African-American girls continue to be disproportionately over-represented among girls in confinement and court-ordered residential placements. They are also significantly over-represented among girls who experience exclusionary discipline, such as out-of-school suspensions, expulsions and other punishment.
Studies have shown that black female disengagement from school partially results from racial injustices as well as their status as girls, forming disciplinary patterns that reflect horrendously misinformed and stereotypical perceptions.
Black girls may be criminalized for qualities long associated with their survival. For example, being “loud” or “defiant” are infractions potentially leading to subjective reprimanding or exclusionary discipline. But historically, these characteristics can exemplify their responses to the effects of racism, sexism and classism.
Notwithstanding their status as “juvenile delinquents” with significant histories of victimization, the girls I have studied tended to find a potentially redemptive quality in education. Though most of the girls in my study did not consider their juvenile court school to be a model learning environment, they generally agreed these schools occupy an important space along a learning continuum that has underserved them.
While our ultimate goal is to prevent more girls from being educated in correctional facilities, these schools should be included in the conversation about equity. Not only because are they structurally inferior and failing to interrupt student pathways to dropout or push-out, but because there is a moral and legal obligation to improve the quality of education for all youth – even those who are in trouble with the law.
We must continue to explore ways for access to quality education in these facilities more equitable, while improving the rigor of the curricula, such that it is trauma-informed and culturally competent. We must also examine ways to facilitate a seamless reentry of these girls back into their district schools and home communities.
Thurgood Marshall wrote in Procunier v. Martinez (1974), “When the prison gates slam behind an inmate, he does not lose his human quality; his mind does not become closed to ideas; his intellect does not cease to feed on a free and open interchange of opinions; his yearning for self-respect does not end; nor is his quest for self-realization concluded.”
Current trends in the administration and function of the juvenile court school may exacerbate many pre-existing conflicts between black girls and teachers and/or the structure of learning environments. The limitations and challenges of these conditions may nullify the opportunities for improved associations between black girls, school, and academic performance – antithetical to the stated educational goal of the juvenile court school.
If we can improve the accountability and performance of these schools alongside their district counterparts, we will inevitably move toward a more comprehensive approach to reducing the impact of policies and practices that criminalize and push girls out of school. We will, in essence, begin the process of maintaining her human quality – an essential component of her successful rehabilitation and re-engagement as a productive member of our communities.
Monique W. Morris is the co-founder of the National Black Women’s Justice Institute and author of “Black Stats: African Americans by the Numbers in the Twenty-First Century” (The New Press, January 2014).
