**Race Card Alert** Mississippi town sued over 'school-to-prison pipeline'

[thoughtone]

source: CNN

In 2009, the Lauderdale County Juvenile Detention Facility in Meridian was the target of a federal class-action lawsuit​

Washington (CNN) -- Federal civil rights lawyers filed suit Wednesday against Meridian, Mississippi, and other defendants for operating what the government calls a school-to-prison pipeline in which students are denied basic constitutional rights, sent to court and incarcerated for minor school infractions.

The lawsuit says children who talk back to teachers, violate dress codes and commit other minor infractions are handcuffed and sent to a youth court where they are denied their rights.

It's the first time a jurisdiction has been charged under a law designed to protect the due process rights of juveniles in such circumstances.

2010: Feds accuse Miss. county of rights violations

Also among the defendants were Lauderdale County, judges of the county's Youth Court and the State of Mississippi Division of Youth Services.

About 6,000 mostly African-American students attend grades kindergarten through 12 in a dozen schools in the Lauderdale County School District.

About 86% of the district's students are African-American, but all of those referred to the court for violations were minorities, the government suit said.

The federal action came more than two months after the Justice Department warned local and state officials that they had 60 days to cooperate or face a federal lawsuit.

Deputy Assistant Attorney General Roy Austin said Wednesday that Mississippi officials had failed to cooperate with the eight-month investigation.

"We had no choice but to file suit," Austin said, giving examples of what he alleged are unconstitutional actions taken by the school district and court:

• Children are handcuffed and arrested in school and incarcerated for days at a time without a probable cause hearing.

• Children detained wait more than 48 hours for a hearing, in violation of constitution requirements.

• Children make admissions to formal charges without being advised of their Miranda rights.

• Children are not routinely granted legal representation during the juvenile justice process.

Austin said Wednesday that Meridian is not the only location in the country with such a system. However, he said, it is the only one to date where local authorities have not been fully cooperative with federal investigators.

He pointed to Shelby County, Tennessee, as a school system where complaints had been received but where local officials had been fully cooperative with the Justice Department.

Mississippi officials did not have an immediate response to the lawsuit.

 

[thoughtone]

source: Huffington Post

Meridian, Mississippi Sued By Federal Civil Rights Lawyers For Operating 'School-To-Prison' Pipeline


Federal civil rights lawyers have filed a lawsuit against Meridian, Mississippi and other defendants in which they accuse city officials of operating a “school-to-prison pipeline” that jails students days at a time for minor infractions, without a probable cause hearing.

According to the American Bar Association Journal, the policy mainly affects black students and students with disabilities.

This "school to prison pipeline" claim says students are handcuffed and arrested in school and sent to a youth court and denied constitutional rights for minor infractions like talking back to teachers or violating dress codes. The lawsuit states they are then transported more than 80 miles to the Rankin County youth detention center, reports the Associated Press.

Many students end up on probation, without being provided proper legal representation and without determining whether there is probable cause when a school wants to press charges. For those placed on probation, a future school violation could be grounds for a suspension they must serve while incarcerated in the juvenile detention center.

According to the lawsuit, 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."

Defendants named in the suit include the city of Meridian, Lauderdale County, the two Lauderdale County Youth Court judges, the Mississippi Department of Human Services and DHS's Division of Youth Services. The Meridian Public School District is not named as a defendant, but the lawsuit says incarceration is used as a "medium for school discipline,” according to the AP.

CNN reports the lawsuit comes more than two months after the Justice Department informed local and state officials that they had 60 days to cooperate with an investigation or face legal action.

Deputy Assistant Attorney General Roy Austin noted additional unconstitutional actions on the part of the school district and court that included making children wait more than 48 hours for a hearing, and admit to formal charges without first being advised of their Miranda rights.

According to CNN, Austin said Meridian is not the only location in the country operating such a system, but is the only one to date where local authorities have not been fully cooperative with federal investigators.

In March, a survey by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights found that black students are more than three-and-a-half times as likely as white students to be suspended or expelled, and more than 70 percent of students arrested in school or handed over to law enforcement are black or Hispanic.

Many experts have attributed the school-to-prison pipeline to zero-tolerance policies — a holdover from the war on drugs — that punish all major and minor rule infractions equally, bringing police disproportionately into high-minority schools.

 

[thoughtone]

Miss. County Jails Kids For School Dress Code Violations, Tardiness, DOJ Alleges

source: Think Progress


In Meridian, Miss., it is school officials – not police – who determine who should be arrested. Schools seeking to discipline students call the police, and police policy is to arrest all children referred to the agency, according to a Department of Justice lawsuit. The result is a perverse system that funnels children as young as ten who merely misbehave in class into juvenile detention centers without basic constitutional procedures. The lawsuit, which follows unsuccessful attempts to negotiate with the county, challenges the constitutionality of punishing children “so arbitrarily and severely as to shock the conscience” and alleging that the city’s police department acts as a de facto “taxi service” in shuttling students from school to juvenile detention centers. Colorlines explains:

Once those children are in the juvenile justice system, they are denied basic constitutional rights. They are handcuffed and incarcerated for days without any hearing and subsequently warehoused without understanding their alleged probation violations.
​

To illustrate how this system works, Colorlines provides the example of Cedrico Green. When he was in eighth grade, he was put on probation for getting in a fight. After that one incident, every subsequent offense was deemed a probation violation — from wearing the wrong color socks, to talking back to a teacher – and the consequence was a return to juvenile detention. He couldn’t even remember how many times he had been back in detention, but guessed 30 times – time when he wasn’t in school, fell behind in his schoolwork and subsequently failed several classes, even though he said he liked school.

The phenomenon of disciplining kids through the criminal justice system is known as the “school-to-prison pipeline” – a process that paves the way for some kids accused of minor disciplinary violations to spend less time in school, and more time getting exposure to the criminal justice system. Colorlines explains:

A 2010 study by Russell Skiba, a professor of education policy at Indiana University, looked at four decades of data from 9,000 of the nation’s 16,000 middle schools. It found that black boys were three times as likely to be suspended as white boys and that black girls were four times as likely to be suspended as white girls. It is a serious, endemic issue. […]

Research shows that if the intent behind zero-tolerance policies is to discourage misbehavior and foster good learning environments, they don’t do the job. A sweeping 2006 study (PDF) conducted by the American Psychological Association found that zero-tolerance policies don’t actually make schools safer, and in fact can work to push students away from school. If, however, the intent is to push students of color out of school, away from their educational futures and into the criminal justice system, there is also a body of evidence that suggests that zero-tolerance policies are rather effective instruments.
​

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[thoughtone]

^^^^^

 

[Greed]

Mississippi Mayor’s Election Shows Voting Law’s Imperfect Legacy

Mississippi Mayor’s Election Shows Voting Law’s Imperfect Legacy
By Mark Niquette
Jul 10, 2013 7:00 PM CT

Percy L. Bland III said he knew he would become the first black mayor of Meridian, Mississippi (STOMS1), when he saw the crowd at Velma Young Community Center at 5 p.m. on election day. These were his voters.

In 2009, Bland had lost to white Republican Cheri Barry in a city that is 62 percent black. While he needed white support for the rematch last month, his 990-vote margin came from predominantly black wards where his campaign registered voters, called them and even offered rides to the polls.

“All that work was paying off,” Bland said.

The federal Voting Rights Act enabled Bland’s election by guaranteeing blacks proportionate power, yet it didn’t foster a coalition that bridged the races or prevent accusations of bias and intimidation. The campaign illustrates the unfinished legacy of the 1965 law, which enfranchised millions of African-Americans -- and whose core element the U.S. Supreme Court threw out three weeks after Bland won.

The judges ended a requirement that the U.S. Justice Department approve districts and election rules in Mississippi and all or part of 14 other states, most in the South. The court said that the law, prompted by the killings of a Meridian native and two others trying to register black voters in 1964, was made obsolete by its own success.

Threatening Display

In Mississippi, Republicans said Bland’s win and increased black voting prove that federal protections are unneeded. Bland disagrees. He said his supporters had difficulty casting absentee ballots -- and a stuffed animal was hung in a noose outside his office. They fear that without federal oversight, officials will raise new barriers to voting.

“When you’re trying to suppress someone’s vote, you don’t have to do that much,” said Bland, a 42-year-old insurance agent.

Mississippi used to do a lot. Poll taxes, literacy tests and other subterfuges outlawed by the Voting Right Act kept generations of blacks from exercising their rights. The voter registration form from 1955, for instance, required applicants to copy a section of the state constitution and write “a reasonable interpretation,” according to a copy in state archives.

Lula Coleman, an 88-year-old Meridian resident, said she had to recite the preamble to the U.S. Constitution to get a ballot.

Power Consolidated

On June 25, the Supreme Court said those days were long gone. In its 5-4 decision, it said the act served its purpose, proving “immensely successful at redressing racial discrimination and integrating the voting process.”

While only about 6 percent of voting-age blacks in Mississippi were registered shortly before the act was passed, according to the ruling, a U.S. Census survey showed that about 90 percent of black residents were registered in 2012. Their turnout was 12 percentage points higher than that of whites, according to Census estimates.

The act helped increase the number of blacks elected to federal, state and local offices in the 11 Southern states to an estimated 6,550 today from 565 in 1970, according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, a nonprofit group that studies issues affecting blacks.

Yet political parties in the region have also become largely segregated by race, with white Democrats ever rarer. That leaves most Southern black legislators in the minority and reduces their influence, a center study said.

Vanished Industry

Mississippi has only one Democrat elected to statewide office and no blacks, even though they account for 37 percent of the population, according to the Census.

The voting wards in Meridian, a former railroad hub and the birthplace of actress Sela Ward, have become more segregated as white residents left for surrounding Lauderdale County and elsewhere. Meridian has seen its population decline 17 percent since 1960 to about 41,000.

Sixty-two percent of residents are black, compared with 34 percent in 1960, according to Census data.

Once home to auto-parts plants, Meridian’s economy is now based on caring for the ill and the young; Rush Hospital, East Mississippi State Hospital and the public schools are the largest employers, according to the East Mississippi Business Development Corp. The art deco Threefoot Building, the most dominant skyline feature, sits empty near a restored city hall. Check-cashing companies mix with churches and auto-parts stores in the business districts.

Mapping Strategy

Bland grew up in Jackson, the state capital, and worked as an epidemiologist as well as a health-department human resources and marketing director. He moved to Meridian in 2003 to open a State Farm office.

The last Democratic mayor was elected 28 years ago. Bland wanted the job because he thought better leadership could unleash Meridian’s potential.

Before he could govern, Bland had to be elected in a city where white residents dominate Ward 1, blacks Wards 2 and 4, and there’s a mix in Wards 3 and 5 -- all in boundaries approved by the Justice Department.

Bland won only 21 percent of the vote in Ward 1, which includes stately houses among tall pines near the Northwood Country Club. In Ward 4, filled with closely packed houses and public-housing complexes, he carried almost 82 percent, according to official results.

At the Velma Young Community Center precinct in Ward 2, he won by almost 800 votes.

Twin Grievances

Bland estimated that while 80 percent of his vote came from blacks, he needed white support to win. Like President Barack Obama, Bland also appealed to young people, said Bill Ready Sr., a Meridian civil-rights attorney.

Still, the race afforded glimpses of an older Mississippi. Bland said his campaign called the Justice Department with complaints, including that some elderly or disabled supporters were being unnecessarily forced to prove they were eligible to cast absentee ballots. The toy in the noose at his insurance office in April was intimidation, he said.

Both Bland and Barry requested Justice Department and state election monitors.

Rick Barry, the former mayor’s husband, who also was Lauderdale County’s Republican chairman, speculated that a change in voting locations and redistricting may have affected some of her supporters and said her base was less motivated. He said he questions whether the noose incident was staged for Bland’s benefit, comments Bland called “sad.”

Samuel Thompson, 60, senior pastor at Thirty First Avenue Baptist Church in Meridian who supported Barry, said there was a simple reason for the win: “The African-American community wanted an African-American mayor.”

Inheriting Guilt

That shows that the U.S. Supreme Court was correct, said Haley Barbour, the former Mississippi governor and Republican National Committee chairman. Discrimination isn’t confined to the South, so if any state is sanctioned with federal oversight, all states should be, Barbour said in a telephone interview from Jackson.

“We’re not going to keep punishing people for something that their grandfather did,” he said.

The journey to parity was hard for Mississippi, but the playing field is now level, said Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, a white Republican.

“No one that I know, Republican, Democrat, Tea Party or whatever party, has any impetus at all to go back to 1965,” Hosemann said in an interview at the Capitol in Jackson.

Yet Democrats said the Voting Rights Act allowed such progress, and without federal oversight, Mississippi will backslide. They point to Hosemann’s announcing on the day of the ruling that 1‘he would implement a requirement that voters show a photo identification, which Democrats said will keep some minorities and low-income voters from the polls.

Unknowable Truths

“Until our hearts get right -- and I still can’t trust the heart of man -- until we all know that we are dealing with each other fairly, then we need oversight,” James A. Young, who in 2009 became the first black mayor of Philadelphia, Mississippi, said in an interview at Bland’s inauguration at the Temple Theatre downtown.

During Bland’s speech there, the freshly minted mayor remembered the three civil-rights volunteers killed in 1964, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and city native James Chaney. He spoke of renewed hope and, overcome by the moment, broke down while recalling his father, who grew up poor and worked in the state’s cotton fields.

“My father understood dreams,” Bland said. “I am my father’s child.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...tion-shows-voting-law-s-imperfect-legacy.html