School to Prison Pipeline

[Joanne98]

http://iraqwarit.blogspot.com/2007/06/herbert-school-to-prison-pipeline.html
June 9, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist, nytimes.com
School to Prison Pipeline
By BOB HERBERT

The latest news-as-entertainment spectacular is the Paris Hilton criminal justice fiasco. She’s in! She’s out! She’s — whatever.

Far more disturbing (and much less entertaining) is the way school officials and the criminal justice system are criminalizing children and teenagers all over the country, arresting them and throwing them in jail for behavior that in years past would never have led to the intervention of law enforcement.

This is an aspect of the justice system that is seldom seen. But the consequences of ushering young people into the bowels of police precincts and jail cells without a good reason for doing so are profound.

Two months ago I wrote about a 6-year-old girl in Florida who was handcuffed by the police and taken off to the county jail after she threw a tantrum in her kindergarten class.

Police in Brooklyn recently arrested more than 30 young people, ages 13 to 22, as they walked toward a subway station, on their way to a wake for a teenage friend who had been murdered. No evidence has been presented that the grieving young people had misbehaved. No drugs or weapons were found. But they were accused by the police of gathering unlawfully and of disorderly conduct.

In March, police in Baltimore handcuffed a 7-year-old boy and took him into custody for riding a dirt bike on the sidewalk. The boy tearfully told The Baltimore Examiner, “They scared me.” Mayor Sheila Dixon later apologized for the arrest.

Children, including some who are emotionally disturbed, are often arrested for acting out. Some are arrested for carrying sharp instruments that they had planned to use in art classes, and for mouthing off.

This is a problem that has gotten out of control. Behavior that was once considered a normal part of growing up is now resulting in arrest and incarceration.

Kids who find themselves caught in this unnecessary tour of the criminal justice system very quickly develop malignant attitudes toward law enforcement. Many drop out — or are forced out — of school. In the worst cases, the experience serves as an introductory course in behavior that is, in fact, criminal.

There is a big difference between a child or teenager who brings a gun to school or commits some other serious offense and someone who swears at another student or gets into a wrestling match or a fistfight in the playground. Increasingly, especially as zero-tolerance policies proliferate, children are being treated like criminals for the most minor offenses.

There should be no obligation to call the police if a couple of kids get into a fight and teachers are able to bring it under control. But now, in many cases, youngsters caught fighting are arrested and charged with assault.

A 2006 report on disciplinary practices in Florida schools showed that a middle school student in Palm Beach County who was caught throwing rocks at a soda can was arrested and charged with a felony — hurling a “deadly missile.”

We need to get a grip.

The Racial Justice Program at the American Civil Liberties Union has been studying this issue. “What we see routinely,” said Dennis Parker, the program’s director, “is that behavior that in my time would have resulted in a trip to the principal’s office is now resulting in a trip to the police station.”

He added that the evidence seems to show that white kids are significantly less likely to be arrested for minor infractions than black or Latino kids. The 6-year-old arrested in Florida was black. The 7-year-old arrested in Baltimore was black.

Shaquanda Cotton was black. She was the 14-year-old high school freshman in Paris, Tex., who was arrested for shoving a hall monitor. She was convicted in March 2006 of “assault on a public servant” and sentenced to a prison term of — hold your breath — up to seven years!

Shaquanda’s outraged family noted that the judge who sentenced her had, just three months earlier, sentenced a 14-year-old white girl who was convicted of arson for burning down her family’s home. The white girl was given probation.

Shaquanda was recently released after a public outcry over her case and the eruption of a scandal involving allegations of widespread sexual abuse of incarcerated juveniles in Texas.

This issue deserves much more attention. Sending young people into the criminal justice system unnecessarily is a brutal form of abuse with consequences, for the child and for society as a whole, that can last a lifetime.
________________http://iraqwarit.blogspot.com/2007/06/herbert-school-to-prison-pipeline.html

[Demeter]

1. You Betcha They Are!

How about threatening a mentally disabled white girl with jail, because there isn't anyone in Special Ed with any training in anything, especially autism? It happens.

[Aviation Pro]

2. This is all part of getting them in the system early....

...that way when "disenfranchise time" comes it'll be easier.

[nashville_brook]

3. law enforcement doesn't see the kids as people -- they are objects to be classified

if they saw them as people, they'd think before they put a 7-year old in the juvie system as it is clear that that ruins lives.

if they saw them as people, they'd know that even a small fine will likely have months of consequence for an economically disadvantaged family.

something terrifying is happening in the law enforcement sector, especially here in florida. there's an us-and-them mentality where the "them" is anyone of meager means and children are the ultimate helpless individuals of meager means. it's a sickening form of bullying.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

4. A possible Giuliani presidency ought to be a nightmare for minority parents and for

educators nationwide. Giulani proposed replacing many unarmed School Security Officers with uniformed police within days of having been elected. By the end of his administration, he had perfected a "railroad" to prison system that in effect partly governs some schools from Police Headquarters and imposes prison-like arbitrary control over tens of thousands of NYC students:

From the NYCLU at http://www.nyclu.org/pdfs/criminalizing_the_classroom_report.pdf :

"Criminalizing the Classroom -- The Over-Policing of New York City Schools

... Since the NYPD took control of school safety in 1998, the number of policepersonnel in schools and the extent of their activity have skyrocketed. At the start of the 2005-2006 school year, the city employed a total of 4,625 School Safety Agents (SSAs) and at least 200 armed police officers assigned exclusively to schools. These numbers would make the NYPD's School Safety Division alone the tenth largest police force in the country--larger than the police forces of Washington, D.C., Detroit, Boston, or Las Vegas.

Because these school-assigned police personnel are not directly subject to the supervisory authority of school administrators, and because they often have not been adequately trained to work in educational settings, SSAs and police officers often arrogate to themselves authority that extends well beyond the narrow mission of securing the safety of the students and teachers. They enforce school rules relating to dress and appearance. They make up their own rules regarding food or other objects that havenothing whatsoever to do with school safety. On occasion they subject educators who question the NYPD's treatment of students to retaliatory arrests. More routinely, according to our interviews and survey, they subject students to inappropriate treatment including:

--derogatory, abusive and discriminatory comments and conduct;

--intrusive searches;

--unauthorized confiscation of students' personal items, including food, cameras and essential school supplies;

--inappropriate sexual attention;

--physical abuse; and

--arrest for minor non-criminal violations of school rules.

These types of police interventions create flashpoints for confrontations and divert students and teachers from invaluable classroom time. They make students feel diminished, and are wholly incompatible with a positive educational environment."

[Downtown Hound]

5. Good post

When I think about what I did growing up, I could have been arrested many, many times if I had been growing up today. And I wasn't even a troublemaker. But I did get in the occasional fight, I rode my bike without a helmet and on the sidewalk, I skateboarded, and occasionally I mouthed off. All of these things are downright criminal today. It's scary.

[thethinker]

6. It seems to me

that they are trying to prepare the current generation to live in an authoritarian police state. If they train them to accept this type of treatment while they are young, they will be more docile when they are older.

The police have no business being near our schools. If principals and teachers can't handle the education of children without calling the police, they need to replaced. The parents need to organize and put an end to this nonsense.

There has been so many thing in our society that has changed in the last few years. The public seems to accept things like this and go on with their lives. It is hard to believe we shrug our shoulders when we hear about torture or things going on at Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib. It seems nothing shocks us any more.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

7. There are people here in DU that defend this evil.

If you're one of those people, here's a hearty "FUCK YOU" from me to you.

[DarkTirade]

8. Stupid things like this are ruining our kids.

If kids can't fool around on the playground, then what the hell are we teaching them? Seriously?
These ridiculous 'zero tolerance policies' and the general treating of kids like caged animals is ruining their perspective on things. We're making a society of people who have never had to actually defend themselves... or worse yet, are so conditioned to think that authority can't be fought to the point that they WON'T defend themselves when they need to.
We treat them like caged animals, they will act like caged animals. Which, conversly, is probably why a lot of them snap and bring guns to school too... because caged animals sometimes can't take it anymore and start snapping at everything in sight.
In my entire time in public school, I was in one fight in 8th grade. I'd hate to imagine what would have happened if we hadn't waited until we got to the bus stop to do it though... probably would have both been expelled and arrested for assault...

[tomreedtoon]

9. Just another way most teachers are tyrants.

This kind of behavior on behalf of "educational professionals" never surprises me. Not too long ago a teacher in Florida took a misbehaving retarded child and duct-taped her into a cardboard box. The community outrage about this incident was drowned out by the wishes of all the other teachers that they had thought of the idea first.

And while many people have been complaining about how Bush's "Texas Miracle" occurred - by dumping low-scoring kids out of the educational system - did any of you hear any teachers complaining about it while it was going on? They followed the philosophy of my old sixth-grade teacher: "The less, the merrier."