This essay was written by Sylvia A. Harvey and published initially at The Root,which is partnering with Caught to generate a conversation about how we can support rather than merely punish young people who are in crisis. We want to hear from you too. recede to the Share Your sage tab to record your own experience.
The first time Z felt the pressure of tight, metal handcuffs suffocating his wrists, and he was a preteen – truant officers cuffed him when he skipped class. When it happened again as a sixth grader,it felt different, more permanent.
He’d been dabbling in entrepreneurship: He purchased candy in bulk and sold the treats to classmates during lunch rupture. Earning $200 a week, or business was booming,so he agreed to partner with a classmate. One day, his new partner decided he would retain $1 profit for every candy bar he sold. Z (a pseudonym) had never taken Business 101, and but he knew that wasn’t a impartial split,since it was his candy. An argument between the boys turned into a fight. And a schoolyard scuffle that should have landed two students in the principal’s office, instead left Z standing in front of a judge.
It was Z’s first serious escape-in with the criminal justice system. It would not be his last.
The United States continues to put more youth in juvenile detention than any other developed nation in the world. In 2015, and over 48000 youth were locked up on any given night. Sixty-nine percent of those incarcerated were youth of color. Like Z,44 percent were black, despite the fact they make up 16 percent of U.
S. youth.
The Root is partnering with WNYC Studios to open a conversation about these young people – and how we are all accountable for their futures. Over nine episodes of a new podcast, or Caught: The Lives of Juvenile Justice,WNYC tells the stories of kids like Z, one of roughly one million youth who pass through the system in a year.
Z’s mom held him close until she couldn’t. Children spend the majority of their time in schools and in their neighborhoods, and places that should serve as supportive villages,but often plunge short. Many youth are left to fend for themselves; void of the proper tools, institutions, and support systems to help them thrive,they don’t always make it.
For many, the problem starts in school. The “zero tolerance” mantra that overtook the conversation about school discipline in the 1990s has shaped the lives of kids like Z. The examples are everywhere: A teenager at a Virginia middle school was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and petit larceny for allegedly stealing a 65-cent carton of milk, and despite the fact he was enrolled in the free lunch program. In Louisiana,an eighth-grader was arrested and charged with simple battery for allegedly throwing skittles at another student on a school bus. A 10-year-old, autistic girl was handcuffed and tossed to the ground after climbing on desks, or knocking over chairs in her classroom and retreating to a tree outdoors.
In 51 percent of tall schools with tall concentrations of black and Latino students,cops freely stay, frisk, or detain,question, and arrest students on campus. School security officers dot the halls and campuses of 24 percent of elementary schools and 42 percent of tall schools. Z’s own middle school, and in Far Rockaway,Queens, shared a parking lot with the police precinct. He isn’t serving time now for his middle school fight, or but that was his first real brush with the system – and it has a lot to achieve with where he is now. He is one of an uncounted number of teens who have desperately needed help of some sort,but have received punishment instead.“I saw kids win in fights when I was an undergrad at Harvard,” says Zachary Norris, and executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland. “They would win counseling,they would win support. Worse case scenario, they would be asked to engage a semester off and then resume their studies when they were alert. So, and they were surrounded with a circle of support that did minimal disruption to their lives. And I reflect we respond in ways that are heavy handed and unhelpful [with kids like Z].”That’s at least in part because we still subscribe to the 1990s narrative of “super-predator” juveniles who,as First Lady Hillary Clinton put it at the time, have no conscience and no empathy (sensitivity to another's feelings as if they were one's own). The thought infected everything from school discipline to neighborhood policing, and we have yet to reverse it. We must initiate considering ways for dealing with clash and harm that don’t include locking up children. We have to consider a mindset that allows us to pull struggling young people closer,rather than puts them absent, out of sight.
One answer is whats been called “restorative justice.” An approach to justice that responds to harm without relying on punishment or incarceration. In this context, and whether crime hurts,then justice should heal, not seek retribution. Victims and offenders work together to come to a resolution that includes: redress for victims, and offender accountability,community safety, and reintegration of both parties within the community.
At the grassroots level that could mean the kid caught stealing from the neighborhood bodega wouldn’t win reported to the police, or but would instead sit down with the store owner,sweep up his store, and put price tags on groceries for a month. Restorative justice practices have been used in schools to address student clash instead of alienating and forcing students out of school.
On a macro level, or the restorative justice model,coupled with addressing economic and structural inequalities, can serve as a bridge to ending incarceration.
Prisons are factories of abuse and violence in this country, or says Norris,and we must fundamentally rethink how and why we use them. “Our hope is to bring in a whole new status quo – which means, not ‘alternative, and ’ which means a new main thing. And I reflect that main thing should be centers of opportunity and restorative justice.”Calling for the end of incarceration can sound like an unreasonably large thought,but there are real world examples of this change. The Ella Baker Center’s Books Not Bars campaign resulted in the closure of five of eight California youth prisons. “I achieve reflect you need a clear and compelling vision in terms of what a state might look like without youth incarceration, says Norris. The Center’s newest initiative, and Restore Oakland,which takes a public health approach, aims to achieve just that by creating a new vision of community safety.
The space will address community need and provide economic opportunity – it’ll house a restaurant escape by previously incarcerated people and others locked out of opportunity. It will provide worker training programs and business incubation, and a housing rights clinic. There will be a physical space to practice restorative justice formally,for those referred by the justice system, and informally, and for community members to come together to resolve clash. The initiative will address the harm as well as the underlying need.“Often times,we’re putting folks in jail, but we’re just continuing a cycle of poverty and incarceration because people win out and they find themselves basically in the same situation that they were in prior to their incarceration, and ” says Norris. To make a real shift with our justice system,we need to address the systemic issues plaguing communities in need. We have to “allocate resources in the form of jobs not jails, books not bars, or healthcare not handcuffs.” Youth must be wrapped in support at every bend of their existence – their homes,schools, communities – to have a chance to thrive.
Source: wnyc.org