Michelle Alexander explains how black kids are ruined by the school-to-prison pipeline (1095 hits)
“The New Jim Crow” author Michelle Alexander explains the School-to-Prison Pipeline
Q&A with author and law professor Michelle Alexander about the criminalization of student behavior and mass incarceration – conducted by Rebekah Skelton
The school-to-prison pipeline is a national trend that involves taking students out of public schools and pushing them into courtrooms, juvenile detention centers and prisons. Data and studies show that minority students are more frequently effected by this system, which can be traced back to Jim Crow segregation. Last October I sat down with Michelle Alexander to talk about the issue.
Rebekah Skelton: In your own words, describe the school-to-prison pipeline.
Michelle Alexander: The school-to-prison pipeline is part of a larger caste-like system where children are shuttled from their typically decrepit and under-funded schools to brand new, high-tech prisons. At very young ages children are given the message that not much is expected of them and that they are likely one way or another to wind up in prison.
Our schools are still largely separate and unequal, and what’s different about this era than in times past is not just the inferior quality of education that is provided to young people, but the criminalization of young people in many schools across America. The types of minor infractions that would give you a trip to the principal’s office once upon a time now can result in handcuffs and a trip to the county jail. Incidents involving even just disrespect to a teacher or a fist-fight in the school yard can result in a criminal record for young people. If they’re very young, they may find themselves in juvenile hall, facing a judge, but increasingly young people are treated as adults at early ages — sometimes as young as 13, 14, 15 years old — and wind up facing adult criminal sanctions for the type of behavior that once involved teachers and principals and family members coming together to solve problems, as opposed to trying to dispose of children at young ages.
So really, the school-to-prison pipeline, in my view, reflects the system that’s been created to dispose of our children rather than educate them, counsel them and empower them to do well not only academically, but to imagine a future for themselves that does not include a cage and a lock and key.
READ MORE The school-to-prison pipeline: growing up in a system designed for failure | Rebekah Skelton.
I recently heard a television pastor talk on the same subject and suggest that they need to put the Bible back in the school system. How can that be the answer since we find more and more children from church families that are just as bad as the regular kids. Doesn't the word say that "The good tree won't produce bad fruit"?
Thursday, March 20th 2014 at 1:14PM
Helen Lofton
