'School-to-prison pipeline' for Black children on shocking display in Tennessee
Just about every Black person in this country has been given or has given ‘the talk,’ the depressing but necessary message to Black children to expect to be treated differently by police. But my home state of Tennessee has provided a great illustration that the mistreatment doesn't stop with the police, but includes an entire system that treats Black children as less than.
ProPublica and Nashville Public Radio have reported on a disturbing sequence of events in 2016, in Rutherford County, miles from where I grew up.
Eleven kids were arrested after a video of a 5-year-old and a 6-year-old fighting was uploaded to YouTube. Local authorities under the guidance of Judge Donna Scott Davenport had the children (ages 8 to 14) locked up for literally nothing. Their alleged crime was not stopping the fight, and they were booked with “criminal responsibility for conduct of another,” a crime that doesn’t exist.
The 5-year-old and 6-year old who fought only evaded arrest because they were so young. Some of the older children were arrested at school, even though the fight didn’t occur there.
The story of the arrests is shocking enough, but Rutherford County authorities were able to jail some of the children because of a “filter system” the head of the detention center implemented. According to ProPublica’s report, “Under the filter system, the child would be locked up if deemed ‘unruly.’ But the filter system defines ‘unruly’ simply as ‘a TRUE threat,’ while ‘TRUE threat’ is not defined at all.”
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/school-prison-pipeline-black-children-shocking-display-tennessee-n1282173?icid=msd_topgrid