Navigating the red tape of the school to prison pipeline
One of the biggest aspects of my job as a Youth Advocate at Juvenile Regional Services is checking in with the kids who are in the post dispositional phase. This means that the juvenile has gone through the sentencing process and is either on probation or in secure care. The majority of juveniles that I work with are on probation, with review hearings as often as every 30 days. That means that every 30 days, the juvenile goes before the judge and the judge looks over the juvenile’s progress, including drug testing, any academic issues, and any other issues that the juvenile is facing. Due to the fact that I have only been at JRS for two months, when I first started I had to go down a list of names and see what was going on with those juveniles.

Learn more about the School-to-Prison-Pipeline by playing a game created by the ACLU: http://www.aclu.org/school-prison-pipeline-game
While routinely going down my list of clients, I happened to call a client with the initials R.J. He didn’t have a review hearing for another four months, but I figured I would check in anyway. I reached his father who informed me that not only was R.J. not currently in school but that the 15 year old had not been enrolled since May of last year. He explained that R.J.’s mother had moved to Texas and had possession of many of R.J.’s documents such as social security card and birth certificate. His father had been fiercely trying to get R.J. enrolled in a school but it seemed that doors were continually being shut in his face. This was infuriating for many reasons, but one of the most important was that R.J. could be sent to jail for not being in school. The juvenile courts in New Orleans view academic issues as being non-compliant with probation. A catchy phrase for the repercussions of this practice is the “school to prison pipeline”. Kids are pushed out of schools for minor disciplinary infractions, or, as in R.J.’s situation, they are kept out of public schools illegally. These juveniles, living without the structure of school, disproportionately end up the criminal justice system with a recidivism rate that will make your head spin. In New Orleans, juveniles have been sent to jail for repeatedly not passing classes or not attending. So the thought of R.J. going before the judge without even being enrolled in any school was a scary one.









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