This is Zero Tolerance in effect…

Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children – Police state madness – more and more children being arrested for trivial things….fueling the school to prison pipeline, mass incarceration…Zero Tolerance in full effect.

 

 

#1 At one public school down in Texas, a 12-year-old girl named Sarah Bustamantes was recently arrested for spraying herself with perfume

#2 A 13-year-old student at a school in Albuquerque, New Mexico was recently arrested by police for burping in class.

#3 Another student down in Albuquerque was forced to strip down to his underwear while five adults watched because he had $200 in his pocket. The student was never formally charged with doing anything wrong.

#4 A security guard at one school in California broke the arm of a 16-year-old girl because she left some crumbs on the floor after cleaning up some cake that she had spilled.

#5 One teenage couple down in Houston poured milk on each other during a squabble while they were breaking up. Instead of being sent to see the principal, they were arrested and sent to court.

#6 In early 2010, a 12-year-old girl at a school in Forest Hills, New York was arrested by police and marched out of her school in handcuffs just because she doodled on her desk. “I love my friends Abby and Faith” was what she reportedly scribbled on her desk.

#7 A 6-year-old girl down in Florida was handcuffed and sent to a mental facility after throwing temper tantrums at her elementary school.

#8 One student down in Texas was reportedly arrested by police for throwing paper airplanes in class.

#9 A 17-year-old honor student in North Carolina named Ashley Smithwick accidentally took her father’s lunch with her to school. It contained a small paring knife which he would use to slice up apples. So what happened to this standout student when the school discovered this? The school suspended her for the rest of the year and the police charged her with a misdemeanor.

#10 In Allentown, Pennsylvania a 14-year-old girl was tasered in the groin area by a school security officer even though she had put up her hands in the air to surrender.

#11 Down in Florida, an 11-year-old student was arrested, thrown in jail and charged with a third-degree felony for bringing a plastic butter knife to school.

#12 Back in 2009, an 8-year-old boy in Massachusetts was sent home from school and was forced to undergo a psychological evaluation because he drew a picture of Jesus on the cross.

#13 A police officer in San Mateo, California blasted a 7-year-old special education student in the face with pepper spray because he would not quit climbing on the furniture.

#14 In America today, even 5-year-old children are treated brutally by police. The following is from a recent article that described what happened to one very young student in Stockton, California a while back….

“Earlier this year, a Stockton student was handcuffed with zip ties on his hands and feet, forced to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation and was charged with battery on a police officer. That student was 5 years old”.

#15 At one school in Connecticut, a 17-year-old boy was thrown to the floor and tasered five times because he was yelling at a cafeteria worker.

#16 A teenager in suburban Dallas was forced to take on a part-time job after being ticketed for using foul language in one high school classroom. The original ticket was for $340, but additional fees have raised the total bill to $637.

#17 A few months ago, police were called out when a little girl kissed a little boy during a physical education class at an elementary school down in Florida.

#18 A 6-year-old boy was recently charged with sexual battery for some “inappropriate touching” during a game of tag at one elementary school in the San Francisco area.

#19 In Massachusetts, police were recently sent out to collect an overdue library book from a 5-year-old girl.

HERE ARE THE LINKS:

http://www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com/notitas-de-noticias/details/texas-student-sa rah-bustamantes-12-arrested-for-spraying-perfume/13250/

http://abcnews.go.com/m/blogEntry?id=150 77292

Check out this video on YouTube:<br/><br/>http://youtu.be/wk2b_twCCdw

http://m.guardiannews.com/world/2012/jan/09/texas-police-schools?cat=world& type=article

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/02/18/new.york.doodle.arrest/index.html?hpt=C1

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2010/feb/11/port-st-lucie-schools-confines-6-year-old-with/

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/12/29/nc-high-school-senior-suspended-charged-possesion-small-knife-lunchbox/#

http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/2009/june09/zero-tolerance-states.html

http://m.tauntongazette.com/wkdTGazette/pm_/contentdetail.htm?contentguid

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/San-Mateo-pays-family-of-boy-pepper-sprayed-by -cop-2384518.php

http://django.medianewsgroup.com/mobile/interstitial/?r=http%3A%2F%2F www.middletownpress.com%2Farti cles%2F2011%2F06%2F14%2Fnews%2 Fdoc4df7b12331ec9768149316.txt %3Fmobredir%3Dfalse&d=iphone

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/cops-called-for-school-kiss-657831

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2012/01/27/hercules-family-battles-playground-sex-assault-claim-against-6-year-old/

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/01/02/charlton-library-sends-police-to-collect-overd ue-books-from-5-year-old/ — with Your Son or Daughter next

 

Related articles

• In Texas, Police in Schools Criminalize 300,000 Students Each Year (alternet.org)
• More and More Children Being Arrested For Trivial Things… (revivalandreformation.wordpress.com)
• Texas Student Sarah Bustamantes, 12, Arrested for Spraying Perfume (hispanicallyspeakingnews.com)

The Lionheart Foundation

Emotional Literacy programs for prisoners, at risk youth and teen parents.

Lionheart provides social emotional literacy education to significantly alter the life course of incarcerated adults, highly at-risk youth and teen parents. Lionheart’s educational programs have been integrated into thousands of prisons, juvenile institutions, social service agencies, schools and community programs throughout the United States and abroad.

Lionheart is changing lives and building futures through its prisoner education, at risk youth counseling and the teen parent program.

Check them out-  they just started blogging too!!

Click HERE to visit and be sure to bookmark  for future visits!! 

Closing Cages: People Power Helps Stop Youth Incarceration

While Illinois is closing two youth prisons as a cost-cutting measure, other states are not. Washington State’s King County recently passed a $210 million renovation and expansion of its youth jail. Undeterred, activists work to halt the jail. In Baltimore, organizing against a youth jail proves that popular disapproval can derail supposedly done deals.

 

(Image: Hands on fence via Shutterstock)

By Victoria Law, Truthout 

With the number of youth behind bars at an all-time low – dropping 41 percent from 107,000 in 1995 to under 71,000 in 2010 – are more youth jails really necessary? Research has shown that community-based programs that keep youth connected to their families are more likely to succeed than jails or prisons. So when Dede Adhanom learned that King County was proposing to renovate and expand its current youth jail in Seattle’s Central District, she was outraged.

On April 5, 2012, King County Council members held a public meeting at Seattle University to introduce Proposition 1, a $210 million tax levy to renovate the dilapidated King County Youth Services Center to include a youth detention center with 154 dorms as well as ten family courtrooms. “It was at 1 PM. A lot of people can’t make 1 PM meetings unless they work at a job that pays them to be there,” Adhanom noted. Undeterred, she and several others attended. “We shouted them out of there. That they’re having the public meeting at 1 PM shows their intentions.”

That was the first action of the group that became No New Juvie. To counter the Seattle University meeting, the group convened a People’s Forum. “Dede spoke as someone who had been incarcerated. Another person who had been incarcerated as a youth spoke about his experience,” Alex West, another No New Juvie member, recalled in a separate interview. The group held events in Seattle neighborhoods where residents were most affected by incarceration. They organized a Festival of Resistance outside the juvie. “We made posters and patches. We had games. We had a self-defense workshop and a building healthy relationships workshop. We asked, ‘What do we need to make the jail obsolete?’”

Continue Reading @ TruthOut

 

Related articles

• Youth Incarceration Down in U.S., Colorado (humaneexposures.com)
• California ranks 11th in nation in youth incarceration rate, report shows (mercurynews.com)
• Running Rebels shows value of keeping youths out of jail (jsonline.com)
• Some facts about youth incarceration (indyweek.com)
• Editorial: Praise deserved for lower youth incarceration rate (knoxnews.com)
• Youth incarceration has dropped by 36% in Illinois since 1997 (chiyouthjustice.wordpress.com)

The High Cost of Corrections in America

Date:

June 12, 2012

Contact:

Stephanie Bosh | 202.540.6741

Project:

Public Safety Performance Project

Issues:

Recidivism, Corrections Costs

What’s On Your RAP Sheet?

By Katti Gray

Via @ The Crime Report

Paroled from prison in August 2010, Sandra France was bent on finding a job that steered young people away from the drug addiction and drug-related crimes that had her cycling in and out of prison for 35 years.

That job hunt, however, initially bore little fruit for the 50-year-old ex-offender.

Then she heard about Project ReNu, launched in early 2012 by the Brooklyn, NY-based Center for NuLeadership On Urban Solutions to help the formerly incarcerated figure out precisely whether their recorded criminal histories were undercutting their employment prospects and, where possible, boosting the ex-offenders’ image among potential employers.

Project ReNu’s sole counselor—one of four full-time members of NuLeadership’s staff—steered France through a process aimed at equipping ex-offenders with the details of their “records of arrests and procedures” (or RAP sheet) and correcting errors that those documents sometimes contain before a potential employer sees them.

France completed Project ReNu with what she hopes is a ticket for entry into a legitimate world of work with which she is barely familiar: a state-sanctioned “certificate of good conduct” granted to successful Project ReNu clients who, like France, have multiple felony convictions.

(A “certificate of relief” is available to persons with just one felony conviction.)

In addition to that certificate, France received a document detailing her criminal history, including the date and time of her convictions. And she was schooled in how to articulate other aspects of her life, such as her ongoing drug rehabilitation and involvement in peer support groups, her active church membership, and her on-the-job training in the field where she hopes to be hired.

“These documents show how far I came [and] that, although I have been incarcerated and I’ve been on drugs, I’ve been doing a lot of positive things,” said France, who is now interning at an outpatient clinic for substance abusers—a step toward becoming a certified alcohol and substance abuse counselor.

Those accumulated documents are a package that can be given, perhaps preemptively, to employers.

Reducing Recidivism

With several studies linking gainful employment to lesser rates of criminal recidivism, jobs—and housing—top the list of the most critical material needs of the formerly incarcerated, Shelli Rossman of the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. told The Crime Report.

And, notes Rossman, ex-offenders not only require the tools essential for what can be the monumental task of landing a job—especially during a lingering recession when employers have their pick of prospects who’ve never been to prison—but they also need help hanging on to the jobs a fraction of them do manage to get.

“My hunch is that part of the difficulty in job retention is the nature of the job to begin with,” said Rossman, a senior fellow at the Institute’s Justice Policy Center. “These are high turnover, like food service jobs, where … they’re constantly hiring and replacing staff, not just this population.

“These tend to be low-level jobs without benefits. They …not only undermine the individual financially, but also in terms of morale.”

Even so, findings of the Urban Institute’s five-year “Returning Home: Understanding the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry” study of ex-offenders in Maryland, Illinois, Ohio and Texas included this one: “Former prisoners who held an in-prison job, participated in job training while incarcerated, earned a GED during prison, and/or participated in an employment program early after release, work a greater percentage of time the first year out than those who did not.”

The key assumption of Project ReNu is that paid wages will reduce the likelihood that a previously convicted person will return to crime and to prison, , says  Divine Pryor, executive director of NuLeadership, which is housed in the same Brooklyn building as the agency where parolee France is interning.

Another foundational principle is that if potential employers can see that formerly incarcerated job applicants are confronting their past, and can articulate their achievements during a job interview, then that forthrightness just might work in the applicant’s favor, says Prior, whose organization offers a broad menu of prisoner re-entry services and criminal justice policy programs for both juveniles and adults.

“The best way to empower yourself is to know everything that other people know about you,” he adds. “If you’ve ever been arrested for anything, it’s on your RAP sheet—every single encounter you’ve had with law enforcement that causes you to be fingerprinted.”

According to Prior, the “labyrinth of challenges” facing ex-offenders as they re-enter society can include correcting errors that may have been made by the system or have cropped up through other means, such as identity theft.

Continue Reading  HERE

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Choosing Substance Abuse Treatment Over Prison Could Save Billions: Study

We know that treatment not only saves money, but does in fact save LIVES.  The Prison for Profit mentality MUST change.  The question is no longer how, but when.  Just so you all know, I do NOT support Partnership at Drugfree because of their stance on Cannabis. However, the following is a good article.

 

Sending substance-abusing state prisoners to community-based treatment programs instead of prisons could reduce crime and save billions of dollars, a new study concludes. The savings would result from immediate reductions in the cost of incarceration, and by subsequent reductions in the number of crimes committed by successfully treated offenders, which leads to fewer re-arrests and re-incarcerations, according to the researchers.

Almost half of all state prisoners abuse drugs or are drug-dependent, but only 10 percent received medically based drug treatment while they are incarcerated, according to Newswise. Inmates who are untreated or not adequately treated are more likely to start using drugs when they are released from prison, and commit crimes at a higher rate than those who do not abuse drugs, the article notes.

The researchers built a simulation model of 1.14 million state prisoners, representing the 2004 U.S. state prison population. The model estimated the benefits of substance abuse treatment over individuals’ lifetimes, and calculated the crime and criminal justice costs related to policing, trial and sentencing, and incarceration.

The model tracked individuals’ substance abuse, criminal activity, employment and health care use until death or until they reached age 60, whichever came first. They estimated the costs of sending 10 percent or 40 percent of drug-abusing inmates to community-based substance abuse treatment instead of prison.

In the journal Crime & Delinquency, the researchers found that if just 10 percent of eligible offenders were treated in community-based programs instead of going to prison, the criminal justice system would save $4.8 billion, compared with current practices. If 40 percent of eligible offenders received treatment, the savings would total $12.9 billion.

Via @ Join Together

 

Related articles

• Treatment is the best way to fight crime (jsonline.com)
• U.S. Could Save Billions, Lift Black Community by Treating Instead of Jailing Drug Users (atlantablackstar.com)
• Doing Smarter Criminal Justice and Public Safety (americanclarion.com)
• Education Recommended Rather Than Systematic Incarceration Of African American Males (medicalnewstoday.com)

The Reflections of an Inmate

The following was posted in my PRM Facebook group. I had to share ( with permission, of course!) with you all….

Via Keri Driver “My husband is an inmate at Avenal State Prison in Avenal, CA. He has managed to stay in school through correspondence courses despite trips to the “hole” and adverse transfers. He wrote this paper as one of his English 102 papers. I wanted to share so maybe the public would look at prisoners in a different light.”

The Reflections of an Inmate
By Thomas E. Driver

When members of society hear, see, or use the word “inmate”, it most often carries the image as being f lesser worth or value. The stereotypical depiction is negative, often fueling contempt, judgment, scorn and rejection from the majority of the members of society.
That is, until it enters a person’s personal life. The common response towards the word inmate is condemnation, persecution and rejection. Once a friend, family member or themselves lands in lock-up, everything changes. Now the word inmate becomes a real person, having value and worth. Previous judgments and cries for the “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” type sentencing now seems overkill, appalling, very unrealistic, unjust and even inhumane.
I am inmate Driver E30443. The word “inmate” is like a heavy burden I must carry out into society. My desire is to encourage a change in how society defines those labeled as inmates. What I hope to encourage is how the value, worth and wisdom of inmates has the potential to prevent others from making the same mistakes and help families better understand why criminal behaviors develop to begin with. To one day discover the automatic response to the word inmate is to include the recognition of potential knowledge, experience and wisdom. That consideration for the possible positive changes, growth and maturity that rehabilitation can produce is given. The label of inmate also has the ability to instill the perspective that this person has potential value, worth and possible experience and wisdom to offer. I desire for society to remember that most inmates did not choose to aspire to become an inmate or criminal in their youth. Many members in society only differ from inmates because they were never caught before changing their behaviors, had influential connections or enough money to avoid the label. Life events greatly influence and lead people to live such negative lives.
Inmate Driver E30443 is also, Tommy, the youngest son of the very respected and loved couple of Robert and Mickey Driver. The lucky man that is married to the amazing and wonderful Keri Driver who sees her husband as just that; her husband, not an inmate. Driver is also the little brother, the favorite uncle and the loved father. Along with his wife Keri, he shares hopes and dreams for the chance to be of great worth to the majority of members of society. The recognition he desires is not for him but for society to have to undoubtedly recognize the potential of any person, to become a valuable, contributing member of society.
Inmate Driver E30443 – the victim of childhood abuses that as a result of, became a drug and alcohol user, that as a result of became a criminal that resulted in him becoming an inmate. Now unlike society seems to believe, the results of the effects in their lives that lead to becoming an inmate do not stop once this label is reached. These changes can continue and the possibility these changes may be positive in nature are very likely. As a result of being an inmate Driver has discovered how to face and deal with the effects of abuse in a positive, healthy manner. He now has the knowledge, experience and wisdom to help youngsters who are currently facing the same effects he had to face and now because of being an inmate has learned the skills needed to help the youngsters and their families so they better understand the effects from their child’s trauma(s). Inmate Driver is a wealth of knowledge and experience that could potentially benefit hundreds of thousands of others, possibly even being a major cause for the decrease in criminal activities.
Inmate Driver E30443 is also the certified welder that earned blue ribbon awards at the Sacramento County Fair along with being the fabricator of numerous structures in or around historical buildings. Driver is also the Olympic hopeful and sixth in state wrestling champion in 1986 for Washington State. Certified in air conditioning and refrigeration, Driver can also construct solar energy panels. Certification was also earned in vocational landscaping producing numerous positive articles and letters about how to improve the landscapes and environments he has access to. Inmate Driver is also known as the graduate student who earned and Associates in Social Sciences degree from Lassen Community College receiving Presidential honors for maintaining a 3.8 GPA while also facilitating or attending numerous self-help programs, often spending hours trying to instill positive changes in his peers.
Inmate means to me: a man with hard work ethics, pride, humility, courage and wisdom. A positive influence, leader and example to not only fellow inmates but to correctional staff and members of society as a whole. A man, that while serving justice for his past criminal behaviors, took advantage of the opportunities to learn and change and become a law abiding, honest and respectable man with values, principals and standards that are very positive. Making him a valuable asset to society.
I am Inmate Driver E30443, call me Tom or Tommy. I was incarcerated twenty-five years ago for shooting and killing a man that threatened my life and held me captive at gun point. I am no longer the immature criminal, liar, thief and disappointment I was back then. Today I am an example of successful rehabilitation. I am honest, responsible and hopeful. I am the son my parents are now proud of for my positive changes and growth. I am the husband my wife calls “home”, her “life and breath” as I too see and feel she is to me. I am the rehabilitated father that pleads with his son to not make the same mistakes in life that I once did. I pray the wisdom and experiences I share will give my son Joey the tools he needs to avoid the regrets and negative experiences of bad choices and enjoy a wonderful and successful life. Inmate: man/woman, son/daughter, husband/wife, father/mother, brother/sister, uncle/aunt, potential person to heal our children and our families. Source of wealth of knowledge, experience, and wisdom viewed by many as priceless because of the potential benefit to society. Inmate Driver E30443, who am I to you?

Re-inventing college for prisons

Two ex-inmates are trying to bring higher education to the incarcerated, one maximum security facility at a time

By Graham Kates, The Crime Report

(Credit: Eduardo Ramirez Sanchez via Shutterstock)

At the height of the tough-on-crime era in the mid-1990s, prisoners in New York State seeking access to college-level courses were dealt a one-two punch that seemed to deliver a crushing blow to inmate higher education.When then-President Bill Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act in 1994, he revoked inmate access to federal Pell grants. In 1995, New York Governor George Pataki followed suit, eliminating Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) funding for prisoners in the state.

For Kathy Boudin, at the time an inmate of the maximum security Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, it seemed like college programs “disappeared overnight.”

“When college was removed, instead of having a line of people walking to school, we had people sitting up in the day rooms playing cards, playing dominoes, getting in fights,” said Boudin, now the director of the Columbia University School of Social Work’s Criminal Justice Initiative.

Boudin — a former member of the counterrevolutionary group Weather Underground who served 22 years for her role in an armored truck heist that left three dead — and other inmates were determined to complement the prison’s GED program with a college education.

After the program’s launch in 1997, similar initiatives were started by New York’s Sing Sing prison and Bard College. Their successful struggle ultimately brought college back to a dozen prisons throughout New York, and helped form the backbone of a decade’s worth of inmate education advocacy. Today, there are programs that bring college to prison in half a dozen states.

Continue Reading @ Salon

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Mass Shootings: After 19 In Five Years, Many Thoughts And Prayers, No Real Answers

Our heart aches for the families of Newtown, Connecticut.

We need to reach out to the loved ones of those who were murdered and to the community that has been shattered. We need to let them know that they are in our thoughts and our prayers, and that we are ready to do what it takes to make sure a tragedy like this never happens again. We NEED  viable  programs and treatment …America we also NEED to wake up.
On Friday, Dec. 14, a gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and opened fire on students and teachers, killing at least 26 and wounding others.

Though the victims were younger — some of the 20 children killed on Friday were in kindergarten — the massacre drew comparisons to the 2007 tragedy at Virginia Tech that left 32 dead and 17 others wounded in the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in U.S. history. Hundreds more have died in shootings during the five years that have passed since that devastating marker.

There is no official definition of a “mass shooting,” but FBI classifications describe the term as any incident in which a perpetrator kills four or more people, not including him or herself. Under that definition, 19 mass shootings have taken place since April 16, 2007, the date of the Virginia Tech massacre. That’s a rate of more than one every four months — only considering these most brutal examples. Other devastating shootings go largely unnoticed on the national stage.

Continue Reading @ HuffPo

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• Thoughts and prayers for the innocent lives lost in Newtown, CT (americanturban.com)
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• A Timeline Of Mass Shootings In The US Since Columbine (thinkprogress.org)

Playground to Prison: Youth in the Adult Criminal Justice System [infographic]

You might also like:

Guantanamo: Cuba’s Prison of Terror [infographic]

Locked Up: World Prison System [infographic]

School Food vs Prison Food [infographic]

Via @ Daily Infographic