Boredom or Bars

Why is it that our response to everything is to throw people in jail? It would be one thing if it worked, but I’ve talked in previous entries about the blowback we’re beginning to see on the streets (see Tuesday, May 15th – Homegrown Gang). Am I the only one who sees the irony of living in a country that claims to be the bastion of freedom and liberty, yet we have a higher percentage of our population in jail than any other country – and remember, that includes countries like Iran and China. In fact, it is estimated that there are 9 million incarcerated individuals on this planet. Over 2 million of them – 22% -- are in the United States.

I started thinking about this when reading an article in the Seattle Weekly. It was about the response to truancy as dictated by Washington State’s Becca Bill. Passed in response to a public outcry after the murder of Rebecca Hedman, a 13-year-old runaway who was beaten to death in Spokane, the bill was designed to give parents and the courts more ‘control’ over disobedient, runaway, and at-risk children. Seeing truancy as a predictor of future problems, lawmakers decided to extend the bill to cover truancy.

The article focused on a 15-year-old male and his friends. Described by counselors as a “nice, smart boy with good intentions”, he is also described as having incompetent parents. His father is in Chicago with little involvement, and his mother is said to ‘typically’ have ‘no idea where he is or what he is doing’. He finds school ‘boring’ – so he often skips with his friends and runs wild in the streets – if your definition of ‘wild’ is spending the day at a downtown game store playing Dance Dance Revolution.

So, let me get this straight. Here we have a smart, basically good kid. His parents don’t parent, and his only option is a boring, unchallenging school system that is failing to engage him or meet his needs. How should we respond to this? Hmmm … lets see … how ‘bout we put him in jail?

After the school filed a mandatory truancy petition, police officers came to his home, handcuffed him, put him in a squad car and drove him to a juvenile detention facility. He donned the required green jumpsuit and was marched past violent offenders to a cell upstairs. And there he sat, incarcerated with youth who have hurt, robbed, and stolen from people for the high crime of skipping school. It reminds me of Arlo Guthrie in Alice’s Restaurant, sitting on the Group-W bench telling the murders that his crime was littering.

Look, I am not against addressing truancy. I just think that maybe we should address the real cause of truancy – a school system that is failing our youth – rather than giving our young people a choice between mind-numbing boredom or incarceration.