Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger
I guess I should not be surprised that the State of Mississippi is once again in the news because the Federal Government has filed a Civil Rights lawsuit against it. The Department of Justice has filed a suit against the State of Mississippi, and the City of Meridian, along with the county and various state agencies, alleging that the defendants have worked to operate a “school to prison” system that allegedly violated the rights of African-American students and students with disabilities.
“As a result,” the court filing states, “children in Meridien have been systematically incarcerated for allegedly committing minor offenses, including school disciplinary infractions, and are punished disproportionately without due process of law. The students most affected by this system are African-American children ann children with disabilities.”
Specific allegations include handcuffing, arresting and “incarcerat(ing) for days at a time without a probable cause hearing, regardless of the severity—or lack thereof— of the alleged offense or probation violation; not providing “meaningful representation” to the juveniles during the justice process; making the children “regularly wait more than 48 hours” for a probable cause hearing; and not advising children of their Miranda rights before the children admit to formal charges.
Students can be incarcerated for “dress code infractions such as wearing the wrong color socks or undershirt, or for having shirts untucked; tardies; flatulence in class; using vulgar language; yelling at teachers; and going to the bathroom or leaving the classroom without permission,” the Associated Press reports.” Common Dreams
I read the Common Dreams article and the AP article linked above and I could not believe that I was reading about a school district in the year 2012! This article could have been written in the 1950′s and no one would have even flinched. I know that the good Benedictine Sisters that I had in grade school in the 1950′s and 60′s would use corporal punishment against myself and other students who “needed” discipline, but they would have never allowed the police to put us in jail for leaving the classroom without permission! Has the City of Meridian and the State of Mississippi been caught in a time warp that has prevented them from escaping the 1950′s?
The Department of Justice initiated the lawsuit against the city of Meridian and the State because they have refused to work with the DOJ as some other cities have with similar programs. “Gregory Davis, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi, said it is disappointing that the local and state government agencies have not worked with the Department of Justice to resolve the violations.
Roy Austin Jr., deputy assistant attorney general, told the Associated Press that other areas around the country have “school-to-prison pipelines,” but this is the first time the civil rights division has filed a lawsuit based on these allegations. He said Shelby County, Tenn., is another example of a problematic area, but he said officials there are working with the Justice Department to fix the problems. “The department is bringing this lawsuit to ensure that all children are treated fairly and receive the fullest protection of the law,” Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, said in Thursday’s statement. “ Common Dreams
What would you do if your child was sent to jail for minor school infractions? The AP article linked above states that these students who are put into the juvenile justice system for minor school infractions can end up on Supervision and an additional school infraction can send them back to the detention centers! Does the State of Mississippi handle school districts that are not predominantly African-American in this disgusting manner?
“The Justice Department said Lauderdale County Youth Court Judges Frank Coleman and Veldore “Vel” Young denied the agency access to court hearings and information and directed the city of Meridian to withhold files concerning children. The Justice Department’s investigation began in December 2011. The school district has about 6,000 students, with 86 percent being black and 12 percent being white. From 2006 to the first semester of the 2009-2010 school year, all the students referred to law enforcement or expelled were black and 96 percent of those suspended were black, the lawsuit said.” Washington Post
I think that last quote from the Washington Post hits the nail on the head when it states that 100% of the students that were referred to law enforcement were black! I think it is fair to say that the City of Meridian and the State of Mississippi need to be sent to the principal for discipline! What is your take on this story?
My take on this is that public officials need to go to prison for this, but unless the Feds do it? It’s Mississippi. It’ll never happen otherwise.
You could be right Gene. Mississippi seems to be intent on continuing like the Civil War never happened and that African Americans never went through the Civil Rights Era!
Raff, in talking with my relatives and others in Louisiana, sometimes the subject of how backward Louisiana comes up and inevitably someone says, “At least we’re not in X.” where X = Mississippi or Alabama. When the backward consider you backward? That’s quite an accomplishment.
(Sorry for the algebra.
)
Gene,
That is Algebra that even I can understand!
The sad part of this is, the problem is not confined to Mississippi. Dr. Denise Oliver-Velez is a front page writer at Daily Kos. She is a professor of cultural anthropology at SUNY. She covered this story in considerable detail this morning, and has a number of relevant links in her story. Read it and weep.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/28/1150468/-Wearing-the-wrong-color-socks-to-school-could-get-a-child-sent-to-prison?showAll=yes
Yet again, I am horrified at how low humans willingly go.
Excellent article raff…. What do you think about parents being incarcerated for a child’s truancy or getting in trouble at school….I kid you not…..
The article you wrote about is just a tip of the iceberg……I hope the DOJ gives them their dooo process…..
When my husband was in grade school, like 4th grade, he was sent to a juvenile facility for like 5 years for kissing a girl at school. This was a locked place where they beat the kids. He is caucasian. He supposedly has an IQ of 165. This was in Steamboat Springs Colorado.
One thing I don’t like about DOJ is that they only go to Court to protect racial minorities. In fact they filed in Court something about that deprivation of rights under color of law can only be done to racial minorities. I can look up the exact quote.
DOJ should take on the cause of pro se litigants. Pro se litigants are the new untouchables in U.S. law.
OS,
Thanks for the link. Amazing stuff!
AY,
I have read about parental liability for their kids legal infractions and truancy.
It is a tough issue. Thanks!
The perverse logic of the American for-profit prison system in full bloom: whereby local government officials are incentivized to farm their public schools for black and disabled bodies to warehouse on the state government’s dime.
Guess there must not have been enough young blacks smoking pot for the city fathers of Meridien to make the monthly kickback quotas, so they had to look elsewhere.
Ugh Disgusting. Wouldn’t we have to invade a foreign country that was doing this to one of their minorities? Where’s the National Guard when we need them?
Then the kids who have been wrongly imprisoned can’t find jobs; then they’re forced out of the economy and basically forced to find a way to survive; then we have a good “excuse” to imprison them for decades at a time so they can work for the state or for profit-making prisons for 17 cents an hour, and have to pay for their own lunch too, right? Is anybody minding the 13th Amendment?
Nox,
Do you have evidence that the juveniles are being held in a for profit detention center?
Malisha,
You are right that this kind of system leads to life long problems!
What states aren’t being sued except California and New York by Eric Holder and his bunch?
My guess is someone is making a lot of money on those kids. Another move toward the feudal society by preparing a generation of kids for slavery-like conditions, kids with no control over their own destiny.
bettykath,
I have the same feeling, but I don’t have any evidence of that in this case. That is why I asked Nox if he/she had any evidence.
I have some dear friends who are now in heaven. They would be a hundred and ten years old. When they emigrated from Meridian, MS in the 1940s they came to Saint Louis and found a somewhat segregated state with little of the hell of Meridian. They told me about a horrid place with lynchings and chain gangs being a norm. Over the years I have been in MS several times and seen great changes. But one thing which remains ingrained in southern states is this prison farm system that they love so well. The case on today’s blog has been in the news and on other legal blogs. The Justice Department has to dismantle this system, root and branch. In this day and age there are black politicians who get into some of this chain gang operations. If other blog commenters have any info on this topic please chimne in.
Fairly,
Well said.
Well tell me again someone why this election is unimportant and there is no difference at all twict the two parties. The Romney justice department would certainly follow the same path. Thank you for posting this Raff.
Mike Spindell: I dontthink that Romeny would. It doesnt fit in with the Southern Strategy. The RepubliCons have been currying favor with white bigots in the Souther since Lee Atwater pontificated the strategy to Nxon and Raygun.
Fairly,
My point exactly.
You libs think Romneys the worst thing ever while at the same time Obama sails the country down the river running up a 5 trillion dollar debt
Bruce, There are a lot of things to criticize re: Obama, but the 5 trillion dollar debt isn’t one of them. Most of it comes from the Bush administration wars funding that weren’t counted by Bush but were counted by Obama and the Bush tax cuts.
http://www.examiner.com/article/gop-debunked-obama-did-not-create-5-trillion-new-debt
bettykath,
You know as well as anyone with a pulse that Ayn Rand supporters and teabaggers are reality challenged. Be careful how you wield those facts around, one of them might get hurt and sue you for wounding them with a blunt fact.
OS,
Hilarious and true. Those fact thingies can really get in the way sometimes.
@rafflaw,
Do you have evidence that the juveniles are being held in a for profit detention center?
The current DOJ suit appears to be an extension of a 2009 Southern Poverty Law Center filed suit against Lauderdale County (the same county named in the recent DOJ suit) for running a ‘school-to-prison pipeline’ with a company called GEO as the private firm responsible for the incarceration of the students.
The initial investigation, which began in 2006, turned into a federal civil rights lawsuit, with the ACLU and Jackson-based civil rights attorney Robert McDuff as co-counsels. It was settled in March with a sweeping consent decree designed to end the barbaric, unconstitutional conditions and the rampant violations of state and federal law that were documented separately by both the SPLC and the DOJ.
More on GEO from the SPLC page (which I highly recommend if you can stomach it):
GEO, which was born as Wackenhut Corrections Corp. in 1984, is the second-largest prison company in America, with 66,000 beds at 65 prison facilities across the U.S. and another seven overseas. With a total of 4,000 beds in three prisons, including Walnut Grove, the company houses about a quarter of Mississippi’s prison population.
Built with $41 million in taxpayer subsidies, Walnut Grove has generated about $100 million in revenue for the companies operating it since the doors opened in 2001.
With the acquisition of Walnut Grove and its other prison projects, GEO is riding a wave of privatization efforts.
Across the U.S., the number of inmates in such private facilities grew by 80 percent between 1999 and 2010 – from 71,208 to 128,195 – as states and the federal government bought the industry’s pitch that it could save taxpayer money by operating prisons at a lower cost, according a January 2012 report by The Sentencing Project. Thirty states now have partially privatized their prison systems.
For GEO, more privatization means greater profits. In 2011, the company produced $1.6 billion in revenue, a 27 percent increase over the previous year, and net income of $98.5 million, the best performance in the company’s history, according to its 2011 annual report.
The company’s business model depends, at least in part, on tough sentencing.
With 1.6 million people living behind bars, the U.S. already has the world’s largest population of prisoners – and the highest per-capita rate of incarceration. But the prison industry wants more. GEO’s annual report is clear about that – noting that “positive trends” in the industry may be “adversely impacted” by early release of inmates and changes to parole laws and sentencing guidelines.”
Google ‘school-to-prison pipelines’ to find a plethora of well developed critiques of the way the system ‘works’. There’s even a wikipedia page that lays out the many problems quite succinctly:
To wit:
Because prisons can be privatized and run for profit, and traditional public schools cannot, the market favors sending people to prisons rather than schools—particularly if they are not destined to become part of the high-skilled workforce. (As prisoners, people can be compelled to perform labor anyway.)
13th Amendment? What 13th Amendment?
NN, thanks for the research. This whole thing did not pass the smell test, so I had already figured the private prison industry was involved somehow. I recall the same thing was covered in a story on this site recently, when the judge in the case was busted for being in on the deal–and not in a good way. IIRC, that one was in Pennsylvania.
And guess who has a large financial stake in GEO? Since the time they were Wackenhut?
Unless he’s recently cashed out, that would be our very own domestic war criminal and former Vice President, Dick Cheney.
Who’d have thunk a psychopath like that would be involved in caging people for money.
The obvious truth for anyone who cares about this country is that there should be no privately operated prisons. The entirety of the justice system should be a governmental function, as was intended by our founders. It’s time to finally call these bast**ds who would perpetrate this evil system what they are and that is Un-American. The destruction of Constitutional protections for Americans for any purpose is obviously an Un-American activity.
Nox,
great work in uncovering the profit motive behind the disgusting practices in Meridian.
Mike S. is correct in suggesting that government should be the only entity involved in operating prisons and all functions of the justice system. The idea that privatizing government functions is abhorrent to the Constitution.
Gene,
Who would have guessed that the former war monger was involved in jailing kids?!!
O.S. you must run with the occupy wall street bunch? Talk about reality challenged
And I suspect those kids are working for little or nothing in producing products that bring in even more profit to the jailers and the corporations that hire the prison help.
Texas…. Texas…. Texas…. Next on the list….
This is the same exact thing Texas has been doing for over 20 years in their schools. The Texas Legislators are the ones who incorporated under Zero Tolerance (with President Bush approval). Texas area such as Houston, Dallas, Austin, Galveston, Forth Worth, Tyler, Bryan, Waco and others has embraced criminilizing minority in school for a long time for minor infraction. The minority student as young as 6 years old has been recieving criminal mistmendor C ticket that range $50 to $600.00 and jail time at the age of 17 years old (while still in school or not) like they were giving out candy. The supertendent and board member make a contract (MOU) with their City to use officers to write tickets on these children for any and everything. The Federal Department of Justice should clean house and put everyone involved in jail.