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WORD COUNT
727
MARCH 11, 2009
LET’S SHUT
DOWN THE PRISON PIPELINE – by Marian Wright Edelman
As most children grow up in America, they hear the out-loud dreams and
expectations that their parents and other adults have for them: doing
well at school, a fulfilling career and a family. Regrettably, those are
not the dreams and expectations with which many poor Black and Latino
children grow up. For too many of them, childhood means starting school
not ready to learn, not reading at grade level, being pushed out or
dropping out of school at younger and younger ages, then hanging out on
the corner and getting a "street" education. This often leads to being
sucked into the pipeline to prison, which can best be described as a
living nightmare.
As part of a growing campaign to expand public awareness and catalyze
action to stop this scourge that threatens the lives of countless
children and the future of our nation, the Children's Defense Fund was
joining with five national partners to conduct a California
Cradle
to Prison Pipeline Summit last month, in Sacramento. The
summit was to sound an alarm and share solutions for dismantling the
pipeline to prison and rerouting children to healthy adulthoods. There
is no more urgent concern for America or children of color in America.
Nationwide, a Black boy born in 2001 has a 1 in 3 chance of going to
prison in his lifetime; a Latino boy has a 1 in 6 chance.
California operates the largest prison system in the United States and
incarcerates more than one of every 10 prisoners in America.
California's prison pipeline traffic is burgeoning—there were 232,849
juvenile arrests in 2006, more than 600 each day. A large number of
them, 36,496, were not for violent or dangerous crimes but for status
infractions such as truancy, incorrigibility, running away and curfew
violations.
The disparity in spending on youth incarceration compared to spending
for education reveals how perverse the state's priorities have become.
During the 2007-08 school year, California spent an average of $11,935
for each K-12 pupil, but the state is projected to spend more than 20
times as much, $250,000, for each youth in a state juvenile facility in
2008-09. Our states spend on average about three times as much per
prisoner as per public school pupil. I can't think of a dumber
investment policy. No wonder California can't balance its budget!
We must mount a concerted national effort to dismantle the prison
pipeline by attacking it at its root causes—poverty and racial
disparities, lack of access to health care, poor early childhood and
public education, a broken child welfare system, and inequitable
administration of juvenile justice. Zero tolerance school discipline
policies are criminalizing children at younger and younger ages. We are
hopeful that the Obama administration will begin to transform some of
these issues at the national level. A high priority should be national
health coverage to ensure that every child and pregnant woman has access
to affordable, comprehensive health and mental health coverage for all
medically necessary services so that at-risk mothers, as well as
pregnant mothers and babies, are identified early, and children don't
begin life with three or more strikes already against them.
We know what to do. There are promising approaches that can be
replicated at the state and local levels. For example, the CDF Freedom
Schools® program empowers children through academically and
culturally enriching summer and after-school programs that promote a
love of reading in young scholars and encourages them to engage in
service and civic activities. In 2008,
CDF
Freedom Schools® sites served nearly 9,000
children through partnerships with churches, schools, colleges and
universities and community organizations. Each young adult servant
leader intern works with 10 children from low-income families setting
high expectations and helping them believe they can make a difference in
the world.
California's Homeboy Industries, located in Los Angeles, has enjoyed
great success as a model gang-intervention program diverting thousands
of young people from the prison pipeline for two decades. Homeboy
Industries offers intensive hands-on counseling, job training and
placement in useful employment. It provides assistance in enrolling in
school, legal aid, help with immigration problems and classes that teach
life skills. Many youths are employed in Homeboy Industries'
enterprises: Homeboy Bakery, Homegirl Café, Homeboy Maintenance and
Homeboy Silkscreen & Embroidery.
The pipeline is not an act of God; it has been created by our human
political choices. Our summit is part of an ongoing campaign to rouse
the nation to act with urgency and demand new choices for our children
and to level the playing field for all children to survive, thrive,
learn and contribute according to their God-given potential.
--
Marian
Wright Edelman, whose latest book is “The Sea Is So Wide And My Boat Is
So Small: Charting a Course for the Next Generation,” is president of
the Children's Defense Fund. For more information about the Children's
Defense Fund, go to
http://www.childrensdefense.org/. A photo of Marian Wright Edelman
is available at: www.minutemanmedia.org
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