TRI In The News

'School-to-Prison' Pipelines a National Trend

From One News Now

Original article available here

The Justice Department is looking into a Mississippi county that is allegedly running a "school-to-prison" pipeline, jailing students for simply misbehaving in schools.

The Justice Department is accusing Lauderdale County officials of jailing students for minor offenses like "showing defiance." John Whitehead of The Rutherford Institute says a disproportionate number of African-American students are allegedly being punished.

"We're seeing this as a trend across the country, and it's not happening just in Mississippi; it's happening in New York, Los Angeles … wherever you might be," Whitehead reports. "In fact, some of the larger cities like New York -- they're actually calling the schools 'school-to-prison' pipelines."

Among other things, he explains that privatization of prisons is contributing to this situation.

"What most Americans don't understand is that many of our prisons and jails in this country are taken over by private corporations, which require -- if they pay to maintain the prisons -- the government … to maintain at a 90 percent occupancy rate," the attorney details. "That means creating new laws [where] minor offenses would actually put people into jail."

The DOJ has given county officials 60 days to offer solutions to bring its school-to-prison practice to a halt.