This blog post is solely addressed to my fellow people of color.  I would like to suggest that taking our young people on prison “field” trips is a terrible, terrible idea. 

By Colin Matthes - Just Seeds Artists' Cooperative

This post originates from a comment made by a well-intentioned woman who attended an event that I co-organized this past weekend.  We were having a conversation about solutions for preventing the arrest of so-many of our youth of color in Chicago.  As part of a longer answer suggesting that community members must be involved in the lives of youth, she offered these words: “We need to take these kids to the jails and prisons and show them what they should expect if they get locked up.”  There was of course an “Amen” chorus following this suggestion.

Brothers and sisters, scared straight approaches have been repeatedly proven NOT TO WORK. You can read about this here and here. Let’s embrace empiricism and reject fact-free conjecture.

It feels cathartic to call for a return to “tough love” as the obvious solution for what ails us. In fact, shortly after the comment that I cited above was made, several people began to lament the “good old days” where we used to be able to “knock children upside the head.” The inference (not subtle) was that when we could readily use corporal punishment (or the threat of it) our youth were not getting arrested or incarcerated. That is simply not true. Youth of color have consistently been disproportionately impacted by the juvenile justice system. I just wrote about that over the weekend. What is lacking when we have these public discussions in our communities is factual historical perspective and also a critical understanding of how systemic oppression works. The so-called “War on Drugs” has exponentially more to do with why more of our young people are being arrested, detained and incarcerated than does the fact that families are less reliant on corporal punishment as a disciplinary practice.

The other tired trope that I am constantly subjected to is that “it’s the parents, stupid.” Everyone who is reading this has been part of discussions where it all comes down to: “The parents or families are the key to everything….” I say, that’s all well and good. However it doesn’t help the young people who I work with. They DO NOT HAVE parental and/or family support. Often there is nothing to “heal” there because they are estranged from their families. What are we supposed to do with those young people? We must build “resilient” community support networks that extend beyond “parents” or “families” as they have traditionally been defined in this country. I don’t want to attend ONE MORE workshop or event where someone says: “We have to engage the parents or family.” Yes, of course, by all means let’s “engage” families when and where we can. While we are doing this though, it would be great if we would get over our judgmental and blaming attitudes in the process. It would also behoove us to find other people in the community who can step into the gaps where parents and families cannot (for whatever the reasons).

Let me return to my original premise which is that it is a bad idea to organize field trips to jails and prisons for black and brown youth. What our young people need is exposure to a reality OUTSIDE of their daily experiences. They need to be taken on trips downtown to the Art Institute, the Shedd Aquarium, the Museum of Science and Technology. I would say that the majority of the youth who I work with hardly ever leave a one mile radius from their communities. Downtown is often a foreign country for some of our young people.

About 12 years ago, I took a group of youth from the Westside to the Field Museum. When we finished, I decided that as a treat, I would take them to Starbucks and let them order whatever they wanted. When we got to Starbucks, half of the group said that they were not thirsty or hungry and decided to wait outside. The others came in with me and after taking one look at the menu began to excuse themselves to wait outside with their friends. Only two out of a dozen young people stayed with me inside the store.

When I turned to ask them why everyone was outside. One young man said: “Ms. K, maybe we can just go to 7/11. They have regular drinks there.” I felt so stupid and ashamed. Here I was, someone who prided myself on being so conscious of how privilege truly works in the world… Yet I had not recognized how intimidating reading a Starbucks menu would be for these young people who never left Lawndale and Austin. When we debriefed the field trip afterwards, I apologized to the young people for not having been more sensitive and for putting them on the spot. They were of course exceedingly kind and forgiving of my misstep (though they did tease me mercilessly for several more weeks). It was a lesson learned for me and really motivated me to support and create opportunities for our young people to be exposed to new ideas and environments different from their own. I took that for granted in my own youth as I was privileged to travel the world growing up. This is not a small thing. Exposure to different people and different cultures provided me with an invaluable education and augmented my critical thinking skills. These things have held me in good stead over the years. I learned how to learn through those experiences.

Taking Black and Brown youth to prisons does not expand their horizons. It doesn’t open up new windows of opportunity for them. If anything, it reinforces the status quo. It tells them that this is where they “could” end up when most of them are already living in prisons of poverty and neglect. It tells them that prison is not a pleasant place to be. Well they ALREADY KNOW THAT. Many have family members and friends who have been on the inside (though they may not articulate this publicly). Some of them have already been in lock up themselves. What’s new about that experience? Nothing. Do something different. Take the young people on a tour of Civil Rights monuments, take them on a trip to South America, take them to a baseball game. Anything except prison.

The brilliant Aaron MacGruder uses satire to make a similar point in an episode of the Boondocks that has Huey and his classmates visiting a prison. Below is an excerpt of that episode: