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THE OFFICIAL WEB SITE OF THE MADISON TIMES WEEKLY NEWSPAPER |
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Community forum focuses on interplay between race, school, and juvenile justice by Bob Jacobson Community members and panelists representing schools, human services, law enforcement, and the justice system gathered at Madison Memorial High School Nov. 20 to discuss “Race, School, and Juvenile Justice.” The forum was the second in a series sponsored by the Dane County Disproportionate Minority Confinement/Contact (DMC) committee. The previous forum took place Oct. 16 at Madison East High School. Policy makers have long been aware of the disproportionate contact with and confinement of people of color in the Madison community, but historically little has been done to address the issue. In 1992, the federal government added language to the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act requiring states that receive federal juvenile justice funding to address the issue of minority youth being incarcerated at a much higher rate than nonminority youth. When the act was reauthorized in 2002, the “C” in DMC was broadened to included contact with the system as well as confinement. Dane County is one of six Wisconsin counties targeted to address DMC in its juvenile-justice system. According to Assistant District Attorney Barbara Franks, chair of the Dane County DMC Committee, the purpose of the forums is to gather information that will then be submitted to five issue-specific DMC subcommittees. These subcommittees are in turn charged with examining the policy implications of the feedback they receive. “In the last 18 months, we have been examining all of the decision points in the juvenile-justice system, from arrests through incarceration,” Franks said. “We are in the process of analyzing the number of referrals to the District Attorney’s Office involving youth of color, in comparison to the number of petitions filed and the numbers sent to correctional facilities. To augment data collection and analysis, we have begun to solicit perspectives from various stakeholders — parents and incarcerated juveniles in the community, middle and high school administrators, and youth-serving agencies.” That’s where community forums come in. According to Franks, the DMC committee has not yet determined how many, if any, additional forums will be held. Franks noted that the forum at Memorial was not quite as heavily attended as the one at East. The discussion, however, was equally lively. “One important issue raised today was that of parental authority to discipline their children,” commented Franks. “What is perceived as child abuse by the system may be considered by the parent as the last resort in maintaining child discipline. Young people know that they can call the police if the parent gets physical with them. More often than not, these same children end up in the system because they know they don’t have to listen to their parents. Then, when they get caught up in the court system, the parent may be perceived as ineffective. To add insult to injury, when the child is placed outside of the home, the parents are assessed costs. This is an issue that deserves closer examination and more dialogue.” Panelists at the forum included Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard, Police Chief Noble Wray, Memorial High School Principal Pamela Nash, West High School Principal Ed Holmes, Judge Maryann Sumi, Evelyn Mazach of the state Public Defender’s Office, and Stephen Blue from Dane County Human Services. According to District Attorney Blanchard, law enforcement and the courts need to continually search for ways they may be contributing, consciously or not, to racial disparities in the system. “I think historically there’s been some tendency among people in the justice system, police, and the courts to say, ‘Well, we have a society that is mixtures of official and unofficial, conscious and unconscious racism, which is producing what’s happening both economically and in the court; and therefore there’s nothing we can really do about it. We’re just here to enforce the laws, and it’s too bad that it has this result,’” Blanchard said. “A lot of us feel that’s not good enough. While there’s that background, which is huge, that does not let us off the hook for what we might be doing better to reduce the disparity. The justice system is not going to be reformed overnight by any particular thing, but we still have the responsibility to analyze whether we’re making it worse through enforcement policy, and to recognize the potential for that in the system.” Principal Holmes highlighted the role of fear — young White teachers who may feel physically intimidated by bigger African American male students — in creating an environment that can lead to quicker than necessary involvement of law enforcement in incidents at school. A recurring theme in the comments of both community members and panelists was the importance of parent involvement and barriers created by policies that make it more difficult for parents to exert their influence over their children. Stephen Blue, representing Dane County Human Services, touched on the impact of welfare reform, which has dramatically reduced the number of single mothers who are able to stay at home and monitor youths in low-income neighborhoods. Police Chief Noble Wray praised the forum as an opportunity to hear directly from parents. He, too, emphasized the key role parents can play in addressing DMC issues. According to Wray, it is parents, not the police department, who should be the first resort when problems arise at school. “One of the things that rang clear for me today was that there is a difference between what parents expect to take place in school and what’s actually taking place,” Wray said. “Have we gone too far in making the school our clients and not involving parents in the dialogue? That’s one of the things I will be taking back from this forum.”
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