We Hide the Ugliness of Incarcerating Low-risk Kids in Harsh Prisons
|
When did we decide it’s OK to use handcuffs on kids who make us mad, and what does it say about us as a nation?
Listen to the White Southerner: Zero Tolerance in Schools Is Racist
|
There are some things that this Southern white male with black slave-owning ancestors can say and get away with: “If I can see the racism in zero tolerance, why can’t you?”
Schools, Like Courts, Turning Away From Sledgehammer Responses
|
We fling sledgehammers in the form of zero tolerance. We use suspensions, expulsions and arrests to rid our schools of disruptive students. When did making adults mad become a crime?
OP-ED: Common Sense Leads Us Astray in Education, Juvenile Justice
|
It doesn’t make sense that punitive practices can make kids worse, but they do. Zero tolerance policies should deter misbehavior at school, but they don’t.
OP-ED: Reformers Must Be As Militant As the Purposely Ignorant
|
Like the nonresponsive kids, there will always be nonresponsive adults who reject the best practices approach. They suffer from “militant ignorance,” or a conscious disregard of the truth to avoid a universal truth — that everyone sins. To acknowledge this truth is to acknowledge their own imperfection.
OP-ED: Sunshine Was Best Disinfectant at Senate Judiciary Hearing
|
The Senate Judiciary hearing opened all the doors to let the sunshine in so everything can be disinfected. The oversight and accountability changes to the bill will be very helpful in the disinfection process, including a mandate that any requirements made on the states will be subject to notice and comment.
OP-ED: Why You Won’t See the Sheep in My Court
|
“Are we doing something wrong?” “No, you should only see the kids who scare you — not those that make you mad.”
OP-ED: Facts, Persistence, Open Minds Lead to Legal Enlightenment
|
Many entering the field of juvenile justice are like newborns with a tabula rasa of empirical knowledge around what works.
Despite their lack of knowledge, they enter this field with lots of opinions about what works. These opinions make as much sense as calling a pig a horse and then trying to ride it.
OP-ED: Only Collective Culture Can Make Best Practices Permanent
|
My advice to best-practice folks is to change the culture of the community and not limit change to the juvenile justice system as we know it in the traditional sense — the court and its bureaucratic probation counterparts.
OP-ED: A Good Captain Barks Orders
|
Something “is outta kilter” or smells to “high heaven,” so bad it would “knock a buzzard off a gut wagon.” It looks like Mr. Listenbee does have a serious problem at OJJDP — employees who don’t know “crap from apple butter.” Why do these union employees not see what the advocates and experts see?