By Carey Wedler
(CW) — Last week, the school system in Riverside County, California, was hit with a major lawsuit from multiple legal advocacy organizations over its policy of placing misbehaving and poorly performing students on probation, allegedly funneling them into the “school-to-prison pipeline.”
The ACLU, the ACLU of Southern California, the ACLU of Northern California, the ACLU of San Diego, the National Center for Youth Law, and Sheppard Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP, filed a lawsuit to fight what they call “fundamentally unfair processes,” according to a press release from the ACLU.
Though students swept up in the program have committed no crimes, the ACLU says the Youth Accountability Team (YAT) Program, an arm of the probation department, targets students for “school discipline problems and poor academics,” deeming them “at-risk” and effectively treating them like criminals. Other behaviors they seek out in youth include “defiance” and “substance abuse.” The program is ultimately a reflection of America’s growing police state, as the YAT website notes that their “teams” are “located throughout the county and are a collaborative effort between the Probation Department, local law enforcement agencies, District Attorney’s Office, counseling agencies, and various school districts in the County.”
“As it stands, children can be and are being placed on six-month terms of probation without procedural safeguards,” according to the ACLU. “Children and their families are not provided with specific information about the offense they are accused of committing, the terms of YAT probation, the possible consequences of going to court, or advisement of their legal rights.”
The organization press release continues:
With this lack of information, they sit across from officers of the probation and police departments and purportedly submit to invasive probation conditions and waive their First and Fourth Amendment rights. This is fundamentally unfair, and it violates children’s constitutional due process rights.
The program, rooted in the “juvenile super-predator” myth, has been in place since 2001 and is based in the belief that scaring young people can divert them away from engaging in criminal activity. This approach has been proven fundamentally flawed, as research shows adolescents respond more to positive incentives and support. “Scared-straight programs, boot camp, and programs that rely on compliance and surveillance, like traditional probation, are ineffective,” the ACLU argues.
It should come as no surprise that heavy-handed efforts to control children in schools have negative effects on them. This is also reflected in parenting techniques that involve withholding love as a means to push a child toward preferable behavior, which can have long-term, damaging emotional effects. Considering the control tactics built into public schooling, from mandatory homework and curriculum to assigned seating, needing permission to use the restroom, and punitive measures like detention, the entire paradigm seems deserving of scrutiny and a softer, more supportive approach that respect’s children’s uniqueness, needs, and freedom.
Some diversion programs, especially community-based ones, can be helpful in keeping troubled students out of detention centers, but Riverside County’s YAT program is instead punishing those students and setting them up for failure. If anything, it’s likely the schools themselves are failing students—not the other way around, and it’s a problem that does not warrant criminalizing them.
In the meantime, Riverside County’s punitive policy continues to treat students who need the most support as criminals in a program that disproportionately affects black and Latino students, and it is overdue for reform.
As the ACLU noted:
The constitutional deficiencies of Riverside’s YAT Program are clear, and the program will continue to violate children’s rights until it is reformed. But reforming the program will not only protect their rights, it presents an opportunity to provide a model for bringing juvenile probation and diversion in line with contemporary research on adolescent development.
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By Carey Wedler / Republished with permission / Steemit / Report a typo
Home schooling is the only way to actually give your kids an education and save them from the globalist indoctrination.
You are correct with respect to education, but we have been led far too far down the primrose path to be saved from absolute tyranny. We are already enslaved by dependency and our acceptance of government controls imposed upon us under the pretext of keeping us “safe”. Most of our population, indoctrinated under compulsory schooling, given “security” under compulsory Social Security, fiat “money” debt after confiscation, with no due process, of our constitutional lawful money, compulsory insurance laws, myriad license and “certification” requirements, unlawful taxes, fines, penalties and asset forfeitures imposed in total contradiction of the Bill of Rights, remain so “dumbed down” that they actually believe themselves to be “free”. All hopes of returning to anything close to living in a place where there is any liberty vanished before anyone now living was born.
For all the reasons you list and more is why being awake counts for so much less than it did. To walk away from the path of propaganda is the true test and is far more arduous than before
Another reason not to live in the People’s Republic of California…
It’s not just California. Nationwide, schools have become what amounts to being part of the penal system. For most, the schools are regarded as failing, as they are failing to educate. What is NOT understood is that they are intended, by those in control of government, to do exactly what they are doing, and that the system was never intended to enable the development of an educated population. Voting, or otherwise providing more money for schooling, only further enables the creation of a slave society.
The ACLU is saying that it’s not fair to expect Black and Latino students to behave as normal civilized humans because their only upbringing was by the government.
I guess you don’t understand how foolish you look making that statement. I’m not a fan of the ACLU, but nowhere in this article, especially anything quoted from the ACLU, does it imply the meat and potatoes of your statement. What’s made pretty clear is that it affects all students, but Latinos and Blacks are more disproportionately targeted for this YAT program. Children, regardless of race or ethnicity, should have standards of behavior to follow, but if their “misbehavior” isn’t actually a crime, it shouldn’t be treated as such…regardless of ethnicity. Remember, after all, white people are actually the biggest targets in this day and age and NOT ethnic minorities…even though, technically, throughout the world white people actually ARE the minority.
Peace.
An excellent response to an absolutely senseless comment.
I agree. The ACLU can make some make some really dumb stupid statements like the one above.
Happy I didnt breed
Abolish school and problem solved.
Indeed, public schools in parts of California and prisons seem to have much in common. What else can one expect in a state that forces its children to become fully vaccinated against the wishes of many parents.
But there is hope for children who act out because they hate school or have difficult family circumstances. One is school choice. California has a thriving charter school community. These schools should be available to children regardless of their zip code.
The other is to reinvent schools so that children are evaluated on the basis of what they can do (e.g. scout merit badges) rather than what they cannot. Schools should build on student strengths and what they like. At the elementary and middle school levels, that means much more music, art, physical education, dance, sports, science and foreign language learning and creative teachers who know how to use these modalities to help teach basic English, math and history. To do it right, teachers in the early years should be able to do things with students, which means they should be able to pass a physical fitness test.
At the high school level, reinvention means relegating the predominant century-old factory model school to the dustbin of history. Replace traditional courses with ones that have team-taught cross-disciplinary lessons and projects, and where the focus is on completing projects. Keep cohorts of students and faculty from different disciplines together for most of the school day so that no student feels neglected or underappreciated and where teachers can model for students the collaborative process that is required by today’s world of work. The school day would have only two periods, mornings and afternoons with a lunch break. The reinvented high school also enables students to gain skill, emotional growth and career direction through work-based learning and community service projects. The mind is a terrible thing to waste, especially the minds of teenagers. Too many of today’s high schools are wasting them. It doesn’t have to be that way.