Is the Justice System Criminalizing Our Children?

-


Many educational reformers such as the ACLU ( American Civil Liberties Union), the Advancement Project and Burns Institute state that oppressive school policies and restrictions have created a schoolhouse-to-jailhouse track for students. According to the Advancement Project, "the schoolhouse to jailhouse track is an education problem as much as it is a criminal justice problem. When students are pushed out of school through harsh disciplinary policies, their education is interrupted."

  The organization proceeds to say, "for many students, harsh discipline is part of a vicious cycle. Students who are already struggling are more prone to misbehavior out of frustration. When they do act out they are harshly punished, which in turn leads to further academic struggle and frustration. Stopping the schoolhouse to jailhouse track thus not only promises to treat our children humanely and keep them out of prison, it also promises to be a first step towards offering every child the opportunity to succeed in school and beyond." This is part of a broader reason why some minority students choose to drop out of school. Students in such group feel as if policies like the School-to Prison Pipeline are established to target them, leading them to believe that they aren't guaranteed any success in life.


                                  So What Is the School-to-Prison Pipeline?

 According to Rethinking Schools, the school-to-prison pipeline begins in deep social and economic inequalities, and has taken root in the historic shortcomings of schooling in this country. The civil and human rights movements of the 1960s and '70s spurred an effort to "rethink schools" to make them responsive to the needs of all students, their families, and communities.

But according to an article from PBS's Tavis Smiley Reports, the school to-to-prison pipeline: an epidemic that is plaguing schools across the nation. Far too often, students are suspended, expelled or even arrested for minor offenses that leave visits to the principal's office a thing of the past. Statistics reflect that these policies disproportionately target students of color and those with a history of abuse, neglect, poverty or learning disabilities.

The report continues to say, students who are forced out of school for disruptive behavior are usually sent back to the origin of their angst and unhappiness--their home environments or their neighborhoods , which are filled with negative influence. Those who are forced out for smaller offenses become hardened, confused, embittered. Those who are unnecessarily forced out of school become stigmatized and fall behind in their studies; many eventually decide to drop out of school altogether, and many others commit crimes in their communities.

  According to the ACLU, Many of these students have learning disabilities or histories of poverty, abuse or neglect, and would benefit from additional educational and counseling services. Instead, they are isolated, punished and pushed out.

  "Zero-tolerance" policies criminalize minor infractions of school rules, while cops in school lead to students being criminalized for behavior that should be handled inside the school. Students of color are especially vulnerable to push-out trends and the discriminatory application of discipline.

Reformers like the ACLU believe that children should be educated, not incarcerated. They are working to challenge numerous policies and practices within public school systems and the juvenile justice system that contribute to the school to prison pipeline.




Info-graph from suspension stories.com

                                        How this all leads to mass incarceration

 The growth of the school-to-prison pipeline is part of a larger crisis. Since the 1970, the U.S. prison population has exploded from about 325,000 people to more than 2 million today. According to Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness, this is a phenomenon that cannot be explained by crime rates or drug use. According to Human Rights Watch (Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs, 2000) although whites are more likely to violate drug laws than people of color, in some states black men have been admitted to prison on drug charges at rates 20 to 50 times greater than those of white men. Latina/os, Native Americans, and other people of color are also imprisoned at rates far higher than their representation in the population. Once released, former prisoners are caught in a web of laws and regulations that make it difficult or impossible to secure jobs, education, housing, and public assistance-- and often to vote or serve on juries. Alexander calls this  permanent second-class citizenship a new form of segregation.

   The impact of mass incarceration is devastating for children and youth. More than 7 million children have a family member incarcerated, on probation, or on parole. Many of those children live with enormous stress, emotional plan, and uncertainty.


                                                                    My Take 

 Evidently, punishments such as suspension rates are not uncommon in our school systems. Often times such increase in punishment highlight racial disparities in discipline and the impact on achievement. This is a big issue in my state, Wisconsin. According to Erin Richards of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Wisconsin high schools suspend black students at a greater rate than any other state in the country.

  Among districts nationwide with large numbers of K-8 schools, Milwaukee Public Schools suspended more children than anyone else that year.
    "Their black K-8 suspension rate is way off the charts," said Losen, director of Civil Rights Remedies at the Civil Rights Project.

The group produced the new report, " Are we closing the school discipline gap?", after examining suspension rate data districts submitted to the federal government for the 2011-12 and 2010-11 school years.

Because out-of-school suspensions can last multiple days, the report highlights the amount of instruction children receiving the penalties are missing. Research and common sense suggest children who miss school don't do as well academically as kids who attend school regularly.

  The report shows Wisconsin is the highest-suspending state for black high school students and the third-highest suspending state for black elementary school students.

  On average, 10% of high school students were suspended nationwide in 2011-12.
Broken down by race: 23% of black high school students were suspended, compared with 7% of white students, 11% of Latino students and 12% of American Indian students.

MPS posted an average high school suspension rate of 33%-- more than three times the national average. The district suspended 43% of black students, 18% of Latino students and 16% of white students in 2011-12. Student discipline has been under the spotlight in MPS since 2008, when a different national report suggested the district had the highest suspension rate in the country. Suspension rates have declined since then.

Let me be clear, this isn't an attack on MPS and or their policies and regulations. This is simply a wake-up call for change. Some of these suspensions are minor crimes. I should know because a fellow member of an organization I'm affiliated with was put into such situation. What was devastating about his experience was that he is a very introverted kid and doesn't socialize with anyone at school. So for him to be suspended was very shocking to hear. One day a group of young men stampeded throughout the hallway of their school while he was getting his supplies from his locker. He was then caught in the midst of it all. This gave an administrator the intention to suspend him and claim that he was one of the boys.

 







Fact Sheet: How Bad Is the School-to-Prison Pipeline?

               2015

         Carla Amurao

      Tavis Smiley Reports

     http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/tsr/education-under-arrest/school-to-prison-pipeline-fact-sheet/


Stop the School-to- Prison Pipeline

      Rethinking Schools

 Volume 26 No.2- Winter 2011-2012

 http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/26_02/edit262.shtml


School-to-Prison Pipeline

   American Civil Liberties Union

 https://www.aclu.org/school-prison-pipeline


Ending the Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track: Understanding The Issue

              Advancement Project

 http://safequalityschools.org/pages/understanding-the-school-prison-pipeline







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Young Voices of Milwaukee

-
Image
Two weeks ago I decided to be a part of a youth led organization called Urban Undergrounds. A friend of mine told me to check it out last year and thought that it would be a perfect way for me to start as a young passionate person who is committed to make a change within our community. The organization brings together young people between the ages of 14 to 18 who want to make a change within the community in terms of violence, poverty, health, criminal justice and education. According to Urban Underground's website the purpose of creating such organization is because," very often communities will convene stakeholders to explore and address issues impacting youth without ever consulting or engaging them. Although young people are often told that they are "the future" they are treated as if their ideas, creativity, and influence have no relevancy to the present. Urban Underground believes that every issue is a youth issue and their voice and leadership is
Read more

Black Boxes Reportedly Found In The Disappearance Of AirAsia Flight 8501

-
Image
Jakarta, Singapore- Search Officials believe they have found the crucial black boxes of AirAsia jet was found today in the Java Sea stuck under debris from the plane's fuselage. Officials say it will be retrieved on Monday as the breakthrough will hopefully reveal what caused the jet's fatal crash.   Indonesia's Directorate General of Marine Transport confirmed that the black box of the AirAsia Flight QZ8501 has been found. The breakthrough comes exactly two weeks after the flight from Surabaya to Singapore went down with 162 on board.   Coordinator of the Directorate General of Marine Transport Tonny Budiono said navy divers from Indonesia navy ship KN Jadayat found the black box at a depth of 30 to 32 meters. The black box is currently wedged between pieces of wreckage making it difficult for divers to retrieve, and due to time constraints, retrieval will take place tomorrow morning, said Budiono.    The search crew will attempt to retrieve the black box by m
Read more

Suspects Identified On French Newspaper Attack

-
Image
                                        The Attack On A French Newspaper Paris-- French officials have identified three suspects in the tragic shooting attack on a satirical newspaper that killed 12 people Wednesday. Four of the magazine's well-known cartoonists, including its editor, were among those killed, as well as two police officers. Authorities said, one of the officers was shot dead on a sidewalk outside the newspaper. President Francois Hollande, visiting the scene of France's deadliest such attack in more than half a century, called the assault on the weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo "an act of exceptional barbarism."    Fears had been running high in France and elsewhere in Europe that jihadis returning from conflicts in Syria and Iraq would stage attacks at home. Two officials identified the suspects as French brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, in their early thirties, and 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad, whose nationality is yet to be released.
Read more