Summary Of The Documentary The School To Prison Pipeline

Documentary 1

I was listening to a documentary on BBC world service and they were talking about the School to Prison Pipeline in the state of Texas. This has been a very interesting topic for me in class because it is insane that people can treat kids like criminals. In the documentary, they stated some interesting facts on how a child is seen as a criminal but they have the opportunity to get a clean slate but they have to appeal and pay more fines. School kid in the United States can end up in jail for acting up in class. Kids are being treated like criminals for non-violent crimes. These crimes can be minimal, like acting up in class, skipping school, or even talking back to a teacher. Some kids are given Class C misdemeanors it is a lower

“School system should not be giving kids/ making kids criminals because of a violation of the school rule” (BBC documentary) if kids had wrong colored shoes or wore the wrong shirt they would get in trouble. Each school year the school would spend $20 million on school security, they have police officers at their local school. Security and police are all intervening instead of the teachers or principle dealing with the problem. If they are detained at a very young age, then they are three times more likely to end up in prison when they get much

Kids for cash was about two judges, President Judge Mark Ciavarella and Senior Judge Michael Conahan who incarcerated more than three thousand children to juvenile detention center/ camps, while they were receiving money/paybacks from private operation. Robert Mercile built two private detention centers for juveniles which were in cahoots with the two judges to send the children there.

Mark Ciavarella, elected for 10 years and after the election he was appointed Juvenile Court Judge. He was appointed judge four years after the Columbine tragedy in 1999. In which the “Zero Tolerance” was put into place by Judge Ciavarella, meaning he wouldn’t tolerate no drugs, no weapons, and no violence in school. The community praised and support him for trying to change the school to a better place. But instead he started incarcerating kids who had done minor offenses. For example, mocking a principle on MYSPACE, a student throwing a ball at another girl because the other girl waned to fight, an argument, a parent trying to teach their son minor lesson and cost their son, childhood in a detention center and later on in the years committing