I have been following the case of a police officer who shot an eight-grader in Texas last week.

A Northside Independent School District police officer Friday shot and killed a teen he’d been pursuing after the boy made a move toward him, district officials said.

The youth, an eighth-grader who recently had been expelled from Pease Middle School, was pronounced dead at the scene in a backyard in the 200 block of Roswell Canyon on the far West Side.

A school district spokesman said it might be the first time a district police officer has killed a suspect.

There is a lot in just this opening paragraph.   We know that this young person was an 8th grader.  We know that he had already been expelled from school.  We learn that there is such a thing as an armed police officer whose job it is to be assigned to a school district.

In Friday’s incident, the school police officer happened upon two boys fighting near the Northside Alternative High School off Hunt and Potranco roads, NISD spokesman Pascual Gonzalez said.

“One youth ran and the officer pursued him,” Gonzalez said. The officer lost him after a several-block chase in the Trails of Santa Fe subdivision, across Hunt Road from the high school, he said.

Gonzalez said a homeowner flagged down the officer and said someone was hiding in his backyard shed.

Gonzalez said that as the officer approached the shed, the boy “pushed open the shed doors and somehow lunged at the officer,” which triggered a brief scuffle that ended when the officer fired once.

It wasn’t clear when the officer pulled his weapon, he said.

The 14 year old was chased by a police officer because of a fight with another young person?  Then he ends up dead?  The article describing the incident ends with these words…

Gonzalez said the officer, whom he described as a veteran of the department, “is very traumatized by this. Our officers work in schools to take care of kids.”

The officer was put on administrative leave.

The community launched a protest against school police officers carrying guns.

About 15 protesters gathered outside a Northside Independent School District board meeting Tuesday, calling for district police officers to give up their guns in the wake of a teen’s shooting death last week.The Southwest Workers’ Union organized the protest, which included San Antonio Independent School District students, after Derek Lopez, 14, was shot Friday by a Northside officer.

Both Northside and SAISD officers carry guns, and Edison High School senior Monica Ramos said she thought district police officers could use Tasers or pepper spray as replacements.

But Northside spokesman Pascual Gonzalez said Northside has no plans to ban officers from carrying guns because it would hinder them from carrying out their duties as Texas peace officers.

Frank Bates, an NISD parent who showed up to support keeping officers armed with guns, said, “It’s a shame what happened, but you can’t take a tool away from the officers.”

I have always found it ironic that police officers are often called “peace” officers.  In this case, this term is particularly inappropriate.

In a column about the incident, Veronica Paniagua writes:

The litany of blame — and the list of questions — grow from there.

Derek Lopez shouldn’t have run from Alvarado. (Already expelled from Northside schools, was the eighth-grader heading for more trouble?)

Alvarado, too, should have taken appropriate precaution before peering into a storage shed where the teen was hiding. (Why didn’t he wait for backup?)

Lopez, whatever his faults or fears, should have responded in a more docile way to the officer’s calls of “police, police.” (Why didn’t he simply call out that he was unarmed and that he was coming out with his hands up?)

Alvarado shouldn’t have drawn his gun. (He told investigating officers that he witnessed Lopez delivering a backhand slap to another boy. For this, was the use of deadly force necessary?)

Lopez shouldn’t be dead. (How did we get here?)

I will tell you how we got here.

We got here by expelling 8th graders from schools and pushing them into the prison and sometimes the dead before you are 16 years old pipeline.

We got here by treating fights between young people as criminal assaults rather than as opportunities to utilize restorative practices to solve conflicts.

We got here by flooding schools with so called “peace officers” carrying guns.

We got here by acting as though our schools have become “war zones” when school shootings are actually rare and school “violence” is actually consistently on the decline.

We got here by demonizing young people as so-called potential super-predators and as gangsters in training.

We got here by committing systemic violence against young people as adults — through the fact that we keep youth poor, unemployed, and subject them to abuse and neglect.

Adults are to blame for this situation. We should take responsibility for rectifying it. We can begin by removing armed police officers from our nation’s schools.

I just read a report on Monday that was devastating in assessing the impact of a criminal record on future employment and economic self-determination.

The new report, “Ex-offenders and the Labor Market,” found that in 2008 there were between 5.4 million and 6.1 million ex-prisoners and between 12.3 million and 13.9 million ex-felons in the United States. Over 90 percent were men.

In 2008, about one in 33 working-age adults was an ex-prisoner, and about one in 15 working-age adults was an ex-felon. Among working-age men in that same year, about one in 17 was an ex-prisoner and one in eight was an ex-felon.

Because ex-offenders face substantial barriers to employment, the authors estimate that the large ex-offender population in 2008 lowered employment that year by the equivalent of 1.5 million to 1.7 million workers.

Think about what this means.  How is this country ever going to get to “full employment?”  It is hard not to say that prisons are serving their purpose in a capitalist system by removing large numbers of able-bodied people from the labor force.  Imagine what the unemployment rate would be in this country if current prisoners were added to the mix.  This would be cause for revolution.  The powers that be don’t want that.

For more information about the study, click here.

I have putting this off but a response is overdue…

You opened your e-mail to me with this:

“As a white male, I would enjoy your blog much more if you weren’t so obsessed with black people.”

I immediately sent up a prayer to the Lord for patience.

It was only a matter of time before I received this type of e-mail. I am frankly surprised that it took this long.

I blog about prisons and injustice.

How can I write about these two things without addressing race and racism? Without talking about black and brown people?

The answer is simple… I cannot. It would be impossible.

By entering the public domain, I invited you in. So now I have to be an accommodating hostess.

You wrote: “You can make your point about prisons being unjust without constantly making it about black people.”

Oh Lord, give me strength.

Actually no. Black people have been the canaries in the coal mine for the current epidemic of mass or hyper or mega incarceration. Black people have historically been and currently are disproportionately targeted by the long arm of American INjustice.

I am a only tiny part of documenting this reality.

I’ve thought about what to say to you for a few days now.

I decided to [as one of my favorite poets Nikki Finney has written] “step into the shoes” of your words.

So I would like to declare unequivocally today that YES I am in fact obsessed with black people.

I am obsessed with black people because black bodies are being incarcerated, tortured, and killed all day every day. This is a matter of some urgency for me as I myself am black and have black family members and black friends and black non-friends. So for me this is a matter of survival.

It is open season on Black people, always has been.

But my obsession with black people is more expansive than the topics that I address on this particular blog.

I am obsessed with black music (Salif, the Roots, Talib, Lucky, Ella, Louis, Bob, Michael, Sarah… the list is endless).

I am obsessed with Patricia Smith, Pat Parker, Sonia Sanchez, James Baldwin, Claude Brown, Langston Hughes, Alice Walker.

I am obsessed with Ella Baker, Malcolm, Paul Robeson, Fannie Lou, Angela Davis, Harriet Tubman…

Come to think of it. My obsession with blackness and black people knows no limit.

But my obsession with black people does not crowd out my compassion for others. Particularly those of all races, ethnicities, genders, religions who are striving for liberation and justice…

Take it away James…

The following article caught my eye and I have to say that I had no idea that this was even possible.

Here’s the article in its entirety:

A mother and father can’t access most information the District’s juvenile justice agency has on their children, the city’s highest court has ruled.

The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed by two parents who cited open-records laws in asking that the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services turn over all documents pertaining to the parents and their five children. Two of their children had been committed to DYRS in 2005 and were released in May 2007, “apparently without any prior notice” to the parents, the D.C. Court of Appeals ruling said.

When the parents filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the documents, DYRS and then the mayor’s office turned the parents down. The Court of Appeals also ruled the parents could not have access to the documents. Not only does FOIA give parents “no greater rights than anyone else,” but District law also does not include “parents in the list of persons for whom the confidentiality of these records is excepted.”

The parents have no legal right to the bulk of the information they wanted, said at-large Councilman Phil Mendelson. He recently pushed legislation through the council that makes it easier for government agencies to share information about children, but the law does not include new rights for parents.

“The law is very specific as to what can be released and to whom,” Mendelson said.

The city does give parents limited access to court records, but goes no further. One reason for that, Mendelson noted, is that DYRS gains custody — and parents lose it — when a child enters the system.

But the public needs access to the information inside the sealed records to hold government agencies accountable, said Matt Fraidin, a law professor at the University of the District of Columbia who focuses on child welfare issues.

Last year, The Washington Examiner reported that Shelby Lewis, a pimp who operated in Maryland and D.C., gained custody of a 12-year-old girl and then sold her into prostitution. The records on how the girl ended up in Lewis’ custody are sealed. Lewis was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Nov. 1.

Parents — and the public — “ought to be able to know why government agencies make decisions that dramatically and profoundly affect their lives and their children’s lives,” Fraidin said.

Does this make sense to anyone?

I received the following e-mail from the tireless and dedicated Kathy Bankhead who spent years as the chief prosecutor in juvenile court in Cook County. Kathy is one of those prosecutors who just “gets it.” Anyway this is supremely disturbing news… Spread the word far and wide across the state.

A warning to the wise:
Illinois’ crime rate is at or lower than the crime rate in the 80s according to all objective data. The prison population is down in Illinois as well. You may recall that the State wanted to close a wing of Stateville prison or Pontiac prison in order to save money because the prison space was not needed. You may also remember that Thomson prison was never able to fully open because the anticipated incarceration of “Chicagoans” didn’t happen.

Neither Pontiac nor a wing of Stateville were closed because of community and union concerns and protests about lost jobs and decreased economic opportunities. The feds are buying the Thomson facility which employed 77 people for 136 inmates. No one seems very concerned about that government waste of our tax dollars.

This year a new law named for a police officer who was killed by a gang member on probation for a handgun offense was passed by the legislature and signed by the governor. No, it wasn’t a gun control law, like the one the State’s Attorney proposed last year which would have required that lost or stolen guns be reported within 24 hours. It wasn’t a law passed to in order to increase the odds of tracking down and prosecuting gun runners/traffickers. The law had nothing to do with reducing the supply of guns making their way onto the streets and making their way into the hands of the stupid, the scary or the criminal. It wasn’t a law that increased the penalty for being a felon with a gun. It is illegal for felons to possess a gun or ammunition in Illinois.

Gun laws in Illinois: Unless specifically exempted by statute, any Illinois resident who acquires or possesses firearms or firearm ammunition within the state must have in their possession a currently valid Firearm Owner’s Identification (FOID) card issued in his or her name. http://www.isp.state.il.us/docs/ptfire.pdf

Most Illinois laws make it a FELONY to illegally possess a gun in Illinois. (This is not a complete rundown of the law, nor is it intended as legal advice, though it is good advice)

The new law states that any gang member illegally in possession of a gun is guilty of a Class 2 felony which is usually punishable by probation or 3 to 7 years incarceration, must be sentenced to 3 to 10 years in the penitentiary. Probation is not an option. Note: “A [20 year old] West Chicago street gang member today became the first person in DuPage County to be convicted and sentenced under a new state law that makes it illegal for a gang member to have a gun in his possession…[He was] sentenced him to five years in prison…”.

In January 2011 probation will not be available to any person guilty of illegally possessing a gun without a FOID card. It will mean 1 to 3 year prison sentence.

The effect will be increased incarceration of Illinoisans, particularly those from Cook County. This will continue the vicious downward spiral, especially for young men with limited resources/opportunities, of arrest, prosecution, felony conviction, incarceration, parole, further reduced resources/opportunity, recidivism…that increases danger and decreases public safety for the communities from which they come and to which they return, thereby making those communities even less desirable – decreasing resources and opportunities for other young people in the community who then enter the criminal underground economy. Eventually, they will be begin the cycle of arrest, prosecution, felony conviction, incarceration, parole, further reduced resources/opportunity, recidivism…

The purpose of these laws is to decrease gun violence by deterring illegal possession of guns. Interestingly, there has been no educational/informational ads or announcements about these laws and the enhanced penalties. An aggressive public service education campaign aimed at those most likely to be arrested for violating these laws would surely do more to reduce illegal gun possession and the inevitable violence that follows and consequently increase public safety and opportunity for positive individual and community outcomes than imprisonment.

The effect of the new laws will be an increase in incarcerations. The communities whose economies depend on prison populations will be the only ones who benefit in the long run as our prison population and taxes required to maintain them will surely rise.

There has been a lot of talk lately by government officials and community members about “reentry”; I feel a cottage industry about to begin. But that’s a discussion for another time.

It is critical that this information be shared, so that we are able decrease violence, increase opportunity and do not increase the prison population.

What can you do? Please tell everyone, especially young people about the new laws. They are too complex for a full airing in this note, so tell them this:

1. Stay away from guns and ammunition and tell your friends to stay away too, until you are old enough to legally possess them.

2. Having a gun on you, in your house, in your car or the car you are riding in will lead you straight to prison, even if you’ve never been in trouble before.

3. Being in a gang or hanging around with gang members (even your friends) with guns nearby will lead to a long prison sentence even if you have never been in trouble before.

4. If you have a bright future or dream of one, illegal gun possession is the best way to turn your dream into a nightmare. Or, if you have limited resource and opportunities and think it’s tough now, if you think you have few options for success now, get a felony conviction, go to prison and see how much worse it gets for you and your family.

The Illinois State Police used to have a pamphlet on guns laws, but it is outdated. The laws change so fast it is hard to keep up. If anyone has a specific question about gun laws, legal ownership, transportation etc I may be reached at work (773) 783-5100 or by email [email protected].

Please make sure as many young people as you know learn about this and pass it on to young people they know: Facebook, Twitter, email, text message, phone call, announcement in the church bulletin. Get the word out!

Everyone who knows me knows that I abhor violence. I have been an anti-violence organizer since I was a teenager. I cut my teeth organizing against racial violence, I then found myself doing anti gender-based violence organizing which led me to anti-prison work. Anyway, I read an op-ed this weekend in the Jerusalem Post by someone advocating that perpetrators of family violence be assessed a “violence tax” in addition to being incarcerated.

From the Op-Ed:

THE TIME has come to change our approach to perpetrators of violence in the family, so that their punishment will also compensate and rehabilitate their victims. Family batterers need to recognize that there is a painful financial price for their abuse. Following a conviction for serious crimes, such as child abuse, molestation, rape or murder, offenders should be required to pay a “violence tax.” It should be a painful deterrent that will transfer all the assailants’ assets and earnings to the victims of his violent crimes and to the state to pay for his incarceration. Upon his release from prison, the tax will be gradually reduced, but the criminal should still be required to pay for his victims’ treatments and rehabilitation and compensate them for their suffering.

Treatment for violent offenders has stagnated for many years in the absence of effective deterrents and appropriate care for victims, who are often left helpless.

It’s time to shake up the judicial system and to punish violent offenders financially as well as by imprisonment.

Let me get this straight… Because we have failed as a society to deter family violence through incarceration, we should now add a financial “punishment” to the mix. Rather than interrogating the reasons for why criminalizing perpetrators of family violence has failed to end this problem, the solution proposed is to increase the level of “penalties” for the crimes. This makes absolutely no logical sense to me.

More from the Op-Ed:

The goal is to give meaning to the hollow mantra “the prisoner paid his debt to society.”

Many will roll their eyes and wonder if justice can be bought. The answer is twofold: First, the financial penalty will be added to a prison sentence and will not replace incarceration. The violence tax will provide an additional source of funding for rehabilitation and repayment to society that the offender will pay for his actions.

Second, the money paid to the victims will not restore their physical or mental health, but can provide them substantial relief. A situation of restorative justice where the offender pays for his victims’ treatment is not only poetic justice, but might even awaken in the offender a feeling of remorse for his crimes or ownership over the processes of changing his ways. He participates, indirectly, in the repair of the lives he himself destroyed or scarred.

Painful restorative taxation of violent offenders could cause those considering harming others to reconsider their actions. Make no mistake. This is no fine imposed for traffic offenses, but confiscation of all the assets and income the offender has accumulated over his lifetime – to be reserved for only the most severe crimes. This could cause some potential murders and rapists to think before committing their crimes. Even if some criminals won’t be deterred, it will contribute to the alleviation of the suffering of the lives scarred by violence in the family and maybe prevent the next murder.

In the U.S., since our prisons are filled with poor people already presumably there would be very little to “seize” in terms of assets. While the U.S. is seeing a re-emergence of debtor's prisons, I am hoping that this concept of a “violence tax” does not catch on stateside.

The only man who makes me reconsider my views about marriage…

When we last left off on the topic of black women and capital punishment, I summarized the history of executing black female slaves. During the period of Reconstruction (1865-1877) many fewer black women were officially put to death by the state. According to David V. Parker, “[e]xecution inventories confirm that mostly southern jurisdictions hanged five Black females for murder between 1866 and 1877 (p.73).”

While the number of black women executed decreased dramatically during Reconstruction (for many reasons), it was during this time that two of the youngest Black females were put to death in the U.S.

“Kentucky officials hanged 12-year old Eliza in February 1868 for killing Walter Graves, a 2 year-old White child under her care as a babysitter. Eliza confessed to the killing after the family’s White neighbors threatened her with lynching. Officials arrested and tried Eliza for Walter’s murder. Though the trial judge rendered her confession involuntary and inadmissible given the lynching intimidation, a jury nevertheless convicted Eliza for the White boy’s death.

In another case, Maryland hanged 16-year old Mary Wallis in a country jail yard for poisoning and killing the Read family’s infant. Mary reportedly poisoned the child’s milk. Mary was mentally challenged, and because of her age and mental deficiency the jury recommended leniency for Mary. But as many White trial judges did at the time, this judge overruled the jury’s suggestions and sentenced Mary to death (p.74).”

During Jim Crow (1890-1965), it was open season for the killing of black people both through legal and extralegal means. During that period it is documented that there were more than 8,100 legal and extralegal executions of black people in the U.S. According to Parker, “[t]he White justice system killed 4,707 Black prisoners and White lynch mobs killed another 3,445 Blacks (p.75).” Black women were 3% of the 2,364 Black lynching victims identified in 10 southern states between 1882 and 1930.

In the Jim Crow era, the black women who were executed were usually put to death because they had murdered their White employers. An illustrative example of black female execution during Jim Crow can be found in the case of Corrine Sykes.

“The 1940s saw poor young Black girls from North Philadelphia often standing on street corners in prominent neighborhoods waiting for affluent housewives to hire them as housemaids (Gregory, 2004). In one such case, Freda Wodlinger, an older housewife from a prominent White family in West Oak Lane, hired young Corrine Sykes. Corrine was a shy and petite girl with low intelligence, who was illiterate and inclined to hysteria.

Three days after Corrine’s hire, police found Wodlinger dead from multiple stab wounds; there was a terrific struggle with the killer hacking Wodlinger to death with a heavy kitchen knife. Missing from the house were $50 in cash, $2000 in jewelery, and a sable fur piece. Suspicion immediately turned to Corrine, who police arrested after an extensive search. Corrine gave conflicting stories but in the end signed a written confession despite her illiteracy.

A jury convicted Corrine of first-degree murder and the trial judge sentenced her to death by electrocution. Pennsylvania executed Corrine Sykes in October 1946. Troubled by doubts that Corrine was Wodlinger’s killer, some believe Corrine’s judicial killing was a wrongful execution. For one, immediately on her arrest, Corrine implicated her boyfriend, J.C. Kelly, saying that he had threatened to kill her and her mother if she didn’t steal the valuables for him (Grosvenor, 1998). Others find it strange that when Corrine’s boyfriend learned of her arrest ‘he raced to his boarding house, burned the sable, and dumped the diamonds’ (Grosvenor, 1998). Another point is that Corrine was far too small to have inflicted the severity of the knife wounds that killed Wodlinger. There is also speculation that years after Corrine’s execution, Wodlinger’s husband made a deathbed confession that he had killed his wife.

Whatever happened, Corrine’s execution had a poignant impact on North Philadelphia’s Black community. Some 10,000 people attended Corrine’s viewing although it was open only to family members and close friends. On the day of her execution, most housemaids in the city went home early from their jobs (p.76-77).”

Filmmaker Tina Morton tackles Corrine Sykes’s story in her film Served Souls.

Cook County Juvenile Detention Center: Heading in the right direction, but still a long road ahead

On October 26, 2010, John Howard Association staff and volunteers conducted a monitoring visit of the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (CCJTDC). JHA met with CCJTDC’s top administrators and visited the school, mental health unit, and living areas.

Generally JHA’s visit revealed progress in the overhaul of CCJTDC; however, there is much work to do. The population of the facility is still inappropriately high in both John Howard Association’s and CCJTDC’s administration’s opinion. The volunteer programs at the facility also lack coordination, a problem the new deputy director will be tasked with solving; there is still a lack of a “continuum of care,” meaning links to the community for youth when released; finally, some staff remain untrained and under-qualified for the positions they hold.

Click here for the full report.

Betsy Clarke of the Juvenile Justice Initiative has released a new paper documenting the disproportionate incarceration of juvenile drug offenders on the West side of Chicago.

The following is an abstract of the paper:

“The “War on Drugs” in the US has disproportionately impacted people of color in urban settings. This paper presents one example of this disproportionate impact, documenting the reliance on incarceration for juvenile drug offenders within the west side of the city of Chicago. Statistics on youth committed to juvenile prisons across the state of Illinois demonstrate the majority of juveniles incarcerated for drug offenses come from the city of Chicago, and zip code mapping of the Chicago area youth committed to juvenile prisons reveals the majority of juvenile drug commitments come from one area in the city on the west side. The paper further examines the disproportionate impact of incarceration on youth of color in Illinois. The paper concludes that the disproportionate impact on minority youth from Chicago is contrary to evidence that treatment is more effective than incarceration for children in conflict with the law.”

Click here for a copy of the paper.

Click here to download a copy of the map that illustrates the disproportionate impact.