Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Crime and Children's Punishment
For great wrongdoing there are great punishments from the gods.
— Herodotus, The Histories of Herodotus, Bk. 1,ch.8
If you’re going to be six years old at some point in your life (and most of my readers have probably moved beyond that point) it is important to (a) carefully select where you choose to live and (b) behave. This is all brought to mind by a recent mailing from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) describing a lawsuit it has filed on behalf of a 6-year old called J.W.
J.W. attends the Sarah T. Reed Elementary School in New Orleans, is four feet tall and weighs 60 pounds. He is not unfailingly polite. Indeed, on two occasions in May he was downright rude. On the first occasion he talked back to a teacher. Realizing that such activity could lead to a full-scale insurrection by 6-year olds if permitted to go unpunished, J.W. was arrested, handcuffed and shackled to a chair. (Nothing was stuffed in his mouth so he could, in theory at least, have continued talking back.) J.W. did not learn from this episode. In less than a week, he was involved in an argument with another 6-year old over who could sit in a given chair in the lunchroom. J.W. was on the losing side of that argument and was once again handcuffed and shackled to a chair.
The effect on J.W. has not been what school officials had hoped. Being trained educators they had been taught that using those techniques on six-year olds would not only help the 6-year olds see the errors of their ways but would eliminate the need for water boarding or other forms of discipline when the children were older. They were wrong. His parents say that he is now afraid of school, the police and teachers and is completely withdrawn. School officials explained that the arrest and restraints imposed were required under school rules. The educators may have help in changing the rules. The Southern Poverty Law Center, has filed a class action lawsuit alleging that the school principal and other officials had “provided a clear directive to all employees. . . that students were to be arrested and handcuffed if they failed to comply with school rules.” There’s no way of knowing how that suit will turn out but thanks to the behavior of a student and school officials in a school in Dade County, Florida, we may have a clue.
Isiah Allen got in trouble on October 20,2004. Isiah was six years old, three feet five inches tall and weighed fifty-three pounds. He allegedly behaved disruptively in class and was taken to the principal’s office for misbehaving. Instead of standing contritely he had a tantrum and consequently was locked in the principal’s office. While alone he smashed a picture frame. Upon hearing the glass break the adults re-entered the room and found Isiah standing motionless in a corner holding a piece of broken glass. When the police arrived he was still standing there. Unresponsive to the police officer’s ministrations it was finally decided the best way to handle the situation was to taser Isiah. He was, according to the complaint that was filed in the court case, tasered with 50,000 volts and handcuffed while vomiting. The taserers were sued and in due course the case got to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals that concluded that if the alleged facts were proved “the unlawfulness of the conduct was readily apparent to an official in the shoes of these officers.” (There is no report of what happened when the case went back to the trial court.) Our final example of how tough it is to be a six-year old is again brought to us courtesy of Florida. The child in this case, Haley Shalansky, was neither tasered nor shackled.
Haley was a 6-years old student at Parkway Elementary in Port St. Lucie, Florida weighing only 37 pounds. According to the sheriff’s officer Haley was asked to do something by her teacher, became upset and stormed out of the classroom. Her behavior was a ticket to the principal’s office where she had a tantrum and, according to the sheriff’s incident report: “kicked the wall, went over to the desk and threw the calculator, electric pencil sharpener, telephone, container of writing utensils and other objects across the desk.” She was handcuffed and taken away in a police car.
The next day she again had a tantrum in class but this time was taken away and committed to a mental health facility. The school says the parents have missed many scheduled meetings to discuss Haley’s behavioral problems. The lesson for the parents is obvious. If you miss enough meetings with school officials when summoned, your child may end up in a mental health facility.
Describing its reason for getting involved in J.W.’s case SPLC explains that: “All across the nation, schools have adopted draconian ‘zero-tolerance policies that treat children like criminals and turn schools into prison-like environments.” Based on the foregoing, it is hard to argue with that conclusion.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
The Homeless are like Bears
And homeless near a thousand homes I stood,
And near a thousand tables pined and wanted food.
—William Wordsworth, Guilt and Sorrow
Once again the homeless are in the news and, as always, the question is what to do with them. The solutions are not always obvious but the attempts can be described as nothing, if not creative and in many cases the National Park Service’s treatment of bears offers guidance.
Those with long memories will recall the town in Florida that treated the homeless by following the example of Yellowstone National Park. Rangers in Yellowstone relocate unwanted bears far from where they are picked up hoping that once relocated they will not return to the places from which they have been taken. The Florida town picked up the homeless from tourist areas and moved them to outlying areas hoping that the relocated homeless would enjoy the fruits of their relocation even though none of the fruits included a home. I have been unable to determine how successful that program was. In all events, towns today continue to follow the example set by the rangers in Yellowstone.
According to Change.org, many communities have adopted rules that not only ban begging but ban furnishing food to the homeless, a practice followed in national parks with bears where feeding them is strictly forbidden. In Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, an ordinance was adopted that prohibits sharing food with the homeless in public parks. In Phoenix zoning laws were invoked to shut down a church that was serving breakfast to the homeless and others. Gainesville, Florida restricts the number of people soup kitchens can serve even though the number is less than the facility can comfortably accommodate.
Miami is considering an ordinance that would require people who distribute food to the homeless to go through formal training instructing them on how to ensure the food they are serving is safe and how to clean up the mess left behind. Those serving food would also have to provide a portable restroom and on-site sink. That will eliminate those serving food from the backs of vehicles and in parks. Although neither bears nor the homeless are going to cease being nuisances as a result of these compassionate and enlightened approaches to the problems they each pose, it is at least a way of addressing the issue that may encourage the homeless to go and find a home.
Enlightened though those approaches are, none can hold a candle to the approach favored by a town that has been described in this space and elsewhere as a perfect town. Its residents are educated and compassionate and live in beautiful houses, many of which replaced tiny houses that people lived in before they realized how much nicer it was to live in very big houses. That town is in Colorado and its name is Boulder.
Like other affluent communities, Boulder’s pristine quality and virtually perfect ambience is slightly tarnished by the presence of the homeless. Its council, in its wisdom, has devised a way of dealing with them that is far more creative than the limits on their feeding imposed by other communities. It has banned camping, something bears are permitted to do, so long as they are not in the vicinity of humans and campgrounds.
Most people think of camping as a pleasant adventure that families do with children on summer vacation. The wise rulers in Boulder, however, have come up with a definition that redefines “camping.” “Camping” in Boulder does not require pitching a tent or cooking “smores” over a campfire. All that is required is that the person lie down on city property “with shelter.” “Shelter” includes “any cover or protection from the elements other than clothing.” Thus, a homeless person who lies down and places a blanket over him or herself or climbs into a sleeping bag has taken “shelter” and violated the ordinance and the offender can be ticketed and fined or jailed.
Boulder, like many communities, lacks sufficient adequate housing for the homeless. From October 15 through December 31, 2009, 333 homeless people were turned away from the homeless shelter because of lack of space. One of those people was David Madison. The temperature, when he was denied shelter was 11 degrees. Mr. Madison took himself to a public place, lay down and crawled into a sleeping bag in order to keep from freezing. He was ticketed and convicted of violating the camping ban. He is not the first to be ticketed.
Since Boulder is such a perfect place its police have little to do. Accordingly, they have had the time to issue tickets to those who violate the no camping ban and since 2006 have issued 1,650 tickets to homeless people who violated the “no-camping” ordinance.
There is a bright side to being homeless in Boulder. It is OK for its residents to offer them food.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Errata
There are no Horses in Metamorphoses.