February 25, 2015
The
Portland Observer Black
History Month
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Page 19
O PINION
A Cruel and Unjust Juvenile Justice System
Why are so
many girls in
detention?
BY M ARIAN W RIGHT E DELMAN
I’m grateful for a
powerful new book,
“Girls in Justice” by art-
ist Richard Ross, a fol-
low up to his moving
earlier Juvenile In Jus-
tice, which combines Ross’s photo-
graphs of girls in the juvenile justice
system with interviews he gathered
from over 250 detention facilities
across the United States. If a picture
is worth a thousand words, the
deeply disturbing photographs
speak volumes.
Ross uses the power of photog-
raphy to make visible the hidden
and harsh world of girls in deten-
tion. These heartwrenching images
coupled with the girls’ ages and life
stories should move us to confront
the cruel and unjust juvenile justice
system in our nation. These girls are
ours: our neighbors, our children’s
classmates, our daughters and
granddaughters, sisters, cousins,
and nieces — and, for some young
children, our mothers.
“Girls in Justice” begs the ques-
tions—why are so many girls, espe-
cially girls of color, confined in our
nation’s detention facilities, and
what are we as a society going to do
about it?
We must all work tirelessly to
give hope and a fair chance to these
girls and all children by promoting
policies, programs, and supports
that help them and their families,
especially those most at risk. We
must combat systemic problems that
contribute to family and com-
munity dysfunction and wreak
havoc on developing children
including girls; we must dig
beneath the surface and ex-
amine the root cause of girls’
“offenses” and why injustice saps
the hopes of so many young lives
on our watch.
In 2013, one in five girls in the
United States was poor, and girls of
color were disproportionately poor.
From birth to young adulthood,
children — especially poor children
and children of color — encounter
multiple and cumulative risk factors
that often result in their being fun-
neled into the prison pipeline
through the juvenile and criminal
justice systems and locked up be-
hind bars. Such massive incarcera-
tion is sentencing millions of chil-
dren to social and economic death.
The pipeline to prison is lodged at
the intersection of poverty and race
and is intolerable in a professed
society of opportunity.
In 2007, the Children’s Defense
Fund launched the Cradle to Prison
Pipeline crusade to confront youth
incarceration and the factors driv-
ing it and propose solutions to re-
place it with a pipeline to college and
career. While twice as many boys as
girls are arrested, girls are the fast-
est growing segment of the juvenile
justice system. As girls rock the
cradle they rock the future, and we
must pay attention to both girls and
boys to ensure the development of
healthy families.
Girls of color and poor girls face
special challenges before they en-
ter the juvenile justice system, dur-
ing their confinement, and when
they return to their communities after
release. At the front end, racial dis-
parities and the lack of appropriate
treatment and support that run
through every major child-serving
system negatively impact their life
chances by pushing more children
into juvenile detention and adult
prison. These include limited health
and mental health care; lack of qual-
ity early childhood support experi-
ences (including home visiting,
Early Head Start and Head Start,
child care, preschool, and kinder-
garten); children languishing in fos-
ter care waiting for permanent fami-
lies and shunted through multiple
placements; and failing schools with
harsh zero tolerance discipline poli-
cies, mostly for nonviolent offenses,
that suspend, expel, and discour-
age children who then too often
drop out and do not graduate. Too
little effort is made to divert girls
from the juvenile justice system
despite the existence of successful
evidence-based programs.
Girls in the system often encoun-
ter a unique set of challenges. Al-
most three quarters of them have
been sexually or physically abused.
Most are arrested for nonviolent
offenses such as truancy, running
away, or alcohol and substance use
which can often be linked to severe
abuse or neglect. These nonviolent
offenses, or status offenses, would
not be considered offenses for an
adult. Poverty has an impact: al-
though the trauma of sexual vio-
lence and abuse affects many girls,
poor girls often lack adequate sup-
ports to keep them from juvenile
detention.
Victimized girls often face more
trauma and stigmatization by being
held in juvenile detention facilities
instead of diverted to appropriate
community-based alternatives.
Whether confinement is temporary
or longer term, programs and per-
sonnel are often not equipped to
deal with their unique needs and
sometimes exacerbate the trauma.
Reports are rampant of confined
girls being emotionally, physically,
and sexually abused, isolated, sepa-
rated from their babies, unable to
visit their family members regularly,
and humiliated through common
practices like pat downs. Detention
centers need more comprehensive,
gender-responsive, trauma-in-
formed, culturally-relevant services
for girls.
After release, girls, many of whom
may already have been disconnected
from their families and communities,
need help through education, em-
ployment, and family and community
support including programs to
strengthen their families and assure
them access to health and mental
health services. Effective reentry
plans should include school
reenrollment, housing, job training,
case management, and mentoring.
All help reduce recidivism. We should
all feel ashamed as the girls in this
book talk about reentering detention
multiple times and how these are gen-
erational patterns. This revolving
door of individual and family con-
finement must end — now.
It is way past time for every adult
to take responsibility for reducing
the number of girls and boys behind
bars through prevention and diver-
sion programs and community sup-
ports both before and after deten-
tion. And it is way past time for
adults of every race and income
group to break our silence about the
pervasive breakdown of moral, fam-
ily, community and national values,
to place our children first in our
lives, to rebuild family and commu-
nity, to model the behavior we want
our children to learn, and to never
give up on any child.
We do not have a “child and
youth problem” in America, but we
have a profound adult problem. It is
time for adults to address it and to
give all of our children true justice:
hope, opportunity, and love.
Marian Wright Edelman is Presi-
dent of the Children's Defense Fund.
Make Black History Month and Every Month Matter
Making a
difference
against racism
BY M. L INDA J ARAMILLO
Black History Month
has historically been ob-
served in February each
year. It is meant to honor
and recognize the incred-
ible courage and witness
of African-American heroes and
sheroes who have shaped our com-
munities, our churches, and our
nation.
I am continually in awe of those
who have made a difference in my
life throughout the years. I am privi-
leged to work with such folks every
day, but will not call them out by
name without their permission. It is
important to set aside a special time
of the year for this purpose, but it is
time to proclaim that every month
matters!
As we celebrate, we must also
recognize that many issues still per-
meate our society because of insti-
tutionalized racism that is often not
known, understood, nor acknowl-
edged.
In the past year, we have
been painfully exposed to the
truth about racism in our na-
tion. Racism that plays itself
out in a health care system
that responds to those who
are insured or those who have
the money to pay their way. Racism
that plays itself out in crisis and
violence that should never happen
between communities and the po-
lice.
Racism that is evidenced in a
mass incarceration system that re-
sults in a gross overrepresentation
of black and brown men behind bars.
Racism that denies equal access to
money, from checking accounts to
mortgage loans.
While there are many reasons for
this inequality, I want to focus on
the issue of literacy. The fact that we
face such a serious problem with
illiteracy, also labeled low literacy,
calls us to address the issue as an
urgent matter. The impact of illit-
eracy is broad, intersectional and
justice. The ability to read touches
every facet of life, from our faith to
our health.
The United Church of Christ has
a long commitment to public educa-
tion and to education in general.
Churches and communities are actively
leading the effort to help children and adults
read. Reading Changes Lives is intended to
build upon these efforts and launch an
aggressive literacy campaign to address the
looming disparity affecting those who are
overlooked because of race and economic
marginalization.
complicated because it proportion-
ally affects more people who are
poor and people of color.
As a complicated and broad so-
cial justice issue, literacy impacts
other issues, including economic
justice, gender inequality, criminal
justice, public education, and racial
Reading Changes Lives is an all-
church initiative launched in Sep-
tember by the UCC to raise aware-
ness of the literacy crisis nation-
wide and the wide-reaching impact
that the ability to read has on the
quality of our lives.
Reading Changes Lives pro-
claims that literacy is a basic human
right. Churches and communities
are actively leading the effort to
help children and adults read. Read-
ing Changes Lives is intended to
build upon these efforts and launch
an aggressive literacy campaign to
address the looming disparity af-
fecting those who are overlooked
because of race and economic
marginalization.
February is a special month of
the year that reminds us that it is
time for reparations, reconciliation,
and renewal. There can be no more
important reparation at this time than
to work toward the restoration of
our zeal for education as a church
and as a nation.
Just as #BlackLivesMatter – ev-
ery month matters! Join us in the
effort to raise literacy levels.
The Rev. M. Linda Jaramillo is
executive minister for Justice and
Witness Ministries in the United
Church of Christ.