summer he plans to move out of the academy and into his own apartment.
The students still have their share of troubles. LaQuawn K., 16, ran away from the school a couple of weeks ago and got shot in a fight in Brooklyn. He is back at the academy now, but he brags about the bullet, lodged next to his left lung.
Two weeks ago, Michael R., 16, yelled at and tried to provoke Pierre Fils, a teaching counselor.
They rushed into Mr. Aulet's classroom and pulled chairs around a table. Michael, dragging his feet, took a seat at the front.
Three staff members were in the room, but they stayed quiet.
''Did anyone in the group see a problem with Mike?'' asked Richard, opening the meeting.
Michael rolled his eyes. ''I don't accept,'' he said.
Michael mumbled back, ''I don't accept.'' Then he started to laugh.
After 15 minutes, the group was riled. But Michael's composure was intact. The students went back to their classes. But they were not done with Michael.