Summary : ' It 's A War Going On '

Prior to being assigned the reading of the memoir “Always Running”, by Luis Rodriguez, I had never given much thought on juveniles involved in gang life. Rodriguez achieved success as an award-winning poet; sure the streets would no longer haunt him - until his own son joined a gang. Rodriguez fought for his child by telling his own story in the vivid memoir, “Always Running.” “Always Running” is the compilation of events Luis experienced during his youth in San Gabriel. The theme of the book is to always strive for the best things in life and to always take a stand for what you believe. Lured by the seemingly invincible gang culture of East L.A., he witnessed countless shootings and beatings, as well as senseless acts of street crime against his friends and family members. As a Latino in a poor neighborhood, Luis struggled through criticism, stereotypes, and mistreatment. With the help of his mentor, Chente, Luis saw a way out through education and the power of word to successfully break free from years of violence and desperation.

Even at their youngest stages of life, African American males are being told that they’re just following a path to jail from birth. Even figures that as a child you’d look up to are telling young black males that they can’t succeed in this world. The vice-principal of the Rosa Parks School when talking about a young African American male said “That one has a jail-cell with his name on it”. Education institutions are the ones who hold the power to decide and construct who has access to opportunities and resources needed to advance in our capitalist society. The system is setting up African Americans for failure from the start. “The racial bias in the punishing systems of the school reflects the practices of the criminal justice system. Black youth are caught up in the net of juvenile justice system at a rate of two to four times that of white youth”. The profiling starts at a young age as well, planning their future for them. In conclusion, Education Institutions are the ones who hold power in this world. They are the building blocks of the future, as they shape young lives. With institutional racism putting some races ahead of others, however, a majority of students are stunted in their path to adulthood, leading to racial issues and divides that would otherwise not

“Tomorrow 's future is in the hands of the youth of today” is not a particularly new sentiment. But what is new, what has become a pressing question, is what is to become of the future if our youth are behind bars instead of in schools? Youth today are being pushed into the criminal justice system at an alarming rate. This issue is known as the school to prison pipeline ─ the rapid rate at which children are pushed out of schools and into the criminal justice system. The school to prison pipeline is a term that came into use by activists in the late 1970’s and has gained recognition throughout the years as the issue became more prominent in the 1990’s. Some activists view policies meant to “correct” misbehaviors, especially in regards to Zero Tolerance policies and the policing of schools, as a major contributor to the pipeline. Others believe that the funding of schools and the education standards are to blame for the rapid increase of youth incarcerations. While the school to prison pipeline affects every student, African American students, both male and female, are more often the victim of discrimination in education. The school to prison pipeline must end, and the trend must be reversed.

This study is about the phenomena of students experiencing a transfer from school straight into juvenile and adult criminal justice systems. Heitzeg (2010, 1) presents how this study attempts to explain how the pipeline emerged with the help of media and youth violence. In addition to media, the process of moving youth toward the pipeline is also due to authority’s tendency to target youth according to racial, social, and economic backgrounds (Heitzeg, 2010). The implementations of zero tolerance policies exhibit a trend among African American and Hispanic/Latino youth. “African-American students are referred for misbehavior that is both less serious

In this video Marc Mauer explains the racial disparities in the criminal justice system which are overlooked and continues silently in the criminal justice system. Mauer explains how two teenage boys arrested for shoplifting in different social classes receives different treatment from the criminal justice system. The first teenager has a two parents that are able to send their son to get help. They are able to send him to a social worker. They inform the prosecutor that their son is doing better. The prosecutor decided to drop the charges against the teen because he was able to seek help for his criminal behavior. It is also implied this teenager is white financial stable and not a danger to the community. He is just an average teen who fell into the wrong crowd. Therefore, he has no criminal record and is able to apply for jobs without scrutiny for being arrested as a teen. This teen would also be viewed as a youth that is having environmental problems and would get social dispute resolutions, interventions for acting out in

In Punished: policing the lives of Black and Latino by Victor Rios Oakland boys are studied in an ethnography. The purpose of the ethnography was to examine the how the boys interacted with themselves, the education system and the justice system. The purpose of this essay is to review what Rios has witnessed and recorded, in his book, and look through the lens of different sociological theories and theorists. These Theories and theorists Rios himself used when describing the behavior.

Over the course of the study, Rios witnessed firsthand how all the adolescent boys were brutalized by rival gangs, peers, officers, and social institutions such as schools whether the boys were labeled delinquent or not. A large majority of the boys were arrested at some time during the study and all the boys were regularly searched by police on random occasions for no other reason than that the officers believed they appeared suspicious. The boys faced a vicious cycle of social controls that demanded unrealistic expectations. When the boys were unable to accomplish the goals society demanded of them, they were labeled deviants and criminals with no support of the community or state in overcoming the

The author and researcher of Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys, Victor M. Rios, was a former gang member from Oakland as well, who learned in his adolescence what a small break from police and educators could mean for a boy on his way to prison. Rios made it out of gang life through the support of concerned teachers, and a very fortunate break from a cop who gave him a last chance. After the death of his best friend and countless negative interactions with the police, Rios was forced to reflect upon the larger image of youth violence and criminalization. He wanted and needed to find out the reason of the prevalence of youth and police violence in his community. After graduating college, and attending graduate school,

Minority youth are disproportionately represented throughout juvenile justice systems in nearly every state in the nation. Disproportionate minority contact (DMC) in juvenile justice occurs when minority youth come into contact with the system at a higher rate than their white counterparts. African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Pacific Islanders and Native Americans comprise a combined one-third of the nation's youth population. Yet they account for over two-thirds of the youth in secure juvenile facilities (Armour & Hammond, 2009).

Did you know that young males of color are more likely to be treated as criminals than any other race? Young men of color seem to be the target of some policemen, whether they are just taking a walk or hanging with friends, they’re considered as a threat to some. In these situations, they can end up pretty bad, whether in arrest or in most cases, death, all because that officer sees them as a “thug” or criminal. Obstacles young men of color face in the US today are “reverse racism,” and some policemen thinking that young men of color are dangers to society. These obstacles young men of color face impacts them by making people believe that they are unimportant or dangerous criminals. Some things that could be done to get rid of these obstacles

In this essay, I will argue, Detroit’s convict culture has shaped the lives of many young American men in Detroit America. Through using structural power to create systemic interaction among society. By using ideological, economic, political and military power to shape public ideas and values through institutions like Detroit’s detention facility. The detention centre has both positive and negative effects on the convicts, designed to enforced cultural beliefs often different from one’s own culture. The centre brings together Detroit’s predominantly black youths in a place of community reintegration. It is a social institution, designed to break down and reintegrate people back into society. Bergmann expresses, youths are connected through their socio- economic circumstances, speech, dress code and race. He argues, convict culture shapes and gives meaning to the lives of these men as they are bonded by oppressive circumstances.

The disproportionality of harsher discipline for minorities than whites for similar offenses (Finn & Servoss, 2015) coupled with the “militarization” of high school disciplinary practices (Alexander, 2012) are the culprits for what has been dubbed the “school-to-prison pipeline,” resulting in poor minority students entering the juvenile and criminal justice systems 50% more today than they did 20 years ago for similar offenses (Wald, 2003).

court this is how they are looking at and judge. You don”t see a teen standing before the courts anymore this is why the court system is blurred. The courts have to look at children Black and Hispanic youths are treated more severely than white teenagers charged with comparable crimes at every step of the juvenile justice system, according to a report released Tuesday that was sponsored by the Justice Department and six of the nation's leading foundations. (Abstract (summary)

Over the course of the semester, when thinking about a topic for this term paper, I knew I wanted to study and evaluate the reasons why minorities are overrepresented and the way the justice system processed youth minorities in comparison to their white peers. Without any previous experiences with the juvenile justice system, it has been very easy to see that minorities are not treated the same way and that there is indeed, an over-representation of minorities in the system. I realized it when I spent a morning in the Juvenile Justice court as well as when I visited detention centers in both West Philadelphia and in El Paso, Texas. Most of the kids I saw in these facilities, if not all, were either Black or Latino. In a country that pledges allegiance to the flag, with supposedly justice for all, where police forces and judges claims to treat everybody fairly with respect, how can we get to a point where minorities are clearly over-represented in comparison to the overall population of the country? This paper aims at understanding why are we in this current situation, what do we know about it and finally how can we remediate and reduce this issue that has been underlined for years by the public in both the political and judicial sphere.

When examining the juvenile justice system for fairness there are many areas that must be investigated. One must look at the police’s enforcement of the law and the juvenile court’s prosecution defendants. The question being asked is this being done fairly to all minors who deal with the juvenile justice system? Why do some juveniles with identical crimes receive different punishments from the court? How do the courts justify these disparities in enforcement? While there are many questions that need to be answered this paper will focus on two. What role does race play in the sentencing of juvenile offenders? Are certain defendants sentenced more harshly because of their race and why is this? These two questions look directly at the juvenile justice system and the fairness of the system when sentencing. The studies that have been used in this research focus on African American, White, and Hispanic males and females that have been involved with the criminal justice system. The focus is on whether or not defendants receive different sentences because of their race and why this is.