When I was a little girl, white people used to touch my hair.  They did so without permission.  They felt entitled to touch the braids on a little black girl’s head.  Without permission.  As a grown woman, I cover my head.  I don’t know if these two things are connected.  But those are the facts.

I thought deeply about whether to write this post today.  But I decided that my thoughts were worth sharing.  Being a black woman born and raised in America has made me very comfortable with the concept of “shifting” or double or triple consciousness.

I got an e-mail yesterday that reminded me about the dominant culture’s deep desire to have those who are marginalized define their place in the world.   This is an essential component of privilege.

I will share the e-mail that I received below.  I have taken out any identifying characteristics because my intention is not to embarrass but rather to shed light.

The reason I am contacting you today is because a certain individual –a fan of “Prison Culture”– asked me to contact you over some confusion we were having in regards to particular stances you take in regards to prisons. The X organization’s  stance is rather simple in regards to prison: like civilization and the entirety of the capitalist apparatus, prisons and the penal system must be destroyed. While quickly glancing through your site, I could find nothing describing your stance in this war, just a lot of references to appalling situations and the grueling realities of the prison industrial complex.

I did find much confusion in your description of yourself though…

“I have been an anti-violence activist and organizer since my teen years. I recently founded and currently direct a grassroots organization in Chicago dedicated to eradicating youth incarceration. My anti-prison activism is an extension of my work as an anti-violence organizer.”

When you speak of anti-violence organizing, do you speak of yourself as a liberal? An activist? A pacifist? An advocate against family, PIC, capitalist, relationship, or police violence? Can you see how your statement has me thinking of all of the numerous conclusions of your statement? Any who, I guess I am just requesting clarifications as to who you are and what you believe.

Before I end this e-mail, I would like to pose the following question to you: do you think prisons can be reformed?

Take a moment to let the words sink in.  There is nothing neutral in this e-mail, is there? The author suggests that they “quickly glanced” through the site.  Right away, one is alerted to the fact that the author is looking to make a point rather than to engage in a respectful interaction.  The most salient part of the e-mail is this sentence:

“Any who, I guess I am just requesting clarifications as to who you are and what you believe.”

How should the person who receives such an e-mail respond.  Here is what I wrote:

Thanks for reaching out.  I appreciate your interest in the blog and in my work.  I will start by saying that I am content with the description provided of myself and my work in the short profile on the blog.  I don’t feel a need to expand beyond that.

The blog is really for myself.  I share information that I come across and I struggle with the contradictions inherent in the current social structure.  It is messy and can be contradictory and so is the world.  I have learned over my years of organizing that this is as it should be and it is as it ever was.  I am glad that others find something interesting in it and I hope that they take from it what they will and make up their own minds about what they think.

I respectfully decline to offer a manifesto regarding my “stance about prisons.”  That feels slightly like being asked to offer some sort of manifesto of my ideologies.  I left that world behind years ago.

Perhaps the most that I can offer to you is that I consider myself an abolitionist and humanist.  But even those words don’t capture the full complexity of my views or my work either about violence or about prisons.  I will leave it there.

Peace to you.

If you are reading this and you are a person of color, you might be marveling at my restraint.   Why respond with such courtesy, you might angrily ask?  You should have told this person off… And yet, why should I do that?  I see no need.

I know that the sentiment expressed in this e-mail is familiar to many.  The entire communication could be summarized as “tell me who you are.”  It is a question for the questioner and not for the questioned. “Tell me who you are,” justify your being, your existence. For those who are long-time organizers, you will recognize the sentiment — it is the litmus test question.  Are you down enough for the cause? Are you a true radical or are you a sellout? Questions that have never advanced movement-building in history.  Those of you who are students of social justice movements will recognize the sentiment.

So I could be offended.  I am not.  I could fire off a nasty e-mail in response.  I did not.  Or I could offer some compassion to the writer of the e-mail.  Which  I do.

Here’s my advice to the author of the e-mail…

You know what would have been an appropriate, non-oppressive e-mail to send to a stranger, one that said:  “I am wondering, do you think prisons can be reformed?”  All of the rest is white noise.

Let me end with an excerpt of a poem that I love by Lorna Dee Cervantes.

“I believe in revolution

because everywhere the crosses are burning,

sharp-shooting goose-steppers round every corner,

there are snipers in the schools…

(I know you don’t believe this.

You think this is nothing

but faddish exaggeration. But they

are not shooting at you.)

I’m marked by the color of my skin.

The bullets are discrete and designed to kill slowly.

They are aiming at my children.

These are facts.

Let me show you my wounds: my stumbling mind, my

“excuse me” tongue, and this

nagging preoccupation

with the feeling of not being good enough.”

That about does it for now…

I am currently on a conference call for the unveiling of a terrific new resource called the Justice Atlas of Sentencing and Corrections.  This is great day for data geeks and people interested in mapping incarceration.

Eric Cadora, founder of The Justice Mapping Center, hosted a national webinar to introduce the National Justice Atlas of Sentencing and Corrections, an online, interactive, mapping utility that provides academics, policy makers and the public a data-driven view of neighborhood patterns of imprisonment, community reentry, probation and parole and corrections spending.

For the first time, policy makers, researchers and the public will have access to in-depth statistics detailing disproportionate incarceration rates, parole and probation revocations, the removal and incarceration of parenting-aged men, and the millions of dollars spent neighborhood-by-neighborhood on imprisonment.

The site is easily navigated.  For a quick example of information that is available, go to the site go to the “documents section” on the site and download PDF examples of specific Atlas Snapshots.  They have collected data from 22 states.  Data will be updated each year and they hope to expand to other states as well.

When you go to the site, click on the actual map on one of the states where data is available.  It provides county by county data and zip code level data.  There is a tutorial for those who need help to navigate the site.  There is a great export function so that you can share your own custom maps.  Below is an example of prison admissions rates in Texas as a map that I exported:

This tool is absolutely fabulous and provides the level of data that many of us need on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis.

I honestly thought that this school district would change its stance once the media picked up on this story.  Well I was wrong…

TASCA, Texas (NEWSCHANNEL 3) – A controversy is growing in Texas over the length of one boy’s hair.

The 6th grader’s mother is taking the fight all the way to the school board.

“He gets to look at a wall all day long. Tell me that’s not mental abuse. You’re mentally abusing him to conform to what you guys think is appropriate,” said the boy’s mother, Marsha Wisnosky. “When does it come down to the child’s merits, not the way they look?”

Kenny Fails has been in in-school suspension for 14 weeks because he won’t cut his hair.

Monday night his mom berated the school board for violating her son’s rights.

Other parents seem to agree that the school needs to back off.

“It’s ridiculous. I feel like boys are being discriminated against as women were years ago,” said mother Jennifer Hendrick.

“What is going to be next? You’re fat, you need to go to ISS? You can’t participate in PE, you’re overweight,” said Wisnosky.

The school board sat silent the entire five minutes of her speech.

There is no word on whether Kenny’s suspension will continue.

The Chicago Reporter has conducted a terrific analysis of 17 year olds convicted of felonies in Illinois.  Here are some the key findings:

A majority, 54 percent, of 17-year-olds prosecuted in Cook County’s adult courts were convicted for drug deals and property theft alone, according to the analysis.

Of all the convictions, 58 percent were for nonviolent offenses. Include robbery without a gun, and nonviolent offenses are 71 percent of all convictions. The single largest number of convictions was based on low-level drug offenses.

An overwhelming majority of these 17-year-olds, like Reed, are black—77 percent. And most hail from just five impoverished areas, some of which are home to the highest long-term unemployment rates in the country—including Austin, Humboldt Park, North Lawndale, Roseland and West Englewood.

Once these teens were charged and their cases headed to court, the odds were they’d plead guilty and end up with an adult felony conviction, regardless of whether they had a private lawyer or public defender, according to the analysis. All this, well before they’re able to vote, buy a pack of cigarettes or join the military.

Of course once again we see disproportionate minority contact with the criminal legal system at work in these numbers.   Additionally, we are prosecuting 17 year olds as adults for mostly NON-VIOLENT crimes.  Our insatiable appetite for punishment knows no bounds especially is the targets are black and brown youth.

Here’s more from their research:

The Reporter analyzed what happened when a plea was entered and found that overwhelmingly, 99 percent of all 17-year-olds pleaded guilty. Only one percent—27 people—pleaded not guilty.

Once convicted, the teens weren’t given just a slap on the wrist for their crimes. More than half of them were sentenced to adult prison. According to the Reporter’s analysis, 882 of the 17-year-olds whose cases were opened since 2006 were sentenced to a combined 3,103 years behind bars in adult prison. More than half of those youth were sentenced to prison times of more than three years. Those remaining were sentenced to alternatives, including probation, community service or court supervision.

Read the entire series of articles from the current issue of the Chicago Reporter.  You will not be sorry.  The stories are compelling and the information is important.

The Tri-County Times is publishing a two-part series about prison life.  The first part came out over the weekend.  I was struck by several parts of their account and will highlight a few of the interesting excerpts here.

The article focuses on a man named Paul who was released from prison in 2008.  From the article:

Paul was in state prison.

Everything changed. Instead of a comfortable bed with a thick mattress and box spring, Paul was now sleeping on a metal bunk bed with a green mattress that was 2½ inches thick. His head rested on a thin plastic pillow, stuffed with cotton, “All the cotton goes to the side,” he said.

Paul’s street clothes were taken away. The “system” gave him three pairs of clothes, underwear and socks. The “system” had his nails clipped. Instead of the view outside his home by a lake, he now lived within four blue concrete walls. Instead of a house full of possessions, he could now fit everything he owned into a 6-foot by 18-inch locker. Nothing in that locker was from his outside life. Even his Bible was thrown away.

This is the value of long-form journalism which we have lost in the past few years.  It can provide the general public with a visceral experience of a world that is really foreign to them.   In just a couple of paragraphs, the author conveys the feeling of having everything that you know taken away from you when you are incarcerated.  He captures the sense of loss that must be experienced when you are first locked up.

Reporter Tim Jagielo provides still more description of life in prison:

His uniform at Adrian consisted of a dark blue shirt, orange on the back, which displayed his new identity — a six-digit identification number. The pants were dark blue, with an orange stripe, numbered. Orange shorts, numbered, were worn in the summer. The rest of his wardrobe consisted of T-shirts, numbered, and six pairs of underwear, numbered. He also had a radio, and personal TV, which he purchased himself.

“You are responsible for buying your own toothpaste, tooth brush and shampoo,” said Paul. “The state supplies only a small bar of green soap.”

The population in Adrian was divided into five levels, based on prison term length. Paul was with the least violent of the population, though he still witnessed violence. “They were just violent people who will fight you for nothing,” he said. The prison population also included some inmates who were mentally ill.

“It’s a whole different world,” Paul said. “I’ve seen guys that would carry on a conversation with cereal boxes.”

The walls of his unit were bright blue, with cement floors, sealed with wax. The windows had sliding glass with no bars. Inmates like him, with less time to serve, were less likely to try to escape, he explained.

The air in the unit was stagnant in the winter, and hot in the summer. “If it’s 100 degrees outside, it’s 100 degrees inside,” Paul said, adding there were no curtains on the windows. “If it was light outside, it was light inside. The light just pours in.”

His cube measures 12 by 20 feet. It contains eight inmates, four sets of bunk beds, eight lockers and four chairs. The inmates are responsible for keeping their own unit clean. There is no privacy, and little room to move around. Once per month tornado or fire drills interrupt their routine or their sleep at night.

“The State only supplies a small bar of green soap,” I know that this is the case in state prisons and yet I am moved and angered by the description.  It is illustrative of the “industrial” part of the prison complex.  His cell is 12 by 20 with eight other inmates.  If you are clausterphobic like I am you can almost feel yourself losing your breath.  Paul relays the story of seeing prisoners who carry on conversations with cereal boxes.  Again what comes through is the sense of loneliness and isolation.

Paul’s day began around 6 a.m., the only time breakfast is served. Inmates knew what would be served ahead of time by a menu. Aside from being vegan, or Jewish, there were no choices of meals. You eat what is on the menu that day. Inmates who wanted to eat would wait for their unit of 160 men to be called. “If it’s raining, you stand outside in the rain waiting to get in,” he said.

In St. Louis, Paul worked in the kitchen, serving food. Much of the food came from boxes that read, “Not intended for daily human consumption.”

Inmates had 15 minutes to eat. After eating, they would go out to “the yard,” the outside communal area. There, inmates could lift weights, walk around a track, or sit at tables in the inside yard. Paul lifted weights, and played softball and volleyball in the summer. “It killed time,” he said. The “weight pit” was a dangerous area, because there were few security cameras.

Guards were always watching the activities.

Paul regularly received letters from friends and family, and visits nearly every week. “When you get a letter, it’s like gold,” he said. He tried to avoid trouble and keep to himself. “You learned to read a situation and avoid it before it gets out of hand.”

At 11 a.m., all the inmates return to their cubes. A red light at the end of the hall turns on, and every prisoner sits on their bunk and waits to be counted. Count time takes about half an hour, depending on the guards on duty. Anyone not on his bunk at count time is given a ticket, which can lead to disciplinary action.

Contraband and fighting can also warrant tickets. Being caught with weapons, or doing anything considered a felony, would extend prison time. Inmates called these extensions “flops.”

After the count is finished, the red light turns off and the meal cycle begins again. Paul and the inmates can go wait for lunch or go outside for yard time again. “Every day is the same in prison,” he said.

“The food smelled awful,” said Paul. They were often served “rainbow” hot dogs — which turned colors as they cooked — pink to green to red, and tasted “like really horrible hospital food.”

You can almost taste the wretched food being served in these prisons based on this description.  “Not intended for Human Consumption” That really says it all. This is uncivilized treatment.  Even people who believe in prisons as the right place for punishment to be meted out should find this inhumane and disgusting.

When the online storytelling magazine SMITH asked its readers to submit six-word memoirs, the results were fascinating, moving, and sometimes very funny. The results were published in a bestselling book called “Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Famous and Obscure Writers.” This past mother’s day, the ONE campaign asked its supporters to write six-words reflecting on Why Moms Matter?

Inspired by these efforts, Project NIA’s UN-marked campaign invites interested individuals to submit six-words to convey either the effect/impact of having a juvenile criminal record or to illustrate the importance of clearing a juvenile criminal record.

An example would be: “Fifteen years later still can’t work.”
Another could be: “Arrested at 16; shoplifting; never recovered.”

So be creative and add your six-words to the mix. Project NIA will use the best submissions to create an awareness raising poster as part of the UN-marked campaign.

Please e-mail your 6 word responses to [email protected].  You can also submit your 6 words via twitter to @projectnia.

For more information about the entire UN-marked campaign, visit the BLOG.

I hope that many of you will participate in this effort.  Please retweet and spread the word to your networks. The campaign hopes to get hundreds of submissions.

I am filing this under my regular adventures in zero tolerance land series. I plan to continue to document the ways in which our educational system is working to “PUSH” students out of school and into the prison system. We know and I have often written about the connection between educational failure and ending up in the penitentiary. The evidence is clear and in controvertible. If our schools continue to rely on zero tolerance policies and harsh disciplinary policies, they will sure be contributing to the ongoing expansion of the prison industrial complex. The absurdity of many of these school rules must be pointed out and they must be exposed. Here’s the latest that took place here in Illinois:

I am quoting some of the article below:

An Oglesby school child faces possible expulsion later this month for playing with toy cap guns at school.

Ethan Scaman, 6, and an unidentified six-year-old who has since moved out of the school district were suspended from Lincoln Elementary School Aug. 27 and 30 for playing with their toy cap guns on the school playground. The NewsTribune was unable to contact the parents of the unidentified child.

On Sept. 20, the Oglesby Elementary School Board will meet at 5:30 p.m. and could at that time choose to carry out the school’s disciplinary policy on bringing weapons to school. In summary, that policy states that any student who brings weapons or “look-alikes” to school or school events “shall be expelled for a period of at least one calendar year but not more than two calendar years.”

However, this requirement may be modified by the superintendent, and the superintendent’s decision can be further modified by the school board.

“We try to be as consistent as possible (when enforcing policy) but there are many variables,” said superintendent Michael Pillion.

Pillion added that during his four years as superintendent there has not been an expulsion. He declined to speak further on the matter citing confidentiality.

Amanda Milton, Ethan’s mother, said her fiancé Josh Scaman was notified on Aug. 27 that her son was in “possession of a weapon” that had been confiscated and told Ethan must be picked up from school immediately for safety reasons.

The weapon in question was a clear plastic cap gun with a bright orange tip and handle; it’s shaped similarly to a snub-nosed revolver, and was inoperable. It fired red, plastic ringed caps that are rated for children ages 8 and up.

When Milton arrived at Lincoln to pick up Ethan, she was told by a school official that Ethan had violated school policy and that he would be suspended. She and Scaman were told the decision to expel the two boys would be determined by the school board.

Truly let’s hope that logic and common sense prevail on the school board. I agree with this young man’s father who said:

“This could have been handled through conversation,” Scaman said. “Just tell him that he’s not supposed to bring those to school. Even if it looked real I might understand, but they kept bringing it up over and over that he could get expelled for this.”

Additionally, Ethan’s permanent school record will indicate he was in possession of a “banned object.”

“I don’t want them thinking they have to watch him until he graduates,” Milton said. “He’s only 6 years old — he doesn’t need to be branded like he’s a menace to society. I thought about letting it go, but this is ridiculous. I understand the school policy, but we’re dealing with a 6-year-old that looks like Opie Taylor, not a sixth-grader.”

I would add that even a 6th grader deserves to be talked to before resorting to expulsion proceedings.

Color me surprised to have read that we are apparently still using corporal punishment in U.S. schools.

From the article:

About 10.5 percent of DeSoto County public school students received corporal punishment during the last school year. The schools reported 3,140 students had corporal punishment, or paddlings, in 4,993 incidences.

DeSoto County’s percentage is similar to Mississippi’s overall average of about 10 percent which is the highest in the nation.

DeSoto County’s rate is 1.5 to 4 times higher than two other state school districts in similar growth and demographic areas, Rankin and Madison counties. The highest academic performing districts last year of Booneville and Pass Christian do not administer corporal punishment. About 50 of the 152 districts in the state don’t allow paddling.

How is this not considered child abuse? What are we teaching youth who are being “paddled” at school? We are teaching them that violence is acceptable to use.

At the beginning of the school year, DeSoto County schools allow parents to choose an alternative form of punishment in place of corporal punishment.

Beginning in seventh grade, students also may choose to decline corporal punishment.

The alternative punishment is in-school suspension, in which students spend one or more school days in a special classroom apart from their regular studies.

How many parents are reading the information that is being sent home from school with their children? I don’t understand what it means that parents can choose an “alternative” to corporal punishment. Do they have to proactively “opt-out” of the practice? How does this work?

So what types of infractions can lead to corporal punishment and who is most impacted by this practice?

According to the DeSoto County schools’ code of discipline, corporal punishment can consist of no more than three licks per incident on the buttocks with an appropriate instrument approved by the principal.

A federal lawsuit filed on behalf of a Tate County high school student in federal court in Greeneville recently asks for a ban on paddling in the state, claiming the punishment is unfairly applied based on gender and race.

The plaintiff student, a 16-year old male, was paddled last fall for looking at photographs on a camera during class. The female student who brought the camera to class was not paddled.

The suit requests a preliminary injunction or temporary restraining order halting the practice as well as a declaration that corporal punishment of students is unconstitutional.

The lawsuit claims that 75 percent of students paddled in Mississippi are male, creating “a serious, gender driven crisis,” and that black students are paddled at disproportionate rates.

In DeSoto County last year, black students at 53 percent of the total number of corporal punishment incidents, were the largest population involved, followed by white students at 39 percent. White students made up 65 percent of the district’s students with black students at 28 percent, according to a Children First Annual report.

White males received 33 percent of the in-school suspensions, and black males followed at 31 percent. Males make up 79 percent of the total corporal punishment incidents.

So we find out that corporal punishment is sexist and racist too. Why is this completely unsurprising. We are beating young black males in schools and then wonder why their rates of graduation are so low…

I cannot offer any comments about this. Simply stunning…

I am posting the entire article:

A Texas mother is outraged after her son was accused of using marijuana by high school officials.

Their only evidence: The boy’s bloodshot eyes, two days after the death of his father.

Kyler Robertson, a junior at Byron Nelson High School, was suspended for three days and transferred to an alternative school until January.

His father, Richard Robertson of Fort Worth, was stabbed to death near Azle on Sunday after getting into an argument with another man, police said.

Kyler lives with his mother, Cristy Fritz, who has not been together with Robertson for a number of years.

On Tuesday, Kyler’s mother said her son was still grieving but longed for a sense of normalcy and wanted to be around friends.

“He insisted on going to school and said he just wanted everything to be, you know, normal,” Fritz said.

She said she supported his decision.

He showed up to school a little late and went to the office because he was tardy, where he was quickly accused of smoking marijuana, she said.

An assistant principal then called her.

“I think I dropped to my knees at that moment,” Fritz said.

Byron Nelson High School is part of the Northwest School District.

Lesley Weaver, a district spokeswoman, said she could not discuss Robertson’s case because of privacy laws.

In general, she said, students are not suspended without “multiple indicators” of drug use.

His mother showed NBC the district’s paperwork detailing the case against him.

An office worker claimed to smell marijuana on him, the documents said.

The school nurse reported his eyes were bloodshot, he appeared “jittery,” and his blood pressure was elevated.

The nurse also noted that his behavior and mental state were “normal.”

The district did not find any marijuana, and nobody claimed to see him smoking.

His mother said the district’s “evidence” proved nothing.

Her son suffers from allergies and was still emotional from his father’s death, she said.

“I said, ‘This is all you’re giving me?'” Fritz said. “In the blink of an eye, my son’s whole high school career was going down the tubes. And he’s dealing not just with a loss but a horrific event.”

She said administrators ignored her repeated pleas to reconsider the suspension and that they were mistaking his grief for drug use.

His mother described her son as an A and B student.

He plays on the junior varsity golf team.

After the assistant principal called her, Fritz said she picked her son up and took him straight to his doctor, who gave him a urine test.

A lab report showed he was clean — not just for marijuana, but for a number of drugs.

“I know my son, and I know he’s not using drugs, and I told them that,” Fritz said.

When she returned to school with the proof, she said administrators agreed to shorten the
suspension and withdraw the transfer, but they never apologized.

“No condolences, no sympathies, no apologies for the lack of compassion, the way they mishandled him, the false allegations, nothing,” she said.

Fritz said she wants the district to admit its mistake and to remove any mention of the suspension from his file.

NBC

Update: The principal has apologized but a lot of damage has already been done to this young man.

A high school principal has apologized to a teen suspended after he came to school with red, watery eyes.

Kyler Robertson’s father had been fatally stabbed two days earlier, and his mother told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that she e-mailed teachers about the death.

But Tuesday, when Kyler arrived at Byron Nelson High School, officials said he smelled of marijuana, along with having the other symptoms. He was suspended three days and assigned to an alternative school.

Wednesday, a urine test showing no evidence of drugs, and administrators canceled the alternative education placement. The suspension was lifted the next day.

Principal Linda Parker apologized on Friday.

A 53-year-old man faces a murder charge in Richard Robertson’s death.

Reading this report from Oregon one has to truly wonder — WTF?

Two fifth-grade students face felony charges for allegedly trashing classrooms at Scenic Middle School on Labor Day.

Central Point police contacted the two 10-year-old boys and their parents Wednesday afternoon after a teacher recognized one of the boys seen in surveillance video.

Police charged both boys with second-degree burglary and first-degree criminal mischief.

I don’t know about you.  But I have come across tons of 10 year old boys in my lifetime and they are known to do many stupid things.  I hate to put this in the category of dumb things that little boys do… But this is a dumb thing that little boys would do.

Here’s more from the story:

Officials noted that the boys were among the youngest suspects seen in a criminal case here.

Children younger than 7 can’t be said to have a criminal state of mind, explained Central Point Detective Brian Day.

Day said that the boys likely didn’t mean to cause the level of harm they did when they slipped over a cement-block wall into a courtyard, then made their way into a group of four science classrooms in the middle school’s B building.

They are suspected of scattering soap, lab chemicals, books, paper and candy around the rooms, including over computers. Profanities were scrawled in marker across various surfaces, including lockers, white boards and teaching materials. Police estimated the “huge mess” caused about $10,000 damage.

“Typically these types of crimes are crimes of opportunity, like grabbing a purse from an unlocked car,” Day said. “It’s not premeditated. They are just kind of messing around at school and something is available and they make some bad decisions.

“It would be more alarming if they had a plan,” he said.

First, this case is a prime candidate for some sort of restorative justice intervention.  Please get these young people out of the clutches of the juvenile legal system and let the entire community work together to figure out an appropriate consequence for their actions.

Second, I find the quote attributed to police officer Day to be flabbergasting:

Children younger than 7 can’t be said to have a criminal state of mind, explained Central Point Detective Brian Day.

I should certainly hope NOT.  When we start getting to the point that we are going to lock up 5 and 6 year olds labeling them as criminal masterminds, I am officially moving to Canada.

I will end with this part of the article:

“We’re not designed to deal with 10-year-olds,” said Joe Ferguson, deputy director of the juvenile division of Jackson County Community Justice. “We try to work with parents and find community resources for them and the family.”

He said the department evaluates all young offenders to gauge their risk of reoffending and tries not to mix low-risk kids with others.

Look, I think that the young boys should be asked to make amends and provide restitution for the damage that they caused.  However, it is critical that this intervention take place in a community-based setting.  The latrogenic effects of the juvenile legal system are well well documented.  This situation cries out for an alternative to a juvenile legal approach for addressing the problem.