Anne Eller

                                                                                                                        May 6, 2002

                                                                                                                        Life & Death in the                                                                                                                              Black Community

 

“Walking on a Tight-Rope”: Black Youth and the Culture of Control

“The po-po are like recruiters around here, only they don’t want

us for the NBA or the NFL—they want us for jail.”[1]

 

            To white, middle class America today, childhood is supposed to be a time of learning, self-discovery, and play.  Their vision, however, does not extend to all of America’s youth.  For many children – especially teenagers – of color, their very existence is met by official suspicion and repression.  At school and on the street, their activities are criminalized, a situation which is often compounded with discrimination in the juvenile justice system.  Although the sum of these social forces is the disruption of entire communities and the perpetuation of racial disparities, political inertia, media distortion, racism, and structural limitations of America’s post-industrial economy are a block to important reforms.   In light of the intransigence of the society around them, the self-conception of black youths is perhaps their most important tool for survival.

            The first place where the activities of black youth are criminalized is at school, primarily through the use of Zero Tolerance Policies (ZTP).  Such policies, which “automatically and severely punish a student for a variety of infractions” gained political currency in the law-and-order-obsessed 1980’s and widespread enforcement after the suburban school shootings of the last decade.[2]   Although a child is “three times more likely to be struck by lightning than to be killed at school,” the broad net of these policies has resulted in an exponential increase of suspensions and expulsions for infractions as small as carrying a bread knife to school in one’s lunch.[3]  The sweeping and arbitrary nature of these policies has affected black students and other students of color especially hard.  As they are more likely to attend urban, public schools, with higher levels of disciplinary supervision, they are more likely to encounter enforcement of these “criminal” policies.

            In New York City public schools and in other urban public schools around the nation, the criminalization of students is taken a step further, for it is police officers, not school monitors, who roam the halls.  Citing a “crisis” in disciplinary conditions, in 1998 Mayor Rudolph Giuliani turned over control of school safety completely to the NYPD.[4]    With the introduction of hundreds of uniformed officers in schools city-wide, being “eyeballed, stopped and often bullied” by police officers for “quality of life” (QOL) offenses has become far more routine.[5]  Significantly for students of color, “nowhere is police scrutiny tighter than at ‘zone schools’,” or non-specialized schools, whose population of black and Latino students is even greater than the city-wide 85% average.[6]  Since the early 1980’s, many of  these “third tier” public schools have been veritable “training grounds for prison, complete with metal detectors, frisking, and holding  cells.[7]“  More proactive enforcement results in greater contact between students and school authorities for other infractions as well.  In schools where police officers are the hall monitors,  therefore, the nation’s zero tolerance policies are one step further to jail.

            The numbers surrounding ZTP policies of school safety have been mixed.  Nationwide, “serious school crime,” including assault, threats, and robbery remain unchanged, remaining at the same relatively low levels where they have been since the 1970’s.[8]    In New York City, both burglary and arrests are down significantly--nearly 20%--but the total number of students “having encounters with the law” has jumped by that same margin.[9]  The number of students between the ages of seven and sixteen who now have “juvenile reports” on file at the precinct has risen 12%.  Finally, and most troublingly, the summonses for adolescents ages 16 and up--which doubled in 1999 and 2000 alone--are up more than 100%.[10]  Perhaps the most tellingly, however, is the 2000 Joint Committee on School Safety’s findings, in which 67% of the principals reported “‘no change’ in their school’s climate of safety.”[11]

            A general impact which is widely acknowledged is the general worsening  of school climate for the students.  From the transit police in the subway station to the officers in the “safe corridors” to those stationed outside and inside of school, police supervision is everywhere.  Close on its heels are daily “horror stories” of harassment.  As one mother notes, “you cannot have children this exposed to cops and not expect the kids to get the short end of the stick.”[12] Or, as one student describes,

            “You could be standing up chillin’ with your friends and they will roll up on you and                  start questioning you for no reason.  They don’t even do it in a nice way.  It’s like,                         ‘Didn’t I see you here before?  Get your ass up against the wall and spread ‘em.’  Your    

            first instinct is to run, but you know that will make it ten times as bad...”[13]

Inside, there is a “unofficial, unacknowledged curriculum on how to be searched, scanned, ID’d, detained, and interrogated.”[14]

            The psychological ramifications of this criminalization are extremely important.   Given the vulnerability of children to images and the added turbulent history communities of color have had with the police, and it is no wonder that the ubiquitous presence of officers in schools is profoundly disturbing.[15]   Their presence represents an authority which seeks not to aid them in their problems and development, but rather to “bait them...[and] use their problems against them.”[16]    Even when students are “frisked, then released,”  the statement that they are “free to go” rings hollow in light of daily reminders otherwise.  Finally, physical manifestations of their criminalization-- from dilapidated schools to metal grates, and cameras--serve as omnipresent  indicators of both neglect and suspicion. 

            The primary material impact of all of this aggressive enforcing, of course, has been running an unprecedented number of black students through the police system and creating police records.  Nationwide, ZTP’s have been criticized nationwide for “importing to education the concept of adult mandatory sentencing” in a manner that is even more arbitrary, harsh, and absent from recourse than its form in the criminal justice system.[17]  When these are combined with actual police enforcement and the logic and zeal of New York’s “Quality of Life” program, however,

the “normal, adolescent acting out” and hanging out--which might earn them a suspension in the suburbs--is trespassing, loitering, and other criminal behavior.[18]   “Disorderly conduct” is a catch-all charge which could describe the behavior of most normal fifteen year olds at some point in the day.  In urban schools with police enforcement, however, black youth aren’t just getting a “write-up” for many typical teenage behaviors; they’re getting booked.  In the words of one attorney, “everything that’s wrong with Giuliani’s police tactics is multiplied tenfold when you apply it to the schools.”[19]

            No matter the protestations, the increase of suspensions and expulsions means not only that more black students fall behind academically but that they are pushed out onto the streets, another site of their criminalization.  Due in part to the activism of privacy advocates and groups like the New York City Camera Surveillance Players, the network of wired and closed-circuit camera surveillance which observe the activities of urban dwellers is well known, and police are relying on such technology increasingly for QOL offenses in addition to major crimes.[20]   Even more pervasive and pernicious than these however, are the provisions of many anti-youth crime bills which demand ever more aggressive policing and sentencing in ways which disproportionately affect youth of color.  In  recent years, eager eyes of national politicians have been turned to states like California, whose stringent youth crime bills like the 2000 Juvenile Crime Prevention Act (also known as Proposition 21) have been voted into law by electoral landslides.

            Curfew and anti-loitering laws, the more benign of anti-youth legislation which has been passed in the last twenty years, enjoy public support on the premise that they deter potential criminals and “identify and incapacitate” others.[21]  In a statistical meta-analysis of statewide arrest rates and crime rates in California, journalists Dan Macallair and Mike Males analyzed the effects of curfews by major counties, in twenty-one Californian cities larger than 100,000 people, and in three specific case studies to test this assertion.  Their findings were stark: “statistical analysis provides no support for the proposition that stricter curfew enforcement reduces youth crime, absolutely or relative to [the change in the crime rate of] adults.”[22]  Even though youth crime declined nearly 30% between 1990 and 1994, as curfew proponents claim,  adult crime “declined at the same rate, in almost identical fashion, for each category,” eliminating the curfew laws as the driving factor.[23]   In fact, because curfew laws “occupy police time... and leaving emptier public streets and public spaces” they may result in less safe conditions in some cases.[24]  The real result, rather, is familiar: enforcement has been shown to be selective and discriminatory in at least five of California’s most populous counties, and more youth of color “run through the system.”   And again, the more proactive pattern of policing results in increased numbers of black youth with “criminal” records, which in turn justifies increased scrutiny and targeting of black youth for other offenses. 

            Indeed, since the 1970’s,  there has been a decisive trend towards more aggressive policing in major cities around the country.  The QOL policies of New York City’s former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani are an excellent example.  Under his direction, New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton pioneered an entirely reinvigorated NYPD in the 1990’s: better  (more heavily) armed, better dressed, and with a renewed sanction to fix the “broken windows” of the city.[25]  The new statutes, premised on the “pseudo-scientific legitimacy” that confronting small infractions will prevent larger crimes, gave police officers almost unlimited rein on behaviors they could deem criminal.[26]   One lieutenant noted that although tickets for many minor QOL infractions are never paid, “that doesn’t matter.  Unpaid tickets become arrest warrants.  What counts is we’ve got them in the system; we’re building a database.[27]   In this light,  sweep laws like Chicago’s 1992 anti-loitering ordinance--which arrested 43,000 young Chicagoans in two years, the “vast majority of them youth of color,” (while only a “tiny fraction” of them were ever charged)--are all the more ominous.[28]   The legality of these databases of potential serious offenders is dubious indeed.

            The most stringent and expansive of recent measures against black youth are represented in  bills like California’s “Juvenile Crime Initiative,” Proposition 21.  Although national and state-wide juvenile rates matched adult rates’ significant declines in the 1990’s, Proposition 21 represents some of the most harsh juvenile crime provisions in California’s--and the country’s--history.[29]   The initiative’s penal target are “gangs [and] gang-related activities,”  focuses which opponents claim are nothing but “racialized code words” for urban youth of color.[30]   The bill demanded even harsher sentences for a range of juvenile crimes, including three year jail terms for petty vandalism, life sentences for home robbery and witness intimidation, and even the death penalty for “gang-related” homicide.[31]  Furthermore, the bill made it easier for youth as young as 14 years of age to be tried as adults for a variety of offenses; no longer did adolescents in these cases have access to judicial fitness hearings.

            Significantly, this bill was built on the foundations of QOL laws as much as as preceding “gang” initiatives, for it expanded and abused the “criminal” databases of both.  California’s database, CalGang, now contains more than 300,000 names drawn from evidence that is often no more than racial profiling, pure and simple.[32]  Having a relative or childhood friend in a gang and wearing “baggy jeans” is enough to put a youth on what the ACLU calls “a Black List.”[33]  In Denver, displaying any two of the following attributes: “slang,” “clothing of a particular color,” “pagers,” “hairstyles,” or “jewelry” earns youth a spot in the Denver Police’s gang database.[34]   In 1992, citizen activism led to an investigation which revealed that “eight out of every ten people of color in the entire city” were on the list of suspected criminals. [35]  California’s own list is so unreliable that the attorney general refused to forward its criteria to federal authorities, and yet its use to trigger sentence enhancements and conduct “sweeps” continues.[36]  

            Because of the legislative focus on policing “urban gangs,” or youth of color, black youth are arrested at rates out of proportion with their white peers.  Although survey data suggest that white and black youth “participate in fights, breaking and entering, carrying and using a weapon, or stealing something worth less than $50” at comparable rates and that black youth have substantially lower involvement in “serious drug behavior,” the arrest rate for black youth is often more than double that of whites in every category and more than forty-eight times higher for  drug-related offenses.[37]   The Pathways to Detention Reform Series, which documents the research and  advocacy of Maryland’s Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI), documents potential reasons to explain this phenomenon.[38]  The focus of police energy and concentration of resources in largely black and Latino neighborhoods, aided by QOL databases and straightforward racial profiling, means that the potential for black youths to get arrested is much higher.[39]  

            Once arrested, racism and poverty often influence youths’ trial and sentencing.  First, black youth are more likely to have to rely on the “overburdened indigent defense system,” which not only increases their chances of being convicted but also of facing trial as an adult.[40]   Second, many black youth often “do not have the family or community resources” which influence judges to deem them “appropriate for alternatives to detention.”[41]  Whether out of an objective assessment of family conditions or simply racial prejudice, many juvenile justice officials often believe that a black youth’s “best chance to receive services may be in the detention system.”[42]   In the words of Jerome Miller, author of  Search and Destroy: African-American Males in the Criminal Justice System,

            “I learned very early on that when we got an African American youth, virtually

            everything from arrest summaries, to family history, to rap sheets, to psychiatric

            exams was skewed. If a middle-class white youth was sent to us as “dangerous,” he

            was more likely actually to be so than an African American teenager given the

            same label. The white teenager was more likely to have been afforded competent

            legal counsel and appropriate psychiatric and psychological testing, tried in a

            variety of privately funded options, and dealt with more sensitively and individually

            at every stage of the juvenile justice processing.For him to be labeled

            “dangerous” he had to have done something very serious indeed .”[43]

 

Implicit in this analysis is that black youths are more likely to be labeled dangerous by virtue of their poverty and their skin color. According to Building Blocks for Youth study And Justice for Some, the result has been that black youth are six times more likely to be incarcerated in public facilities than white youth, even when charged with the same offenses and have no prior commitment history.”[44]    The result of these racial imbalances has been that of the 72% increase in secure detention in  juvenile halls from 1985-1995, 82% have been African-American youths.[45]

            Black girls face a double whammy of discrimination by race and gender.  Government statistics indicate that girls are the fastest-growing segment of the juvenile detention population, increasing by more than 80% between 1988 and 1997 to comprise nearly 27% of total juvenile arrests.[46]   Of these cases, racial bias is still pervasive; seven out of every ten cases are dismissed for white girls, compared to only three out of ten for black girls.[47]   Gender bias is also introduced in detention, as girls are detained for minor offenses such as public disorder and status violations at a rate nearly 10% higher than boys.[48]  Perhaps this disparity is because the misbehavior and distress of girls is often “invisible,” so that when it does finally reach conventionally anti-social proportions (expected of boys and men, but not of girls and women), the public reacts more harshly and with shock.

            According to JDAI, nearly 24,000 youth are detained in overcrowded and understaffed public juvenile detention centers every day.[49]  Although the majority of them are released within five days, many are incarcerated longer (and a disproportionate number of these youth are black and Latino).[50]   Numerous detention centers “fail to meet even minimum constitutional, statutory, and professional standards of care,” and their conditions pose the potential for “terrible physical [and] emotional harm.”[51]  The 1994 U.S. Justice Department Report, Conditions of Confinement,

cited not only “inadequate living space, with youth sleeping on floors, in hallways, in day rooms, and in isolation rooms” but also “deficiencies in educational and treatment services; access to the community; deplorable sanitation, ventilation, fire safety, and building maintenance” and staff abuses of “isolation, restraints, and searches,”  and inappropriate restriction of telephone use, visiting privileges, an even bathroom access.[52]   Civil suits raised against these facilities have brought charges  “ranging from deplorable physical conditions and inadequate programs to outright brutality.” Disturbingly, detention centers have been sued repeatedly “for failure to provide legally required minimum education programs  and counseling to youth.”[53]

            The deplorable conditions of juvenile detention centers affect girls of color, who tend to have experienced more trauma and to be more emotionally disturbed than the average boy detainee,[54]  particularly severely. Whatever the reason, according to a study conducted by the American Bar Association’s Female Detention Project, the profile of the typical girl being held in detention is: “African-American (>50%); dependent prior to first arrest; has experienced five or more foster care transitions; has at least one parent that abuses drugs and/or alcohol; has experienced some type of trauma (general trauma 81%, sexual abuse 38%, physical abuse 43%, neglect or witness to violence 38%); has been committed to a psychiatric hospital at least once (54%), most likely for a suicide attempt, abuses drugs or alcohol (77%); has exhibited violent behavior, most likely in a school setting, and has a history of running away.”[55]  Given that a girl’s typical stay is likely to be a month or longer, “even if it is her first time in detention,” the poor conditions of the detention centers--including the high incidence of sexual and physical assaults--can be even more acutely damaging than they are to their male counterparts.

            At the end of the analysis of juvenile criminalization, both in-school and out, the common factor is that the intervention is largely punitive, not rehabilitative. The original vision of the juvenile justice system, created by Progressive reformers in the 1890’s, was very different.  The founding premise of juvenile code was that children’s offenses ought to be viewed and treated differently than adults.  Specifically, it was thought that children’s misconduct ought to be (and could be) reformed, not simply punished.  Policies like ZTP are the antithesis of these ideals.  Such draconian and arbitrary have nothing at all to do with rectifying the behavior of an individual and cannot instill respect for just rules, which they do not represent.  Similarly, although juvenile detention centers were originally intended only as a means to “ensure that alleged delinquents appear in court and to minimize the risk of serious reoffending while current charges are being adjudicated,”  they are now used as a sanction in and of themselves.[56] Given that the offending population now being punished in juvenile detention is majority non-violent offenders, the parallels with adult jail--both in aim and conditions--are absolutely striking.[57]   Most disturbingly of all, 47 states have “eroded confidentiality protections” of their juvenile offenders.[58]   Their aim, apparently, is not only to punish these children and adolescents, but to do so for life. 

            Youth who fall victim to adult sentencing laws and spend time in adult prison face even more devastating punishment.  Building Blocks For Youth’s ground-breaking study, And Justice For Some, paints the bleak picture all too clearly: “children in adult institutions are five times as likely to be sexually assaulted, twice as likely to be beaten by staff, 50 percent more likely to be attacked with a weapon, and eight times as likely to commit suicide as children confined in juvenile facilities.”[59]   The rate of recidivism of youths waived to criminal court was also higher --30% by one Florida study, 50% by another--and the youths were more likely to “reoffended more quickly, commit more serious new offenses, and be rearrested” than their “matched counterparts” adjudicated in juvenile court.  In adult prisons, in fact, criminal behavior and gang organization is at often the only way to survive.[60]  Almost every channel of reform a child in this situation might have has been utterly extinguished.

            At every level of government, from Congressional committees to to California’s “bipartisan blue ribbon Task Force on Juvenile Crime,” politicians admit that the evidence shows that “punishment-centered crime studies” like Proposition 21 and ZTP do not work to reform juvenile offenders, only to lock them up.[61]   It is impossible to instill respect for ZTP and QOL,  for their failure to differentiate between large and small, criminal and non-criminal actions shows them to be capricious, arbitrary, and at worst, mean-spirited.  In ColorLines, even Barry McCaffrey, the White House drug czar, admits that “we cannot arrest our way out of the problem of chronic drug abuse and drug-driven crime.”[62]   The increase in stringent enforcement youth laws like curfew, studies show, are but a political “panacea.”[63]  That the political march for increased “law and order” measures continues, then, demands further explanation.

              At the center of the punitive “law and order” movement is distrust towards America’s youth in general, and particularly youth of color.  Despite declines in youth crime in the past twenty-five years, the public--especially the white, middle class public--has a “great fear of its young people.”[64]   Although violent crime for you was at a twenty-five year low in 1998, 62% of survey respondents to the National Crime Victimization Survey responded that they felt it was increasing, and nearly 71% feared violence in their schools.[65]   Just as every generation in recent memory have done, the Baby Boomers are becoming more authoritarian parents as they age, and a general criminalization of youth culture, especially that which transpires in public areas, like skateboarding and listening to boomboxes, has resulted.[66]   However, the casting of black youth as potential miscreants is often far more extreme.  Words like “amoral” and “cold-blooded”--reserved only for the ranks of Dylan Klebold among white children--are bandied about in the popular discussion of the problems of “urban youth.”

            The path from innocent child to “[black] feral superpredator” is rife with media distortions, political dishonesty, and racism.[67]  A Building Blocks for Youth study, Off Balance: Youth, Race, and Crime in the News,  echoes what many media activists have known for years: the public media over-depict crime (and youth crime) out of proportion to its actual occurrence, over-present the proportion of crime which is violent, and over-present the proportion committed by people of color while under-presenting them as victims of violence.[68]   The trend is worsening; in 1990 to 1998, although homicides were down 33%, their coverage increased 473% on network news, ostensibly as an effort to reclaim cable ratings.[69]   One out of every two stories about youth involve violence, and stories where “young Black males” are the suspects receive nearly 30% more bandwidth than any other kind.[70]   The result of this profound misinformation campaign in which plays into the hands of race-baiting politicians, who shape the criminal justice debate around defensiveness, fear, and white racism.  In the years since the foundations of white supremacy were shaken by the civil rights movement, “law and order” has been the single most efficacious card a politician could play.

            Of course, if politicians were truly concerned with the state of America’s children, as they claim to be, then many things about the juvenile justice system would be different, for there is ample research and literature to lay the groundwork for an entirely different visions of juvenile justice.  The American Bar Association’s Report on Zero-Tolerance Policies contends that  sweeping, one-size-fits-all discipline ought to be replaced by a more individualized assessment of situations which would allow “effective interventions for addressing risk factors.”[71]   Similarly, Christian Parenti calls for “a Marshall Plan for education” to fix the climate of poverty from which violence and inferior education spring in the first place.[72]  

            Proponents of reform of school safety and QOL policing laws often employ a cost reduction argument, and with good reason. As the American Bar Association notes in its ZTP report, “when the cost appraisal of the impact of zero tolerance includes impacts on an entire community, the financial benefits of suspension and expulsion may completely disappear.”[73]  The report urges that high costs of incarceration, whose likelihood increases with academic failure, must be weighed against the relatively lower costs of alternative education.[74]  In order to watch these kids on the street, the maintenance of huge criminal databases, increased police ranks, a multitude of new court costs, and many new inmates in incarceration mean that California’s Proposition 21 is projected to cost a “mind-boggling” $5,000,000,000 in the next ten years.[75]  Certainly community enrichment programs (as  as just plain old housing subsidies, etc) are a far costlier option in dollars, much less in lives.

            Perhaps the most detailed and coherent program of reform which has been presented surrounding the issue of the criminalization of youth of color is detention center reform.  The collaborative efforts of Maryland’s Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) and the Anne E. Casey Foundation have yielded a practical, step-by-step program of reform based on meta-analyses of many studies as well as work of their own.  Their reforms include: clarifying statutory language and more stringent screening of youths to reduce the number who are entering detention facilities (and expedite the stay of those who are), the creation of  “detention alternatives...the least restrictive possible” for existing detainees (without widening the net of those who are taken out of their homes any further)[76], and official inquests and reforms of discriminatory policing of juvenile crime, among many others.[77]   The Juvenile Justice Information Center also enumerates “elements of a model system:” community-based programming, “coordinated continuum of care, unconditional program commitment to clients, normalization, individual programming (including aftercare and follow up), and flexible funding.[78]   An important political draw, the Casey foundation notes, is that “clearly, alternative programs are far less costly than secure beds...”[79]

            Although in some cities around the country, JDAI funding and political support have brought about important changes, in cities like New York, there has been no progress.  In Part 8 of the Casey Foundation Series, Ideas and Ideals to Reduce Disproportionate Detention of Minority Youth,  there is a section entitled “New York:  Where There’s No Will, There’s No Way.[80] Although introductory groundwork for reform was laid in the early 1990’s, when the new Giuliani administration took over City Hall in 1994, their “get tough on crime” agenda “did not align well with JDAI’s objective to reduce inappropriate or unnecessary use of secure detention.”  In the months that followed,

            [JDAI was reduced] to an advisory body to suggest policy and practice changes. Though                        work on various projects continued for the next few years, the political will for detention               reform had largely disappeared. Eventually, the Foundation ceased funding New York                    City, acknowledging that JDAI and the City’s policy directions were no longer the                               same.[81]

 

Due to Giuliani’s new policies,  “New York’s detention population soared, despite significant decreases in serious juvenile arrests” even before the collaboration had disintegrated completely. [82]

            Thus, although the need, path, and even economic desirability for juvenile justice reform have been clearly established, a debate which draws each of these factors together in the public eye is unlikely in the near future.  Our often simplistic, “fear mongering” media does not expose the link between poverty and crime, rather than race and crime, for class analysis is virtually a black listed topic in American discourse.[83]  Similarly,  an honest, "holistic" cost appraisal of the true costs and benefits of the existing system versus reform--including everything from the cost of jail to recidivism rates to the “emotional costs” which punishment exacts and the impact of negative socialization--would be a massive project even if the media felt a strong impulse to publish it.[84]   As Eleanor Hoytt of the Anne E. Casey foundation grimly notes, however, “in an environment that no longer embraced detention reform in general, there[is] even less official interest in addressing racial disparities in juvenile justice.”[85]

            Even if these reforms are effected, there are some sectors of society which have a vested interest in preserving the status quo fundamentally the same condition.  Few voices that call for the economic restructuring which would be necessary to address the root causes of crime and poverty have been able to emerge at the forefront of the debate.[86]   The business class, who often give significant financial backing to youth crime initiatives, do not want any shuffling of the social order.  Rather, they want police to ensure that the new, post-industrial “themepark city”--replete with it’s disparities of Dickensian proportions--will be safe and orderly for business.[87]   In this view, moderate racism on the part of the white public is actually desirable, for it stems the tide of too radical reforms.

            In the face of the public policy maelstrom which surrounds them, youth of color are confronted with the naturalization of their of their “criminal” status daily.   The rhetoric of the public awareness/propaganda campaigns which surround ZTP and QOL policies, where it is not deceitful outright, is manipulative.  For example, youths arrested for fare-jumping could are inherently alienated by the claim that Transit Police “taking back the subway--for you.”[88]   A girl who has been run through the system for a minor offense of just being a kid has two choices: believe that the police officer is indeed “professional and heroic” and that she herself is somehow an inherent offender, or reject the law codes which criminalize her at all.  The sheer bulk of evidence around her, from QOL policies, sweeps, databases, and police harassment seem to suggest not only that society doesn’t have any faith in her, but that it might actually prefer that she were in prison.   How does one live when one’s very presence seems to cause suspicion and elicit glares--and worse--from adult authority?

            However, as James Balwdin writes, black youth must avoid believing what racist whites have to say about them, for only when they do so are they defeated.[89]   Where society  dehumanizes them, they must empower themselves and embrace their own humanity.  One can see this at a multitude of different levels: from the large and defiant California grassroots movements opposing new criminalization measures, to creation of an identity in public space through art and culture, to the simple, stubborn assertions of self and worth which occur  in class rooms every day.  So long as youth of culture reject the very terms of any argument which questions their humanity, they will be able to better resist the “institutional indignities” which continue to affront them.[90]  Until a society which does not depend on the criminalization of whole sectors of its society can be developed, this will be a continued struggle.


[1] Tarell, a sixteen year-old student. quoted in Ince, Adamma. “Preppin’ for Prison.”  Village Voice. June 19, 2001.

[2] Final Report, Bi-Partisan Working Group on Youth Violence. 106th Congress, February 2000. Excerpted in “Report on Zero Tolerance Policy,” American Bar Association, February 2001.

[3] “Report on Zero Tolerance Policy,”  2.  Also, “Students Report School Crime at Same Level as 1970’s, But Use of Suspension Doubles.” Press release from the Justice Policy Institute, 29 August 2001.  Available online: http://cjcj.org/sss/

[4] Ince 19.

[5] Ince 20.

[6] Ince 22. I tried to find a breakdown of these schools by race, but was unable to do so.  From anecdotal evidence, however, I can say that from my student teaching experience at John F. Kennedy high school in the Bronx, its population of students is nearly 95% students of color (if not more), and the majority of these students Black and Latino.

[7] Ince 19.

[8] Justice Policy Institute, 1.

[9] Ince 21.

[10] Ince 20, 21.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ince 21.

[13] Ince 22.

[14] Parenti, Christian. Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis. New York: Verso Press, 1999, p. 79.

[15] Ince 20.

[16] Ince 23.

[17] American Bar Association, 3.

[18] Ince 21.  According to police reports, charges of “trespassing” were up 325% and loitering 230%.

[19] Ibid.

[20] One site for facts and position papers can be found at the NYSCP’s website, http://www.notbored.org/scp-position.html.

[21] Macallair and Males, 1.

[22] Macallair and Males, 3.

[23] Macallar and Males, 6.

[24] “‘Get Tough’ Juvenile Control Measures--Are They Needed?”  Issue paper for the Juvenile Justice Information Center.  Available online: http://www.jjic.org/myths_c.html.

[25] Parenti 73.

[26] Parenti 84, 89.  With such new power and just the increase in sheer incidence of community-police confrontation, this new era of “proactive policing” was accompanied in cities like New York and Boston “by an almost surreal backdrop of mass police criminality and violence” (ibid).

[27] Parenti 89.

[28] Pintado-Vertner,  Ryan and Chang, Jeff.  “The War on Youth.”  Colorlines Magazine. Vol 2: 4 (Winter 1999-2000), 36.

[29] Pintado-Vertner, Chang 34.

[30] “Criminalized: Youth and Race in the United States.”   Issue paper released by Women's Institute for Leadership Development for Human Rights (WILD).  Available online as a PDF file: http://www.wildforhumanrights.org/dl/criminalized.pdf.  Also Pintado-Vertner, Chang 35.

[31] Pintado-Vertner, Chang 33. Also WILD, 3.

[32] Pintado-Vertner, Chang 35.  Also, Pintado-Verner, Ryan.  “How is Juvenile Justice Served?”  San Francisco Chronicle, 2/27/02.  This article notes that the size of CalGang, which began in 1987 as GREAT (Gang Reporting, Evaluation, and Tracking system to record “street terrorism”) now exceeds the number of students enrolled in the University of California system. 

[33] Pintado Vertner, Chang 35.

[34] Ibid.

[35] Ibid.

[36] San Francisco Chronicle, 3.

[37] Hoytt, Eleanor Hinton and Smith, Brenda V. “Reducing Racial Disparities in Juvenile Detention.”  Part Eight of the Pathways to Detention Reform Series.  Baltimore: Anna E. Casey Foundation, 2002.

[38]  The data JDAI itself uses for this area of research is drawn from another study conducted by Building Blocks for Youth called And Justice for Some.

[39] Hoytt and Smith, 19.

[40] Hoytt and Smith, 23.

[41] Hoytt and Smith, 24.

[42] Ibid.

[43] Qtd in Hoytt and Smith, 16.

[44]Barnett, Martha and Simmons, Evett, issuers.  “Justice By Gender: The Lack of Appropriate Prevention, Diversion, and Treatment Alternatives for Girls in the Justice System”  Washington: American Bar Association and National Bar Association, May 2001.  Available online in pdf form at the American Bar Association’s website: http://www.abanet.org/crimjust/juvjus/justicebygender.pdf.  Statistic from Introduction.

[45] Hoytt and Smith, 10.

[46]Barnett and Simmons, 23.

[47] Barnett and Simmons, 7.

[48] Barnett and Simmons, 14.  I have uncovered no other conjectures as to why this might be true. Significantly,  the female population of detention centers appears to be more mentally disturbed than the male population, that perhaps girls for girls to exhibit anti-social behavior, atypical for their gender in American society, more profound emotional issues must be at hand.

[49] Burrel, Susan. “Improving Conditions of Confinement in Secure Juvenile Detention Centers.”  Part Six of the Pathways to Detention Reform Series.  Baltimore: Anna E. Casey Foundation, 2002.

[50] Orlando, Frank. “Controlling the Front Gates: Effective Admissions Policies and Practices.” Part Three of the Pathways to Detention Reform Series.  Baltimore: Anna E. Casey Foundation, 2002.

[51] Orlando, 12.

[52]qtd  in Orlando, 14.

[53] Orlando, 14.

[54] Again, probably because “normal” misbehavior of boys can (and does) land them in juvy, while anti-social behavior in girls--because it represents a significant deviation from “normal” female behavior in American society--might only stems from more profound disturbances.

[55] Ambrose, Anne Marie and Simpkins, Sandra . “Girls in Juvenile Detention.”  Issue paper for Improving Conditions for Girls in the Justice System: The Female Detention Project.  Washington: Juvenile Justice Center of American Bar Association, 2000.

[56] Orlando 10. 

[57] In fact, nearly two-thirds of the youth currently languishing in juvenile detention centers pose no risk of flight or violence at all.  Rather, they are being held for non-violent crimes and status violations. Steinhart, David. “Planning for Juvenile Detention Reforms: A Structured Approach.”   Part One of the Pathways to Detention Reform Series.  Baltimore: Anna E. Casey Foundation, 2002.

[58]  “Off Balance: Youth, Race, and Crime in the News.”  Executive summary of report for Building Blocks for Youth Foundation.  Entire study available online: http://www.buildingblocksforyouth.org/media/.

[59]  “Children in Adult Jails: Fact Sheet.”  Building Blocks For Youth Foundation.  Factsheet (and sources) available online: http://www.buildingblocksforyouth.org/issues/adultjails/factsheet.html.

[60] San Francisco Chronicle, 3.

[61] “Report on Zero Tolerance Policy,”  1.

[62] Pintado-Vertner and Chang 34.

[63] Macallar and Males 14.

[64]“Off Balance:” 2.

[65] Ibid.

[66] Romero, James D. “Control Issues: The Criminalization of Youth Culture.”  The New York Times.  1 January, 1998.  Home edition.

[67] Ayers, Williams.  “The Criminalization of Youth.”  Rethinking Schools. Vol 12:2 (Winter 1997/1998).  Available archived online: http://www.rethinkingschools.org/Archives/12_02/kids.htm.

[68] “Off Balance” 6.

[69] Ibid.

[70] “Off Balance” 14.

[71] Ibid

[72] Parenti 77.

[73] “Report on Zero Tolerance Policy,” 3.

[74] ibid.

[75] San Francisco Chronicle, 1.

[76] De Muro, Paul.  “Consider the Alternatives: Planning and Implementing Detention Alternatives.” Part         Four of the Pathways to Detention Reform Series.  Baltimore: Anna E. Casey Foundation, 2002., pp. 36-40.  Examples of the alternatives include “home or community detention (non-residential, non-facility-based supervi-sion),  day or evening reporting centers (non-residential, facility-based supervi-sion), shelter or foster care (non-secure residential placement).”

[77] Hoytt and Smith, 55-57.  Steinhart, 12.

[78] “What Works.”  Juvenile Justice Evaluation Center Online.  Available: http://www.jrsa.org/jjec/.

[79] DeMuro 36.

[80] Hoytt and Smith, 52-3.

[81] Ibid.

[82] Ibid.

[83] Parenti, 82.  For an excellent (and brief) discussion of how the media distorts the debate, refer to “Wild in Deceit: Why  ‘Teen Violence’ is Really Poverty Violence.”  Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).  March/April 1996.

[84] “Report on Zero Tolerance,” 3.

[85] Hoytt and Smith 54.

[86] Of the readings I have discussed in this paper, ColorLines is one of these. In their article “The War on Youth,” the author urges that, in order to offer real alternatives to criminal activity in “jobless ghettos,” living-wage jobs and community organizations must be created.

[87] Parenti 69.  In his vitriolic style, he writes, “to fuunction smoothly, the [unequal] metropolis requires elaborate social control...and outright oppression.”

[88] Parenti72.

[89] Paraphrased from his essay “My Dungeon Shook.”

[90] Burrel 14.