A Teenager Didn't Do Her Online Schoolwork. So a Judge Sent Her to Juvenile Detention.
A Teenager Didn’t Do Her Online Schoolwork. So a Judge Sent Her to Juvenile Detention.
A 15-year-old in Michigan was incarcerated during the coronavirus pandemic after a judge ruled that not completing her schoolwork violated her probation. “It just doesn’t make any sense,” said the girl’s mother.
by Jodi S. Cohen July 14, 4 a.m. CDT
https://www.propublica.org/article/a-teenager-didnt-do-her-online-schoolwork-so-a-judge-sent-her-to-juvenile-detention?utm_source=pocket-newtab
This story was co-published with the Detroit Free Press and Bridge Magazine.
PONTIAC, Mich. —<snip>
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In Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued an executive order in March that temporarily suspended the confinement of juveniles who violate probation unless directed by a court order and encouraged eliminating any form of detention or residential placement unless a young person posed a “substantial and immediate safety risk to others.” Acting on Whitmer’s order, which was extended until late May, the Michigan Supreme Court told juvenile court judges to determine which juveniles could be returned home.
Judge Mary Ellen Brennan, the presiding judge of the Oakland County Family Court Division, declined through a court administrator to comment on Grace’s case. In her ruling, she found Grace “guilty on failure to submit to any schoolwork and getting up for school” and called Grace a “threat to (the) community,” citing the assault and theft charges that led to her probation.
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Brennan was unconvinced. Grace’s probation, she told her, was “zero tolerance, for lack of a better term.”
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Those numbers, obtained by ProPublica from the Oakland County Circuit Court, reflect long-standing racial disparities in the state and county’s juvenile justice system. From January 2016 through June 2020, about 4,800 juvenile cases were referred to the Oakland court. Of those, 42% involved Black youth even though only about 15% of the county’s youth are Black.
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But officials at the Michigan Protection & Advocacy Service, the state disabilities watchdog organization, said they were especially troubled that a student with special needs — one of the most vulnerable populations — was punished when students and teachers everywhere couldn’t adjust to online learning.
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The ending where a "Children’s Village case coordinator, listening, tried to be encouraging. “You are doing very well right now, ... (W)hatever happens, it looks good. You are respectful, you are following the rules.”
Then she told them their time was up.
“Stay strong,” Grace told her mom.
“You stay strong, too,” her mother replied. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”"
I know how I'd feel if I had to stand an active third person review of the interaction between my children and myself with actual time interaction from that observer. Its just so wrong on sooo many levels.
The article is a lot much longer and every paragraph is solid.
= new reply since forum marked as read
So sick of the not quite right headlines, they fool the gullible and poorly informed/lazy ones.
