THE VIRTUAL SCHOOL TO PRISON PIPELINE
Systemic racism occurs when governmental policies put people of color, especially African Americans, at a disadvantage in our society. Nowhere is this dynamic more prevalent than in our criminal justice system. Instead of inundating you with statistics to substantiate my assertion, I prefer to rely upon an example of injustice found in an article by ProPublica reporter Jodi Cohen called “A Teenager Didn’t Do Her Online Schoolwork. So a Judge Sent Her to Juvenile Detention”.
If you want to understand how the school to prison pipeline can destroy the lives of children of color before they become adults, what Cohen writes about will provide clarity about that harsh reality. The article starts off in truly depressing fashion:
One afternoon in mid-June, Charisse drove up to the checkpoint at the Children’s Village juvenile detention center in suburban Detroit, desperate to be near her daughter. It had been a month since she had last seen her, when a judge found the girl had violated probation and sent her to the facility during the pandemic.
The girl, Grace, hadn’t broken the law again. The 15-year-old wasn’t in trouble for fighting with her mother or stealing, the issues that had gotten her placed on probation in the first place.
She was incarcerated in May for violating her probation by not completing her online coursework when her school in Beverly Hills switched to remote learning.
Because of the confidentiality of juvenile court cases, it’s impossible to determine how unusual Grace’s situation is. But attorneys and advocates in Michigan and elsewhere say they are unaware of any other case involving the detention of a child for failing to meet academic requirements after schools closed to help stop the spread of COVID-19.
The decision, they say, flies in the face of recommendations from the legal and education communities that have urged leniency and a prioritization of children’s health and safety amid the crisis. The case may also reflect, some experts and Grace’s mother believe, systemic racial bias. Grace is Black in a predominantly white community and in a county where a disproportionate percentage of Black youth are involved with the juvenile justice system.
The National Children’s Campaign agrees with the flexible distance learning model that experts have recommended during the pandemic. In fact, back in May we published similarly-themed guidelines called “What Can Schools Do To Support Students During Distance Learning?” In Grace’s situation, there appeared to be no mechanism for intervention from the school to get her back on track. As the articles explains:
Students with special needs are especially vulnerable without the face-to-face guidance from teachers, social workers and others. Grace, who has ADHD, said she felt unmotivated and overwhelmed when online learning began April 15, about a month after schools closed. Without much live instruction or structure, she got easily distracted and had difficulty keeping herself on track, she said…Her Individualized Education Plan, which spelled out the school supports she should receive, required teachers to periodically check in to make sure she was on task and clarify the material, and it allowed her extra time to complete assignments and tests. When remote learning began, she did not get those supports, her mother said.
Grace’s predicament is infuriating. It also reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend who was a groomsman in my wedding. He is white. His son, who is the same age as Grace, struggled mightily with distance learning. In fact, he went from being a student who has previously been on the honor role to being forced to take summer classes as a result of his academic collapse during distance learning. It was a painful life lesson for my friend’s son, but obviously pales in comparison to what has happened to Grace. While this isn’t an apples to apples comparison, every child had to adjust to distance learning and for some the transition was too daunting. Adults who failed to recognize this are failing our children.
The judge who sent Grace back to a juvenile facility should have exercised some compassion during these unprecedented times. However, the problems in Grace’s case began before the judge entered the picture. The teenager’s caseworker is Rachel Giroux. She made mistakes every step of the way in the process. Whether they were intentional or unintentional is hard to determine since caseworkers are often overworked, but as the article points out:
Giroux filed the violation of probation before confirming whether Grace was meeting her academic requirements. She emailed Grace’s teacher three days later, asking, “Is there a certain percentage of a class she is supposed to be completing a day/week?”
Grace’s teacher, Katherine Tarpeh, responded in an email to Giroux that the teenager was “not out of alignment with most of my other students.”
When people talk about the school to prison pipeline steering children of color into the criminal justice system, while their white counterparts are treated in a more humane manner, the numbers don’t lie. ProPublica discovered Grace’s experience wasn’t unique in the Oakland County Circuit:
From January 2016 through June 2020, about 4,800 juvenile cases were referred to the Oakland court. Of those, 42% involved Black youth even though only about 15% of the county’s youth are Black.
A report released last month, which found inadequate legal representation for juveniles in Michigan, noted that research has shown a disproportionate number of youth of color are incarcerated in Michigan overall. Black youth in the state are incarcerated more than four times as often as their white peers, according to an analysis of federal government data by The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit that addresses racial disparities in the criminal justice system.
Grace should be at home with her mother Charisse right now, but the system failed her. This must stop. People of color will continue to make up a disproportionate percentage of the criminal justice system if biased treatment occurs even when they are children.