Criminalizing Kids

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

We often talk about a possible future of gestapo-like tactics coming to our shores if things don’t change – and quickly. I share those fears and feel the mounting fascism that fuels them.

But today I’m thinking about places in the US where this fear has already come true. I hope everyone is aware of places like T. Don Hutto: America’s Family Prison in Texas and the increasing number of privatized prisons being used to house thousands of detained immigrants.

And then, there’s the fact that, according to Children’s Defense Fund, black boys have a one in three lifetime risk of going to jail, and Latino boys a one in six lifetime risk of the same fate. Of course, for many of these young ones, getting to jail would be better than becoming a victim of the violence they live with every day on the streets. As Bob Herbert pointed out last year, 34 children were killed on the streets of Chicago in less than a year.

So often these days, we live by anecdote. But a situation last week brought much of this home to me. Did you hear about 5 year old Dennis Rivera who was handcuffed by police and taken to a psych ward for having a tantrum in kindergarten? I heard about this particular incident at Jack and Jill Politics where dnA had this to say:

This problem escapes national attention because Americans are conditioned to rationalize people of color as being meant for prison from birth, and therefore there’s little outrage over treating a five year old child like a criminal if he or she is black or Latino.

The children most likely to attend a school where they can be treated like a criminal in a prison rather than a student in a school tend to be poorer and not white.

Part of this is that the school system has given up on these kids, and these schools often end up not being schools but overcrowded warehouses for human beings the city doesn’t want to deal with. The appearance of order in the city’s schools takes precedent over educating its students.

They don’t want to teach these kids. They just want to stick them somewhere they can control (police?) them until they turn 18 or drop out, whichever comes first.

I can feel dnA’s anger in this post. We all know that there are good people doing great things in some of these schools. But overall based on my experience, I think these words speak loudly and truthfully to what is happening to our African American and Latino kids in urban areas. Just as many of us needed to be awakened to the prevalence of racial profiling by law enforcement and the dangers of “driving while black,” I think we now need to recognize that thousands of children every day in our urban public schools, libraries, parks and streets are being criminalized for “growing up black/brown” and doing things that previously would have resulted in detention at school and/or grounding by our parents.

Unfortunately we have grown accustomed to the idea of armed police officers and metal detectors in our schools. And I recently wrote about this kind of thing being imported to our public libraries as well. One of the bi-products of these choices we’re making out of fear is that we increasingly criminalize the behaviors of our children (especially those of color) and fuel the Cradle to Prison Pipeline that the Children’s Defense Fund is talking about.

From what I have seen, the problem with changing these circumstances is that the parents of these children do not have a voice in our systems. Some of that is due to things like addiction and mental illness. But a lot of it is also the result of a complete lack of trust that any of us will listen or that anything better can happen. We’ve recently been talking to staff at our local office of the Children’s Defense Fund. The national office that published the report I linked to above is trying to work with local chapters to raise awareness about this problem and mobilize coalitions to get busy trying to change things. If you’d like to get involved, I’d suggest you call the CFD office nearest you.  

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  1. offices of the ACLU are also beginning to notice this problem. In 2007, the NYCLU published a report titled Criminalizing the Classroom.

  2. to come to light

    I can imagine many states beginning to look over their own racist policies towards their own citizens.  

    Cracking the nut on Racism will crack the nut on Republicanism.

  3. Don’t know why but this made me think of the mercenaries, Blackwater, in Iraq and in New Orleans.

    They have cops in the schools who don’t have a clue as to how to relate to kids.

    This is so wrong in so many ways.

    It was also very disappointing (but, alas, not surprising) to read some of the ignorant comments to the article about Dennis Rivera.

  4. facts in the CDF report linked above. For example:

    * Since 2000, the number of poor children in the US has increased by 1.2 million.

    * The suspension rate among Black public school students is three times that for White students.

    * The percentage of Black children in foster care was more than twice their proportion of the child population.

    *States spend on average almost 3 times as much per prisoner ($22,523) as per pubic school pupil ($8,044).

    • pfiore8 on January 29, 2008 at 21:38

    here is the root… educating or criminalizing our children

    and it starts with all the horrible things that the isms bring to us…

    but it’s not an easy thing. these kids have been hardened and can be hard to control.

    these children need to be seen as AMERICAN children. forget the african or brown or hispanic description of it… they ARE us, fellow AMERICANS. this thing is not happening to African Americans. it is happening to AMERICANS. our children, our precious resources…  

    we AMERICANS. this is, in one degree or another, happening to all of our children. criminalized, marginalized, dumbed down, religion-ized, fattened-ized, tested to death… crammed into designer sneakers and jeans. and the irony is the ones living hard lives in the inner cities or softer lives in the suburbs… i think most families go into debt for those sneakers.

    all of us… prisoners of one stripe or another.  

  5. at Juvenile Hall in a good sized county in N.Cal.  The criminalization of the youth is a monstorous problem that most people know very little about.  It crosses racial lines and infests primarily, though not exclusively, the poor.  The schools, with their “zero-tolerance” policies are the biggest offenders, but right behind them are District Attorneys who have little sense of the damage they do to kids, and the newspapers who are always good at promoting a politician who howls about the crime waves sweeping our streets.

    Then we have the actual, real problems such as the gang violence which is astounding here in the wine country, and the prediliction for the older gang members getting younger kids to do terrible things, the speed epidemic and the horrid lack of resources to channel these kids into a better path.

    Never mind the kids reasonable awareness that there is very little chance for them to ever get ahead in the economy they find themselves in, they know that the job market is bleak, and the average house here costs half a million dollars.  Little vocational training, ignorance and apathy on the part of many parents.  Families here in the country illegally, and the subtext that we see so often, the parents don’t speak english, work their asses off and have nothing-the kid speaks english, has the typical kids disdain for their parents good sense and that is reinforced by the parents apparent failure in life which enhances youth’s natural rebellion.  Shit, I could go on all day.

    And then, at this point, add race-Whew what a mixture.

  6. the first I heard of Hutto was from a documentary (~20-30 min or so, I highly recommend it as an intro)—

    http://www.activistvideo.org/v

    the legacy of 9/11 could have been something so positive, but instead it’s going to be racism, crackdowns on human rights, corporate/government corruption, fearmongering and illegitimate war. Hutto symbolizes all of it. absolute shame. imprisoning whole families… it’s just disgusting. how the GOP ever ran on “moral values” boggles my mind.

    • KrisC on January 29, 2008 at 22:38

    my five year old son…you can best guess that I’d come out with fists of fire!!!!

    I have to think that there is a certain back lash to Bush’s ‘No Child Left Behind’ form of education, that takes focus off of a child’s needs of individual attention and replaces it with over-crowded class rooms, fewer teachers/aides and mandatory testing.  What you have left, is a generation that can test, but cannot think individually or explain why s/he came to a certain conclusion.  Then, gawd forbid, if they do act out, suddenly find themselves on Ritalin!

    Poor little Dennis…what a tragedy!

  7. I got thrown in jail in the 80’s for contempt of court, (a long story) and 80% of the women and girls, in Sybil Brand a LA womans jail, were just people who got swept into jail because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time or were at loose ends on the street. As it was basically a holding tank and it was filled with minors who were waiting to be processed.

    Most not criminals, just kids trying to survive or being wild. Why do we have the largest prison population? Law and order is our obsession as we view the poor or displaced growing and threating our myths of well being. The Wire, a show Armando recommended is an eye opener for those who think that our justice system or any of our systems are functional and not barbaric.

    btw: my reaction while being shuffled through the system for three days was I need an UZI. Quite a thought for a pacifist.      

  8. and there can be no justice without equal opportunity….

    there two kinds of justice….

    one for the wealthy…….

    one for the poor…..

    authoritarianism creates its own threat through its retributive relationship to the social agreement……

    by being willing to throw most of humanity away they become increasing vulnerable in the world…….

    and they then feel the need to throw more away…..

    at scale it fails…….

    • kj on January 30, 2008 at 02:01

    to everyone, for what you do.  Heartbreaking work.                              

    • Edger on January 30, 2008 at 04:30

    I haven’t commented on your essay before now, NL, because I just don’t know what to say. How the authoritarian mindset can extend so far as to actually start handcuffing five year olds is beyond me. What kind of twisted insecurities can cause this, I don’t know.

    On another blog I read a comment by a psychiatrist, of all people, who tried to excuse and justify the treatment of this kid with:

    Just what exactly do you do with a kid who within a week on three occasions has broken glass, punched an assistant principal, and behaved violently and out of control in the principal’s office?  A psychiatric evaluation is quite in order-five year olds have been known to have bipolar disorder and to be suicidal, for example.  If it weren’t for rules about contact with kids, the sensible thing would have been to physically wrap him and use a sheet or strait jacket instead of handcuffs, but we live in a different time.  

    If this kid subsequently punched a wall and broke his hand or ran in the street and was hit by a car, all of you guys would be railing about how the system ignored the “obvious signs” and didn’t get him the mental help he needed.

    As if the “different time” we live in created by these insecure idiots, and the strong opposition to authoritarian abuse of kids by liberals, should be the determining factors justifying child abuse? This from a psychiatrist?

    To which I responded:

    Contact with kids? Rules? Roll him in a blanket or whatever it takes. Have two people do it while three watch.

    What is it with you wingers and force anyway?

    Handcuffs? On a five year old?

    Jesus… Psych eval yourself.

    Something is broken in peoples minds … I don’t know what, or how to fix it.

    • Tigana on January 30, 2008 at 05:48

    http://www.cbc.ca/national/new

    As I have been pointing out for months on liberal sites, there’s lots of money being made – using your taxes – in medicating kids. The damage is horrendous, possibly permanent.

    I expect liberals will continue to write and talk about it, and DO NOTHING.  

    • Valtin on January 30, 2008 at 22:40

    Thank you.

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