Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/category/ideas-and-opinions/page/68/)
What started as a stressful night as a chaperone for a school trip emerged as the beginning of a great journey in discovering how discipline can actually be a positive experience for everyone involved. Can you imagine that?! I can, because I have now seen it repeatedly with my own eyes.
I made the mistake of assuming that all judges would embrace the moral and ethical responsibility of acting to change their own system to keep kids safe and on a trajectory of a positive and healthy future.
Because we have walked these streets abandoned, without a loved one as a compass to guide and point us in the right direction, we have lost our way as children.
“What do you do when you travel to all these places?”
I get this question a lot because judges in the traditional sense don’t travel — they sit.
Over the past several weeks, I have attended a number of meetings and conferences in which both juvenile justice practitioners and researchers were present. Over and over, I was reminded that these two groups really do speak in different languages and often have very different philosophies.
Each year, thousands of children are subjected to solitary confinement in juvenile facilities and adult jails and prisons. Solitary confinement — also known as room confinement, seclusion, isolation or segregation — is the involuntary placement of a youth alone in a cell, room or other area for any reason.
When I became a judge, it didn’t take long to question why so many kids appeared in my court on minor school offenses. In 1995, the year before police were introduced to schools, there were only 50 referrals to the court. By 2004, it had increased to 1,200 referrals.
School officials treat rap music as a serious threat to the school environment. Fear and misunderstanding of, as well as bias against, this highly popular and lucrative musical art form negatively shape their perspectives on this vital aspect of youth culture.
The false belief that I had was that I was protecting my block, making sure no outsiders messed with my friends and family. But in reality all we do is lie, cheat and steal from each other and in most cases kill one another.
The topic of alternatives in police practice usually stops at diversion. We need more — alternatives to excessive force, to deadly force.