Research was completed in two intermediate community schools in 1972 and 1974 to illustrate structural relationships operating in a total institution. The two schools not only differ ecologically -- one urban and the other rural -- but also in the character of regimes, as one is a 'structured' school operated by a social services department, and the other is a 'therapeutic' school administered by a Catholic mission. Data were collected primarily by participant observation, although a formal questionnaire was developed to determine how staff and inmates perceived organizational goals. Findings show that social order in total institutions is best understood as the social accomplishment of staff and inmates working out structural relationships. Dominant groups seek to impose order by presenting their own section interests as organizational goals, needs, or common sense. Although the schools have had to accommodate their regimes to the ideas of child care and social work, these ideas are seldom clear guides to action. Although community home school staff are now armed with a professional vocabulary of motives which translates a custodial sentence into a period of treatment, the staff still clearly seeks control over the behavior and attitudes of the inmates. The school with the more self-conscious commitment to child-care ideas generated more confusion among staff and inmate perceptions, apparently because of the staff's greater autonomy in decisions about inmate needs. Tabular data and four references are provided.