This past week has been significantly easier than my first
two. I have become much more comfortable with interacting with our clients and their
families, and for the past week and a half I have thrown myself into a stat
project so I actually feel useful. Our office is trying to hire an education
attorney, which fits perfectly into this week’s SSF theme, and I have been
gathering school discipline data from Tennessee as a whole and Shelby, Davidson
and Knox counties to demonstrate the inequalities in our school system. There
are huge disparities in discipline rates across gender, race, and disability
levels –the most shocking statistic showing that 53% of all high school black
males with a learning disability will be suspended or expelled. Students that
are struggling to keep up in school due to ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, or another
disability – the population that should receive the most support from their
schools – are punished disproportionately compared to their peers, especially if those peers are white.
Shelby County is one of the worst
offenders – we suspend kids at 2.4 times more and expel kids 3.5 times more
than the Tennessee average. We also have three times as many law related
arrests and referrals to law enforcement as Knox County. The juvenile justice
system should not be pulled into our school systems, especially when it is
clear that black children are seriously over represented in these interactions.
After digging into this data, I
turned to our juvenile court system to see how a child’s educational circumstances
related to their legal outcomes. I expected to find a correlation between being
expelled and being charged with a crime, but the strength of the relationship was
overwhelming. In our court system, a child that is in the correct grade at
school has an average of 3 complaints and 1 felony charge. If that child has
fallen behind grade level or is no longer enrolled in school, the
averages jump to 6.7 complaints and 2 felonies. After further analysis I found
that with each grade a child falls behind, complaints increase by 1.4 and felonies
increase by 0.4 – meaning that a child that is just two years behind has nearly
twice the complaints and felony charges as a child at the correct grade level.
Along with these disturbing
relationships between falling behind in school and juvenile delinquency, I found
that our court matches the school system in that black males make up the
overwhelming majority in every category. Within each charge type, black males
receive harsher sentences than their white or female counterparts. There are
very distinct differences in the 'before, during, and after' of the juvenile system
due to race and gender, and the education system is feeding these inequalities
by inappropriately disciplining these vulnerable populations. There are obviously
systematic problems here that would take years to resolve, but hiring an
education attorney that could fight unfair suspensions and expulsions as well
as work to re-enroll our kids in appropriate education systems would be a great
first step for our office.
Hey Megan!
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate you making these observations, and it's super exciting that you've got a project!
This post really reminds me of a conversation we had a few weeks ago--you asked if there was a program similar to Girls Inc but for males, because your site has difficulty placing your teen boys into programs to give them more credibility. A lot of people think young males, and unfortunately usually African American males, are corrupt and do not deserve a second chance. As you're learning, this is far from the truth.
I'm really happy you've absorbed from your site as you have. While these problems may seem intimidating and beyond repair, all they need is someone like you with a new and fresh mindset to the situation. Additionally, it's important to remember that these problems are not exclusive to Memphis. No matter where you end up after graduation, take this experience with you and make this necessary change!
Hi Megan, this post relates a bit to an experience I had with our black teenagers at the boys and girls club recently. Yesterday, we went on a Rhodes College tour and we got food afterwards somewhere off campus. Since we had to wait for a ride for about a half hour, we went into a clothing store. A coworker and I brought in 15 black teenagers and you can tell right away that the security guard was extremely uncomfortable. The guard kept circling our group the whole time we were there until he came up to my coworker and I to ask us to leave.
ReplyDeleteWhen we got out of the store, one of the black male teenagers asked "why does everyone always assume we are stealing stuff?" I felt pretty horrible about it and you can see that this belief about black teenagers and especially black young men is hurting these people. People are making unfair assumptions about this group and treating them differently than they would white students.
Megan, I really enjoyed your post for this week - all the connections you've made have been incredibly insightful and I'm sure I will continue to learn from your experiences in the juvenile justice system! As an Anthropology/ Sociology major, we talk about injustice and inequality on a regular basis, but it's very easy to forget that the sociological data and statistics that we cite can be as dehumanizing as they are enlightening. For instance, we talk about systemic racism, especially how it plays out in the justice system, but we don't always talk about how being criminalized on a daily basis can impact the self esteem and emotional health of these young men of color.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing that you mentioned that was very poignant was how schools funnel black and brown youth into the juvenile justice system through the school to prison pipeline. What I found most horrifying about these statistics was how difficult it must be to get out of the system once you've been sucked in. I think investing in alternatives to prison and creating productive programming for people with disabilities would be a good place to start in decriminalizing youth.
Megan,
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you are benefitting so much from your experience in the public defender’s office! I’m glad you are beginning to feel more active with your statistics project; it sounds like it’s very beneficial information for the defenders to be aware of. It must be exciting to witness the new education attorney being hired. From your post, it seems like a necessary step in the right direction to have someone knowledgeable about the correlation between education and crimes advocating for your clients. I agree that it’s really disturbing to hear that black males are treated much more harshly in the judicial system than white and female individuals. It’s hard to confront this fact that, like Becky mentioned in her comment, is not just exclusive to Memphis. It’s also difficult, I think, to recognize that we ourselves are not immune to those prejudices. Because this image of black males associated with crime is so prominent, we are also susceptible to linking them in our minds because we’ve been socialized that way. Sometimes, I even catch myself making assumptions like that while driving through Frayser to go to Georgian Hills Elementary in the mornings, but I think the key is combating it both in larger areas like the justice system as well as within our minds. Do you feel that working in the public defender’s office has prompted you to notice and examine prejudices in other contexts? You’re observing and learning a lot, and I’m excited to hear more updates!