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Crime and Children's Punishment
For great wrongdoing there are great punishments from the gods.
- Herodotus, The Histories of Herodotus, Bk. 1,ch.8
If you're going to be six years old at some point in your life (and most of my readers have probably moved beyond that point) it is important to (a) carefully select where you choose to live and (b) behave. This is all brought to mind by a recent mailing from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) describing a lawsuit it has filed on behalf of a 6-year old called J.W.
J.W. attends the Sarah T. Reed Elementary School in New Orleans, is four feet tall and weighs 60 pounds. He is not unfailingly polite. Indeed, on two occasions in May he was downright rude. On the first occasion he talked back to a teacher. Realizing that such activity could lead to a full-scale insurrection by 6-year olds if permitted to go unpunished, J.W. was arrested, handcuffed and shackled to a chair. (Nothing was stuffed in his mouth so he could, in theory at least, have continued talking back.) J.W. did not learn from this episode. In less than a week, he was involved in an argument with another 6-year old over who could sit in a given chair in the lunchroom. J.W. was on the losing side of that argument and was once again handcuffed and shackled to a chair.
The effect on J.W. has not been what school officials had hoped. Being trained educators they had been taught that using those techniques on six-year olds would not only help the 6-year olds see the errors of their ways but would eliminate the need for water boarding or other forms of discipline when the children were older. They were wrong. His parents say that he is now afraid of school, the police and teachers and is completely withdrawn. School officials explained that the arrest and restraints imposed were required under school rules. The educators may have help in changing the rules. The Southern Poverty Law Center, has filed a class action lawsuit alleging that the school principal and other officials had "provided a clear directive to all employees. . . that students were to be arrested and handcuffed if they failed to comply with school rules." There's no way of knowing how that suit will turn out but thanks to the behavior of a student and school officials in a school in Dade County, Florida, we may have a clue.
Isiah Allen got in trouble on October 20,2004. Isiah was six years old, three feet five inches tall and weighed fifty-three pounds. He allegedly behaved disruptively in class and was taken to the principal's office for misbehaving. Instead of standing contritely he had a tantrum and consequently was locked in the principal's office. While alone he smashed a picture frame. Upon hearing the glass break the adults re-entered the room and found Isiah standing motionless in a corner holding a piece of broken glass. When the police arrived he was still standing there. Unresponsive to the police officer's ministrations it was finally decided the best way to handle the situation was to taser Isiah. He was, according to the complaint that was filed in the court case, tasered with 50,000 volts and handcuffed while vomiting. The taserers were sued and in due course the case got to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals that concluded that if the alleged facts were proved "the unlawfulness of the conduct was readily apparent to an official in the shoes of these officers." (There is no report of what happened when the case went back to the trial court.) Our final example of how tough it is to be a six-year old is again brought to us courtesy of Florida. The child in this case, Haley Shalansky, was neither tasered nor shackled.
Haley was a 6-years old student at Parkway Elementary in Port St. Lucie, Florida weighing only 37 pounds. According to the sheriff's officer Haley was asked to do something by her teacher, became upset and stormed out of the classroom. Her behavior was a ticket to the principal's office where she had a tantrum and, according to the sheriff's incident report: "kicked the wall, went over to the desk and threw the calculator, electric pencil sharpener, telephone, container of writing utensils and other objects across the desk." She was handcuffed and taken away in a police car.
The next day she again had a tantrum in class but this time was taken away and committed to a mental health facility. The school says the parents have missed many scheduled meetings to discuss Haley's behavioral problems. The lesson for the parents is obvious. If you miss enough meetings with school officials when summoned, your child may end up in a mental health facility.
Describing its reason for getting involved in J.W.'s case SPLC explains that: "All across the nation, schools have adopted draconian ‘zero-tolerance policies that treat children like criminals and turn schools into prison-like environments." Based on the foregoing, it is hard to argue with that conclusion.
20 Comments so far
Show AllPretty sickening!! What is America coming to?
Where it is scares me; where it's going to is horrific.
I'll take a stab at that:
It's coming to a society in which most people born and raised after a certain period will see absolutely nothing positive in the people before them-violence delivered to them by those in authority, excuses for why nothing can be done to help them from a lot of America's 'left', and pure, unadulterated loathing and an unquenchable desire for robbery from America's right. Knowing only abuse and abandonment, the results should hardly be surprising.
These are the people who deserve to be fired.
You know most of these kids are strong willed and smart.
Glenn, tha's why they're doing it, to crush spirits.
This is the first time ever I thought that home schooling is a good idea.
exactly.
True story: A parent called the sheriff's department, the principal, all his son's teacher's and insisted on an immediate meeting.
When everyone was assembled the man's wishes were made clear. He wanted his son to be committed as a ward of the state.
His son was a good kid. seldom caused trouble, tried to do what he was asked to do. And that kid stood there and heard his father try to give him away.
Who could forget something like that? Your own parent telling every official he could assemble that he did not want you.
He broke his sons spirit all right, along with his heart and his head. Who could have concentrated on school after that?
Welcome to the new ethos of "discipline" as practiced by the homeland security state. It's lock-down time. Examples?
1. The use of Tasers on peaceful citizens
2. This article's depiction of draconian approaches used on small children who act out probably due to an overload of sugar direct from their breakfast cereals.
3. FEMA camps
4. A militarized border
5. No Fly lists
6. Pre-emptive arrests before major political events get underway
7. Control of media to label any who don't conform to the offical storylines as anything from terrorist to mentally unbalanced
8. Few areas for justice to be redressed (since the "high" court regards money over peple's necessary interests)
9. Over 2 million incarcerated, another several million on a variety of probation programs (which keep them tethered to the prison-industrial complex)
10. The carnage to families that's resulted from the inane "drug wars"
11. More and more persons without homes, jobs, or food... and the likely crime rates that will ensue from this debacle; added to the currents of rage that result when criminal bankers and sociopaths in uniforms are rewarded, while investments in programs and policies that make for a stable society (and middle class) go unfunded.
12. A bankrupt domestic economy (in part due to good jobs sent off-shore) that's created a back-door draft. Better get the kids used to military-style rules so they are prepared to sign up for the homeland security state's endless call to war.
These come off the top of my head. I'm sure others in this forum can add to "the list."
In rural farming communities, and largely out of the view of urban people, the following has become a way of life:
Coordination of law enforcement at all levels; paramilitary raids and vehicle stops with no probable cause or warrants; interrogation of school children; use of snitch and coerced testimony; indefinite illegal detentions in horrific conditions and ex-communicado; denial of habeas corpus and due process; the complete shredding of the Bill of Rights.
Over 800,000 brown people, by the government's own admission, have been rounded up and detained, under the excuse of stopping "illegal immigration." But whatever the excuse, it opens the door for fishing expeditions and abuse and will impact all of us, and that is exactly what is happening and it will no doubt get worse.
Meanwhile the ongoing war on young Black males goes on in the urban centers under the guise of the "war on drugs." But white suburbanites, protected and immune from the reality of America, are oblivious to or supportive of the horrendous war both here and abroad against people of color, and unfortunately they control the national political discussion.
Whatever police state elements that the rare white person is aware of or concerned about, multiply that times a thousand and you will approach the truth about it.
#1 Most people won't believe this story, it's just too awful
#2 When they finally do accept the facts they will say it's a "black problem"
This world has gone completely insane.
One must resist the impulse to simply say, "Forget it, Chris-- it's Louisiana". Because, to twist the metaphor, Louisiana is just the buzzard in the coal mine.
(I'm tempted to write "the blankenship in the coal mine", but that's another subject and takes the metaphor a twist too far.)
Authority by ultra-violence is the toxic gas seeping from the top-down-- in the Amerikan Imperium, it's anything BUT odorless and invisible. But detection is only a first step-- it doesn't reduce, much less eliminate, the toxic effects.
But since Louisiana is at it again, I give honorable mention to Marcus McLaurin of Lafayette, LA. I hope Marcus is doing well these days. In 2003, when Marcus was 7 years old, he made the news because he was disciplined for innocently discussing his lesbian parents with a classmate, who innocently asked Marcus about them.
Check the link* or Google for the details. One charming, if sad, detail can be found in a written "contract" Marcus was compelled to complete. In a space provided for "What I Should Have Done", Marcus precociously and ruefully wrote, "Cep my mouf shut".
IMO, this form of violence differs from physical violence and sadistic manhandling-- kidhandling-- in degree, but not in kind.
The House of the Amerikan Imperium has many mansions; it's a hydra with multifarious booted tentacles stamping on a human face.
________________________
* http://www.hify.org/vital_signs.htm
Zero tolerance starts at childhood and only stands to make criminals out of all of us later in our lives. After reading this article and feeling sorry for those children, I am reminded of similar cases in my state against adults who were also the victims of the zero tolerance system. I would not be surprised to find out that 10s of thousands of children every year find themselves in similar situations as these children discussed in this article. I don't know how to do it but we need to abolish the zero tolerance system and establish a new tolerant but orderly system in its place.
Folks, we've ALL been under zero tolerance policies for the last several decades. Is it any wonder that it's worked it's way down to the kids?
We have more people in jails and prisons than any other country IN THE WORLD. And when did this start? Look at the stats, and its' right after Reagan started this nonsense about "privatization", which should really be called PIRATIZATION, that it started to happen. When your prisons are a for profit industry, there is NO incentive to keep people OUT of the system. So suddenly everything becomes a reason to prosecute and make money for the corporations. Thing is that is costs FAR more to do this than the old way of NOT locking up everyone for everything you can.
So, since it's the same people with money calling the shots in everything, is it any wonder that the same approach is what keeps coming up? To think that it would be any different is foolish.
The right wing thinks that we are ALL guilty of something, and if they just look long and hard enough at us, they will find out what they can lock us up for. Funny how they can be caught time after time and not get a minute's worth of time in their own jails, but you and I can lose a job, not pay child support, and now WE'RE in prison. That REALLY helps out the kids who are the REAL victims. In fact, the ONLY people it helps out are the ones making money on locking people up. People like DICK CHENEY.
And so they have to get started looking at your kids and their actions early on so they can start following them around to find out what they need to be locked up for. Easy money for the rich scum, and a lifetime of desperation and prison for everyone else. Just the way the authoritarians like it.
"When your prisons are a for profit industry, there is NO incentive to keep people OUT of the system." True. In my CommonDreams collection I found a particularly blatant example of this. In Pennsylvania, two judges were caught taking kickbacks from two companies that operated youth detention centers, in exchange for sending teenagers to those centers. ("Judges Plead Guilty in Scheme to Jail Youths for Profit", New York Times, February 13 2009)
I don't think it's entirely about money. I think it's more generally part of the oligarchy's campaign to establish a plantation economy (what Michael Parenti calls the Third Worldization of America). This includes the destruction, in principle as well as for money, of institutions that benefit the public. One of these is the public school system. In the era of No Cannonfodder Left Behind, one way for a school to improve its numbers is to have the low-scoring pupils labelled "problem children" and jailed on the pretext of some petty misdemeanor or other. You can guess what colour and socioeconomic status most of the "problem children" are. ("Problem Students in Pipeline to Prison", Boston Globe, May 28 2008)
Canada has a more diverse population then that of the USA and has a prison population of some 32000.
32000 as opposed to well over 2 million. Outside homicides and murders the crime rates are not that different.
If the USA incarcerated at the same rate of Canada the prison population would be about 300 thousand total.
Yet, Stephen Harper and the Conservatives think Canada should be tougher on crme and are looking at expanding the prison system and adopting minimum sentences and three strikes you are out rules like in the USA.
It mind boggling how so many Americans do not realize how corrupt and ineffective their prison system is and how so many Canadians think the US system is something to emulate.
I guess nothing succeeds like failure.
Unfortunately, this op-ed, written by Bob Herbert of the NY Times, talks about several incidents that took place in the NYC schools -- one of the students who was arrested is 5-years-old.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/06/opinion/06herbert.html
Finally, people are beginning to talk about removing the cops from the schools. Will it happen? I don't know, but at the very least, more people seem to be questioning the tactics of the "0 tolerance" policies and laws here in the city.