His third in a series of Op-Eds, Bob Herbert pens The School to Prison Pipeline.  In this piece, Bob draws the obvious conclusion that our society is treating its children as criminals, and no one seems terribly disturbed by this trend.  While the conclusion (for anyone who reads Bob’s work) is obvious, it was necessary.  We need to have our noses rubbed in this because the trend is that dangerous.

With 6 year olds in handcuffs in Florida, and 30 high school kids arrested in Brooklyn on their way to a wake, something is wrong.  Zero tolerance (like 3 strikes and you’re out) has become a mindless mantra, so wholly lacking in rational thought as to make anyone, except someone so blinded by recent personal tragedy, shudder.  And this is why we don’t leave decision-making up to someone blinded by recent personal tragedy.  We can forgive them the anger, frustration and hostility, but we realize that sound decisions are not made in moments of extreme anger.

One of the best quotes in the piece is:

  “What we see routinely,” said Dennis Parker, the program’s director, “is that behavior that in my time would have resulted in a trip to the principals office is now resulting in a trip to the police station.”

This is the point.  We’re talking about conduct where kids behave like kids.  Sometimes they through a tantrum.  Sometimes they have a schoolyard scuffle.  Kids do these things.  We did these things.  I did these things.  If it happened today, I feel certain that I would be a “3 times your out” juvenile delinquent because I used to be a kid.  And my parents, who executed the occasional corporal punishment behind the woodshed, would likely be in the jail cell next to me.  Today, this would be called family values.

As my practice does not regularly involve juveniles, my view of this was through the eyes of a parent and I found it horribly disturbing.  Recently, however, I have had the honor of representing a kid.  A really good kid, without an iota of delinquency in him.  He never should have come into the system.  He never should have been anywhere near the system.  His problem arose at the hands of the parent of an overly aggressive schoolmate.  The parent’s twisted reasoning was recognized by all, from the school to the cops.

And so they all put an end to before dragging a good kid into a place where he should never have been, right?  Not quite.  When the school demurred, the parent went to the cops.  He annoyed the cops enough that they shuffled the papers off their desk into that misnamed thing called the juvenile justice system.  All the while, the kid and his parents were dying.  Didn’t anyone care that a good boy, who had done nothing more than any other normal ordinary kid would do when struck by an overly aggressive schoolmate who refuse to stop, was being subjected to treatment as a criminal.  Short Answer: Nope.  Except me, but I don’t count.

This has got to stop.  We, the adults in this society, have got to stop supporting the criminalization and politicizing of children as criminals.  A few may be, but most are not.  And to have a knee-jerk reaction as has become pervasive is just plain sick.  We are the cause of child endangerment.  Heaven knows, if this had been done when we were kids, we would all be in juvy.  Think about that.  Are we all criminals?  If not, then our children today should not be treated as such.  As Bob Herbert wrote, we need to get a grip.