A Teenager Didn’t Do Her Online Schoolwork. So a Judge Sent Her to Juvenile
propublica.org
propublica.org
A law could be harsh, but fair, sure. However, an excessively harsh law is not fair, nor is an inconsistently-enforced one. This situation ticks both of those boxes.
> Being ordered to do her homework was a weak sanction, she ignored it, so she needs a stronger stimulus.
This simple-minded, old-fashioned line of thinking is out of touch with contemporary scholarship and a major contributor to the US criminal justice system's inefficacy.
If you've been put away for committing crimes, and the conditions for staying free are doing your homework, you _better_ do you homework.
Abstraction is often useful, but its application here seems reductionist to the point of being deceptive.
This 15-yr-old girl (Grace) was not "put away for committing crimes" - she didn't narrowly avoid incarceration, then violate the terms of her parole. She wasn't "put away," in the first place, because her "crimes" weren't worthy of incarceration.
She got in a fight (hair-pulling and biting a finger) with her mother - who's currently distraught that her daughter's not at home - and stole a cellphone (which was later returned) from a schoolmate's locker.
> If ... the conditions for staying free are doing your homework, you _better_ do you homework.
Grace was allegedly locked up for not doing her schoolwork, however her caseworker later mentioned that they didn't actually know (or even attempt to check) whether or not her academic requirements were being met. Additionally, her teacher stated that her performance was in line with most of the other students in her class (despite her losing the extra academic support she received due to her ADHD when her school switched to online classes). In any case, she had definitely not failed to meet the academic requirements dictated by her school. I wonder how her studies are going now that she's locked up.
I don't think the title seems "clickbaity" - I think your comment seems like a callous and misleading apology for authoritarianism. It brings to mind the "Black Codes" [1] that were passed throughout the South, following the U.S. Civil War - specifically policies related to vagrancy laws [2] and convict leasing [3] - whereby many black Americans were legally kept in conditions similar to those of their prior enslavement. By making it illegal to exist without a proven means of support (frequently only attainable via employment on the plantations of former slaveholders), and instituting forced labor as a punishment for committing said crime, Southern states were able to partially perpetuate their antebellum social and economic structure.
Put differently, If you've been put away for not working the cotton fields, and the conditions for staying free are working the cotton fields, you_better_work the cotton fields.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Codes_(United_States)
Uh, what? That's what you have to say about incarcerating a teenager with ADHD amidst an unprecedented global pandemic???
Edit: I got so worked up, I for got to add the punch line: ...for not doing their homework?!?!
Yet, the teenager failed to comply with those requirements, and therefore violated the terms of the probation.
Consequently, the teen was jailed for having committed crimes.
The reason this is newsworthy is that the punishment seems completely out of proportion with the “crime.” That remains true whether you consider the crime to be not doing schoolwork (her teacher said, by the way, that her performance was similar to most of her other students) or fighting with her mother (pulling her hair and biting her finger) and stealing a fellow student’s cell phone.
What’s worse, although she was supposedly incarcerated for not doing her schoolwork, her caseworker filed a probation violation after she went back to sleep after checking in for the day - not even bothering to check whether she was keeping up with her academic requirements. Her caseworker also admitted that they knew nothing about the her educational disability or the accommodations she received because of it. Further, in response to Covid—19, the court that decided to lock her up was supposed to be hearing only “essential emergency matters,” and the governor of her state had encouraged courts to send children home. Despite this, her case (based on a misunderstanding) was apparently deemed an “essential emergency matter” and her presence in the outside world considered risky enough to defy the governor’s recommendation.
To me, this seems like an incredibly callous miscarriage of justice facilitated by ignorance, incompetence, and negligence at multiple levels. The fact that some authority has the power to exercise their authority in a certain way has no bearing on whether that exercise of power is morally justified, else we’d consider the actions of history’s most oppressive regimes just.
Much more often when they are not minorities.
https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/racial-dispar...
Juvenile placement ought to be reserved for those who pose the greatest risk to public safety, but national data show confinement is still used for less serious offenses. In 2003, 76 percent of all committed juveniles had been adjudicated on a nonviolent offense; by 2013, that proportion had barely changed and is now 74 percent14)
Do I think the judge was unfair in revoking her probation? Probably.
Sadly, that's fairly normal for probation conditions.
Nobody in the criminal incarceration system wants to be the one who showed leniency to someone who later turned out to commit some headlining crime. So, nobody is incentivized to help you out even for the most minor of infractions. They'll just revoke your probation and wash their hands of it.
In this case, I think that she wasn't incarcerated in the first place because her crimes weren't severe enough to warrant incarceration. A 15-yr-old girl stealing (then returning) a cell phone or pulling her mom's hair and biting her finger isn't going to jail in the 21st century.
> They'll just revoke your probation and wash their hands of it.
In many states, violating probation can carry its own penalties in addition to those from the offense that led to probation. Therefore, probation being revoked doesn't have to mean restoring a prior term of incarceration (which may not exist), and punishment for probation violations can exceed that of the offense which led to probation in the first place.
> Nobody in the criminal incarceration system wants to be the one who showed leniency to someone who later turned out to commit some headlining crime. So, nobody is incentivized to help you out even for the most minor of infractions.
I think that understanding the incentives in play here is essential to understanding how the system works, and I also think those incentives go beyond not wanting to look soft on crime. In particular, both prosecutors and law enforcement officers can make themselves look better on paper by putting more people behind bars, regardless of the actual impact of their actions (or even their action's legality, in some cases). I'm reminded of a case in which a Florida police chief repeatedly framed innocent people in order to boost his department's clearance rate. [1] I don't see how we can make meaningful changes to the system without addressing that type of perverse incentive.
1 - https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/...
You don't have to break the law again to necessarily break probation.
The US legal system also thrives on plea deals. Prosecutors charge people with WAYY more than is fair, so the risk of going to court is too high (years in jail) and defendants are bullied into plea deals that suck.
If you'd like to learn more about how messed up this system is, season 3 of the podcast Serial is a pretty good starting place.
In a case like this, there's no "time" to do. It's not as if this girl narrowly avoided incarceration on the condition that she agree to probation. Probation was the "time." Her offenses didn't qualify for a term of incarceration.
Both crimes that are punishable by law with prison sentences.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, I guess, if you're a sadist), an artifact of the American criminal justice system is the potential for probation violations to result in punishment which exceeds that of the original offense.
There is no "Probably". This is a statement of fact. The crimes were serious enough that they justified a prison sentence. The criminal was trialed, found guilty by a jury, and sentenced.
Just because the criminal was put on probation that doesn't mean the crimes committed by the criminal weren't serious offenses.
Either I'm missing something or you must be confused. It's extremely unlikely that a young teenager would be sent to "prison" in the US for the crimes that landed the girl in the article, "Grace," on probation. I used the word "probably" only to account for unlikely possibility that, given the variation in sentencing across US jurisdictions, a place exists where this might occur.
> This is a statement of fact. The crimes were serious enough that they justified a prison sentence.
This is obviously untrue. Did you read the article or any of the related news coverage? Grace's crimes were not punishable by a prison term.
> The criminal was trialed, found guilty by a jury, and sentenced.
Where are you getting this false information? Grace was not tried and found guilty by a jury. In fact, she wasn't even tried in a regular courtroom - this entire process took place in family court. [1] For reference - out of almost 24,000 2018 Michigan family court cases involving juvenile offenders, less than 0.01% went to trial (of those, only 12 - 0.0005% - were jury trials). [2]
Why are you making this stuff up?
1 - Family courts exist to solve legal problems involving youth and their parents.
2 - https://njdc.info/wp-content/uploads/Michigan-Assessment-Web...
Say what? Why?
Section 11.d.2.c of the executive order
https://www.michigan.gov/whitmer/0,9309,7-387-90499_90705-52...
>Close areas of the store—by cordoning them off, placing signs in aisles, posting prominent signs, removing goods from shelves, or other appropriate means—that are dedicated to the following classes of goods:... Garden centers and plant nurseries.
Also, I find it terrifying that politifact and numerous other websites claim that this was false.
No, it's not.
In person sales of certain supplies in certain kinds of stores are prohibited. The general ban is political misinformation (which is apparently still circulating months after being both initially promoted and debunked.)
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/14/fac...
However it kinda seems strange they'd apply it to a big box stores only... I know some people wrote comments saying they'd grab the seeds anyways and just use the self checkout - unless they put the effort into making it error out if you did so...
> The limits apply only to in-person sales and do not apply to stores with less than 50,000 square feet.
So a smaller store it's ok? I figured a huge box store like Walmart would be better since larger space probably has more ventilation... But I was wonder the impression the small garden centers closed from what I seen in the media and online. I guess online is always an option but I know some older people or the unbanked is probably left out. Then some garden centers sell plants already started for you too. Just still seems a little illogical to me.
It is really scary how twisted the media presentation of simple facts has become.
For example, Politifact states:
>In reality, executive order 2020-42, which went into effect April 9, 2020, requires larger stores to block off certain areas of their sales floors as a way of limiting the number of people in those stores. The order does not ban gardening or the sale of any product, including, as we mentioned in a previous fact-check, American flags.
Section 11.d.2.c of the executive order
https://www.michigan.gov/whitmer/0,9309,7-387-90499_90705-52....
>Close areas of the store—by cordoning them off, placing signs in aisles, posting prominent signs, removing goods from shelves, or other appropriate means—that are dedicated to the following classes of goods:... Garden centers and plant nurseries.