A Culture of Throw-Away Kids: Juveniles in the U.S. Justice System

Screenshot image copyright Juvenile in Justice.

Recently a 6-year-old kindergartner was arrested and put in handcuffs for throwing a tantrum at school.

Unfortunately, this sort of incident is not isolated. We've created a culture of  "zero tolerance" for certain kinds of behavior (such as a child throwing a tantrum), while continuing to condone a broadening gap that increasingly separates children of color and children from low-income families from higher achievement and better opportunities and then punishes them more frequently and more harshly when they're frustrated with the situation and haven't been given an effective outlet for expressing that frustration or escaping their situation.

We continue to construct a school-to-prison pipeline without thinking about the consequences. We take it personally when children lash out, instead of realizing their actions may be a cry for help, or that they need guidance in learning how to express themselves in a non-violent or more appropriate way.

Like the trash we toss away unthinkingly into garbage bins, we are increasingly sending children "away" to a juvenile correction system. Do we even know what that means? What it looks like?

Photographer Richard Ross has spent the last several years documenting what that looks like. His Juvenile-in-Justice exhibition exposes the hidden world of the juvenile justice system.

According to a recent article in Wired:

"The U.S. locks up children at more than six times the rate of all other developed nations. The over 60,000 average daily juvenile lockups, a figure estimated by the Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF), are also disproportionately young people of color. With an average cost of $80,000 per year to lock up a child, the U.S. spends more than $5 billion annually on youth detention."

Ross says, “I grew up in a world where you solve problems, you don’t destroy a population. To me it is an affront when I see the way some of these kids are dealt with.”

Read the complete Wired article featuring Ross's work.

Check out the Juvenile-in-Justice website for information about the exhibition, the book, and for more photos.

This issue is important for all of us to pay attention to. It's an issue we ignore at the peril of our children's future -- and of the future of the world.

~ Marsha

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