Texas uses electronic system to file automatic criminal charges against truant students.

[dixiegrrrrl]

Last edited Fri Jun 14, 2013, 04:17 PM - Edit history (1)

In Dallas County, Texas, students as young as 12 face criminal charges and arrest for “truancy” via an electronic system that automatically “pushes” cases to courts based on a student’s attendance record, according to a complaint filed with the Department of Justice. These students are required to represent themselves in these proceedings, and are not permitted the assistance of an attorney, advocate, or even their own parents, meaning they are “almost guaranteed a conviction and all the attendant consequences that file,” the complaint says.

Statewide, Texas changed its policy in 2001 to penalize disciplinary violations like truancy through the adult criminal court system, causing a “host of harms to children,” who are then funneled away from school and into the criminal justice system.
But in Dallas County, the harms are particularly acute, as students are regularly charged with “truancy” for mere tardiness, absence due to medical problems, a critically ill parent, and school-imposed suspension. The complaint by several public interest organizations paints a picture of a “byzantine legal process resulting in increasingly punitive measures including arrest, handcuffing, and threats of jail time and detention.” Some of these conditions include:

Youth are coerced and cajoled into pleading “guilty,” even when they have valid excuses for school absences.
Families already facing economic hardship are assessed high fines and court costs, with additional fees added each month that they are unable to pay in full.
Children who miss a truancy court hearing are arrested at school, put into a police car, brought into the courtroom in handcuffs, and then charged an additional $50 to cover the arrest warrant fee.
Youth who fail to fully comply with truancy court orders are arrested in court, handcuffed, and transferred without due process to the “Truancy Enforcement Center,” an arm of the county’s juvenile system, where they may face detention.
Youth may be jailed once they turn 17 if they have not paid their fines and costs in full.
Students are routinely threatened with jail time even before they are old enough under Texas law to be subjected to this punishment.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/06/14/2156481/texas-county-uses-electronic-system-to-file-automatic-criminal-charges-for-student-truancy-complaint-alleges/

Wow..perpetual criminalization.
Would it surprise anyone to find teh majority of the population in the county is black or hispanic?????
See my post # 8, below,

[The Magistrate]

1. Disgusting, Ma'am

One wonders what private company now runs the juvenile facilities, and just how cheap the legislators and other officials were to purchase in job lots....

[cali]

2. this is insane. and the ACLU, if they haven't, needs to challenge this.

I hate the people who are doing this. I hope they get theirs in the harshest of ways.

[cali]

3. how is this not evidence of a police state?

[galileoreloaded]

4. great way to train drones to sit down, shut up, and work

our education system is a joke.

minimum requirements to process paperwork and that's about it.

[cali]

5. no it's not.

a recent study shows that those who go through this are much more likely to drop out of school and be incarcerated as adults.

[galileoreloaded]

7. fair point. the ones who SURVIVE corp indoctrination training

make the best drones.

[LanternWaste]

11. What precisely are they being indoctrinated with, and for whom?

What precisely are they being indoctrinated with, and for whom?


You will of course, supply us with objective, peer-reviewed evidence rather than mere melodramatic editorial (because it's the way of the "drones" only to pretend to be more clever than they are, make sweeping accusations, use passion rather than logic and evidence to sway a discussion, and as you're not a drone, you certainly won't do any of that...)

[galileoreloaded]

12. corporate wage slavery.

"You will of course, supply us with objective, peer-reviewed evidence rather than mere melodramatic editorial"-no, I'll supply you with nothing but my experience. there is no rule 1.1 subsection A that provides any expectation of my obligation to you.

as the father of 2 boys, i will share that its very difficult to actually teach a child today to reject the control mechanisms place in their lives. i've had some pretty heated discussions with teachers and principals who, through no fault of their own, are pressured into teaching basic word processing and cut and paste skills to the next generation of functionaries. this attitude even pervades STEM programs.

sit down, face forward, don't share/have an opinion, and follow the rules.

my favorite is the "ethics" they teach in elementary school. that took months to unwind from my youngest.

both are now leaders in every aspects of their lives. kind and independent thinkers, but with a ton of backbone.

[LWolf]

6. There's got to be a better way to get kids in school.

The example above is ridiculous.

As a teacher who is evaluated based on student test scores, though, I sure as hell would like there to be some teeth somewhere; preferably, with the parents. Older kids might be truant on their own. They sure get a hell of a lot of help learning that it's "no big deal," though.

My district has one of the shortest school years for students in the nation. BEFORE the economy melted down and they started cutting days to save money. My students, for example, had a school year of 155 student days. The district would calculate that a little differently, at 159 "instructional days." I took off the 4 conference days, in which they show up with their parents for 20 - 30 minutes and no instruction takes place.

That gives ABUNDANT time off for vacations. Yet, I always have somebody gone. In the fall, it's hunting trips. I get that; it's part of the local culture. In the spring, they start going camping after spring break, and they may be gone for a whole week, or just take every Friday and Monday off for the rest of the year.

I can give them practice stuff for things we've already worked on while they are gone, but they miss instruction on everything new. I'm accountable, though, for what learning they demonstrate on the damned test.

Is there a good reason they can't go camping during the overly-long summer? The students aren't the ones scheduling the time off. The parents are.

One boy, after being gone exactly 10 days and showing up on the 11th (more than 10 days without contact from a parent, or without being able to reach a parent, and they are removed from the system; parents know this), told me he was "sick." He didn't make quote signs; he made casting motions. He was fishing.

Some parents will email or call or send notes notifying us of a vacation and asking for work. Others will simply call in and say they were sick after they get back.

What's a good way to suggest to these people that April and May (and October/November, for that matter) are not the right time to take a vacation, and to direct them to the 3 months of summer, the week of spring and Thanksgiving breaks, the 2 weeks of winter break? What is a good way to enforce attendance for kids who are not sick?

[dixiegrrrrl]

8. this has nothing to do with getting kids to go to school

this has everything to do with criminalizing, for profit, as many people as possible.
and it is racial.

As of 2010 Census:
over 65% of residents in the county are not white.

The racial makeup of the county was 33.12% Non-Hispanic White,
22.30% Black or African American,
0.10% Native American,
5.15% Asian,
0.06% Pacific Islander,
14.04% from other races, and 2.70% from two or more races.
38.30% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_County,_Texas#Demographics

[LWolf]

13. I see your point.

As attendance is an issue I struggle with daily, I can't take it out of the equation. If we want to take criminalization of children, of the poor, of the non-white out of the equation, then attendance needs to be addressed from a different direction.

Of course, doing that would only have it pop up somewhere else.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

9. And God Blessed Texas.

Nothing against ordinary Texans themselves, but the concept of "Texas Justice" is the most fucked up oxymoron I've ever seen. The way they run their judicial system in their state.

Meanwhile, some kid gets "homeschooled" with no accountability whatsoever as to what's being taught, and there's nothing wrong with that.

God Blessed Texas.

[woo me with science]

10. Welcome to the police state.

Welcome to corporate neo-America.


Letters to shareholders from private prison executives
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022665091