Race, Class, and Punishment

Notes

1. California Education Code 49079 stipulates that teachers be warned of students with “violent propensities”.
2. With 670 per 100,000 US citizen imprisoned, Rwanda is the next most incarceratory society with 434 per 100,000 in 2015. https://www.sentencingproject.org/criminal-justice-facts/.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Coalition for Juvenile Justice, 14. As early as 2005, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy recognized that “juveniles are more vulnerable or susceptible [than adults] to negative influences and outside pressures, including peer pressure,” which seem like common sense, but when it comes from a member of the Supreme Court it behooves us to use what we know about adolescent brain development when we evaluate culpability in youth. https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/files/pdf/RoperVSimmons.pdf. Roper v. Simmons in 2005, Graham v. Florida in 2010, and Miller v. Alabama in 2012 demonstrate an acknowledgment that the adolescent brain is not fully formed and therefore possesses greater possibility for reform and therefore a right to rehabilitation.
6. “By teaching civic engagement, community service, and personal empowerment, the outreach worker might help young people feel empowered to make a chance and to improve their communities. Rios, Human Targets, 163.
7. Ahranjani, Youth Justice in America, xi.
8. If we approached the topic with an open and compassionate mind, we might discover that “three-quarters of the people in prison have a history of substance abuse, and about one in six has a history of mental illness. There are below average levels of educational attainment and work histories among people behind bars and significant levels of physical and sexual abuse.” Perhaps interventions would reduce the massive numbers of incarcerated Americans? Jones, Race to Incarcerate, xi.
9. Forman, Locking Up Our Own, 237.
10. Kupchik, “The School-to-Prison Pipeline”, 99.
11. As of June 2018, a family earning $117,000 in the Bay Area is considered “low income” by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
12. The East Side Union High School District is focusing on creating Relationship-Centered Schools as a means of combating continuing cuts in funding and maintaining support systems such that we can close the opportunity gap. The ESSC and the Relationship-Centered Schools initiative both suggest that there is an increasing need for our students to feel emotionally connected to and safe within the academic environment.
13. Forman, Jr. James, “Education Behind Bars” in Choosing the Future for the American Justice System, 121.
14. Rios, Human Targets, 14.
15. The tales of dysfunction serve to diminish the “unbridled passion that brought us into the field of education, transforming us into agents of a traditional school culture that worked against young people.” Emdin, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood, 33.
16. https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/crime/JAR_Display.asp?ID=qa05200. Accessed 7/15/2018.
17. Ibid., 10.
18. Legislative Analyst's Office. (2012). The 2012-2013 budget: Completing juvenile justice realignment. http://www.lao.ca.gov/Publications/Detail/2562. Accessed 6/23/2018.
19. http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-juvenile-justice-and-equity-legislation-20180405-story.html#.
20. One such example of an area of inquiry is the recent UC Berkeley study of the use of electronic monitoring devices on California youth that revealed the requirements and reality of the program disproportionately impacts youth of color and often leads to jail-time for technical rule violations. 6/20 https://www.law.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Report_Final_Electronic_Monitoring.pdf.
21. Ahranjani, Youth Justice in America, 281.
22. Walker, Popular Justice, 105.
23. The need for a separate juvenile justice system is evident when you consider the 1870 sentencing of 8 children between the ages of 12-15 to the harsh conditions in San Quentin or Folsom prisons by judges in Alameda County. Ibid., 107.
24. Victor Rios recalls some of the reasons that he chose to sell drugs included a sense that he could “gain self-worth, belonging, dignity, pride, and cash--the very resources that social institutions made unattainable for youth like use.” Rios, 2.
25. “Punitive Juvenile Justice Policies and the Impact on Minority Youth” By Michael Finley and Marc Schindler. http://www.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/1999decfp.pdf.
26. https://drugfree.org/article/brain-development-teen-behavior/
27. Coalition for Juvenile Justice, What Are the Implications, 5.
28. Ibid., 19.
29. I will also include an article about teens and marijuana because CAs recent decision to legalize medical marijuana use has resulted in a massive uptick in recreational use by my students. I feel it incumbent upon me to try to inform them of the dangers to which they are unwittingly exposing themselves given the negative impact upon attention span, learning, and decision-making.
30. Life expectancy based upon childhood trauma can be predicted and the higher the ACE score, the more likely the individual would suffer from chronic disease.
31. “The prefrontal cortex is more responsive to intervention than other parts of the brain, and it stays flexible well into adolescence and early adulthood. So if we can improve a child’s environment in the specific ways that lead to better executive functioning, we can increase his prospects for success in a particularly effective way.” Tough, How Children Succeed, 21. For example, Tough cites a study that seeks to reduce the effects to allostatic stress load by providing at-risk parents with therapy to improve attachment relationships which will protect the child from the effects of trauma. Ibid., 38.
32. Dick Durbin opened the dialogue in a meeting with the U.S. Senate, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights, Committee on the Judiciary in Washington, DC. 7/15 accessed https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-112shrg86166/html/CHRG-112shrg86166.htm.
33. Russell J. Skiba, Mariella I. Arredondo & Natasha T. Williams (2014) More Than a Metaphor: The Contribution of Exclusionary Discipline to a School-to-Prison Pipeline, Equity & Excellence in Education, 47:4, 546-564, DOI: 10.1080/10665684.2014.958965.
34. The study further concludes that California students face discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation and even disability. https://www.aclunc.org/publications/right-remain-student-how-ca-school-policies-fail-protect-and-serve.
35. “Studies show that children of color consistently are overrepresented at every point in the School-to-Prison Pipeline, from enrollment in underresourced public schools to suspension and expulsion rates to referrals to disciplinary alternative schools to referrals to law enforcement and the juvenile justice system.” Hewitt, School-to-Prison Pipeline, 34.
36. Ibid., 3.
37. Ibid., 86.
38. Find source: Sherpell v. Humnoke Sch. Dist. No. 5 of Lonoke County, 619 F. Supp … “concluding that the subjective elements of a school’s discipline code were pretextual, designed to mask racial bias, and resulted in punishment of Black students for conduct for which similarly situation white students were not punished.” Hewitt, 87.
39. Kupchik, “The School-to-Prison Pipeline,” in Choosing the Future for American Juvenile Justice, 107.
40. SPLC Launches “School to Prison Reform Project” to Help At-Risk Children Get Special Education Services, Avoid Incarceration Set 11, 2007.
41. Great example of a “disruptive” student and how to approach his conduct without pushing out https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/spring-2013/a-teachers-guide-to-rerouting-the-pipeline. Accessed 6/22/2018.
42. “Studies show that being arrested has detrimental psychological effects on the child: it nearly doubles the odds of dropping out of school and, if coupled with a court appearance, nearly quadruples the odds of dropout; lowers standardized-test scores; reduced future employment prospects; and increases the likelihood of future incarceration with the criminal justice system.” Hewitt, 113.
43. Ibid., 9.
44. Ahranjani, 62.
45. Kupchik, 115.
46. Ibid., 112.
47. Forman, “Out of Jail and Into Jobs,” 48.
48. https://flyprogram.org/about/what-we-do/mission-history/. Accessed 6/14/2018.
49. Ahranjani, 294.
50. Kupchik, 101.
51. Rios, 77.
52. Ibid., 53.
53. While the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects undocumented students, the reality is that these protections are notoriously difficult to enforce. In fact, English language learners, foster youth, homeless youth, and undocumented students are often the most at risk of entering the school to prison pipeline. Hewitt, 41.
54. Rios,78.
55. Ibid., 85.
56. A recent comparison that sheds light on the issue is the comparison that incarceration is actually more expensive than the tuition for a year at Harvard. Accessed 6/12/2018. https://www.scholarships.com/news/prison-incarceration-costs-more-than-harvard-university-tuition.
57. Drug treatment, job skills training, or alternative programs are rarely considered viable alternatives for prison because second chances aren’t often proffered to prisoners, which is ironic given that “our system never treated the failure of prison as a reason not to try more prison.” Forman, Locking Up Our Own, 123 & 231.
58. Ibid., 219.
59. Ibid., 224.
60. Ibid., 236.
61. Kupchik, 98.
62. Jones, 108
63. Mass incarceration https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2018.html and Juvenile Confinement https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/youth2018.html and https://sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Trends-in-US-Corrections.pdf.
64. It is important to recognize and acknowledge in a sensitive manner that students who are undocumented are therefore unable to participate in the democratic process.