Jackson Free Press

While Ellen Reddy describes flaws in Mississippi's youth justice system, an 11-year-old draws corpulent cars and squiggly skeleton keys on a large easel pad in a conference room at the Mississippi Youth Justice Program. Reddy, who is co-director of programs and a community organizer for the program, says that children as young as the girl drawing have been taken from their families and locked into a dark cell at one of the state's training schools. Reddy works with the Mississippi Coalition for the Prevention of Schoolhouse to Jailhouse, which is sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center, to keep kids out of institutions and in their communities and schools.

Tell me about the Mississippi Coalition for the Prevention of Schoolhouse to Jailhouse.

What we do is kind of like community lawyering. It's not enough to bring a legal action, because your case can be in court for 20 or 30 years. But if you have organization, where you have families and children involved, you can keep it open. The community can monitor what's going on just by bringing people together. The strength of the coalition is that we bring the legal and community arms together.

What would you like to see happen with the training schools?

The training schools need to be shut down. Ultimately, I think institutionalizing and incarcerating children does not benefit them. You can place children in the training school and hope that you'll change their behavior, but you've taken that child from their natural environment, you put them inside this institution, and when they come back, they still have the same problems that sent them away. I don't think it serves the best interest of children to totally remove them from their community and support base. Communities are the centers of families' lives, so that's where the resources need to go.

What programs should there be instead?

There should be programs that ensure children are achieving academically, whether that means academic tutoring in the afternoon or making counseling available for the child and the family. You want to deal with children's misbehavior, if they have anger management issues. You want to give children and families tools and skills that they need to resolve any problems that they have. Kids don't step out of closets, they come from families. If you want to change a child, you have to work with the entire family.

How have things changed for children who misbehave?

I can't imagine being a student inside of a school now. I think it's really difficult for kids. There are so many rules now. You've got to walk down the hall in a single line, you can't talk, you can't reach out, you can't play. You can't even get into a fight anymore. Kids will have their scrapes, but now when you do those things it's treated like criminal activity.

Why do you think society has taken this criminalizing attitude toward children?

Part of it is the media. Schools are still the safest place for children to be, but when you have high profile crimes like the shooting in Pearl, all kids get caught up in it. I do not like it when people talk about zero tolerance for children. We must have tolerance for children. And I get a chill when I hear people call children 'predators.' Those things paint a very distorted view of children.

What about the new program to set up a boot camp for kids in Jackson?

There will be no boot camps in the city of Jackson. I met Mayor Melton when he was on the state Department of Education board, and we have a good relationship. I think he does have a fondness for children, and his heart is in the right place. He can be reasoned with. He can be talked to. We met with him, Chief of Police (Shirlene) Anderson and Commander (Tyrone) Lewis and presented to them some of the problems with boot camps. Federal dollars won't cover them. There are issues with medical care and liability. So the mayor has agreed to reevaluate the program and to look at our alternatives. We look forward to him implementing a program that might become a model for the entire state.

And the truancy sweep on Friday night?

I have some concerns about the legal implications. You can't lock a child up for truancy. Being out of school is a status offense. And what's the point of locking up a child for missing school? Research shows that scared straight does not work. If you lock a kid up you might scare him, but that's not a motivation for succeeding at school. Just because an adult gets in a child's face and hollers and talks about consequences, that can't make a child see 10 or 20 years down the road. They can't process that.

Previous Comments

ID

64846

Comment

” I don’t think it serves the best interest of children to totally remove them from their community and support base. Communities are the centers of families’ lives, so that’s where the resources need to go.” In general I cannot agree with this, because in far too many instances both the community and the family are gravely dysfunctional. ”I can’t imagine being a student inside of a school now. I think it’s really difficult for kids. There are so many rules now. You’ve got to walk down the hall in a single line, you can’t talk, you can’t reach out, you can’t play. You can’t even get into a fight anymore. Kids will have their scrapes, but now when you do those things it’s treated like criminal activity.” Given some of the unstructured environments some students are raised in, I think it is great that all students be expected to behave accordingly. Also, I would think having “so many rules” would help aid in what has to be one of the toughest jobs there is, being a teacher. ” Schools are still the safest place for children to be” Maybe it has something to do with all those pesky rules. I think the Mayor’s efforts in addressing the issues with wayward youths in Jackson should be noted. It is not enough to recite what statistically does not work regarding troubled youths, while not really offering much in the way of what does work. I will agree that Jackson does not need a “boot camp”, and I hope the program Melton hopes to bring into fruition will neither be given the title or the tactics often utilized regarding boot camps.

Author

K RHODES

Date

2005-12-07T19:42:11-06:00