In McKinney, Texas, and across the country, the lines between actual crime and typical adolescent behavior have been blurred to the point where police in many areas seem to recognize no difference whatsoever.
In McKinney, Texas, and across the country, the lines between actual crime and typical adolescent behavior have been blurred to the point where police in many areas seem to recognize no difference whatsoever.
An SPLC lawyer relates to a student who has been suspended repeatedly and segregated in a Florida school district where the SPLC is challenging the discriminatory treatment of African-American children.
SPLC advocate Eileen Espinal describes how a rural Florida community meeting highlighted the obstacles children of migrant workers face at school.
Three years after an SPLC complaint sparked a federal investigation into the disproportionate number of African-American students arrested for minor rule violations in Louisiana’s Jefferson Parish schools, the problem has worsened, the SPLC told federal authorities this week.
A community advocate in the SPLC’s Louisiana office helps a young Honduran immigrant who fled to the United States after witnessing a murder and being threatened by the defendant.
The Florida Supreme Court confirmed this week what experts and parents have long known: Children are fundamentally different from adults. Recognizing this fact is critically important in Florida, a state where more than 10,000 children have been prosecuted as adults in the last five years without a judge’s input.
As managing attorney in the SPLC’s Mississippi office, Jody Owens has seen firsthand the devastation wrought by the “school-to-prison pipeline” that funnels vulnerable children into the harsh world of police, courts and prison cells. He explains this civil rights crisis and the path to reform.
In a commentary published in today’s Tampa Tribune, the head of the SPLC’s Florida office argues in favor of pending legislation that would greatly reduce the number of the state’s children pushed into adult courts, a category in which Florida leads the nation.
The SPLC is supporting legislative efforts to rein in the power of Florida prosecutors to push children into adult courts and prisons without judicial oversight.
The class action suit claims that police in a predominantly African-American school district used unconstitutional, excessive force on students, some of them already restrained, by deploying chemical spray on about 300 students over a five-year period.