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Prince George’s Tackles Criminal Justice Reform for Youths

WASHINGTON INFORMER — Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Aisha Braveboy announced a plan Wednesday that seeks to eliminate the school-to-prison pipeline, but with some help. Braveboy, who was elected to office last year, said she will depend on resources from the public school system, sheriff’s office and nonprofit organizations to support a youth justice reform plan.

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By William J. Ford

Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Aisha Braveboy announced a plan Wednesday that seeks to eliminate the school-to-prison pipeline, but with some help.

Braveboy, who was elected to office last year, said she will depend on resources from the public school system, sheriff’s office and nonprofit organizations to support a youth justice reform plan.

“I feel really strong about this because we cannot institutionalize our young people,” she said at the county administration building in Upper Marlboro. “Once they get in a system, mentally they think of themselves as part of the system. What we want young people to know is the community cares about them.”

Although community interventions and diversion programs aren’t new, Braveboy described the initiative led by the state’s attorney’s office to help at-risk youth as a “family approach.”

Instead of some youths being processed and tried in juvenile court for certain offenses, the person’s records will be reviewed to determine if mental health, social or other services are warranted.

For instance, Key Bridge Foundation in Largo will provide mediation sessions to handle certain conflicts.

The county will host its first Juvenile Justice Summit at Bowie State University in November for youth and adults to identify causes of behavior. In addition, possibly provide recommendations on state legislation toward criminal justice reform.

Community Public Awareness Council (C-PAC) of Kettering will mentor youth.

The group helped Imani Williams, 16, to change from a troubled, verbally abusive teenager to an honor-roll student at Friendly High School. When this upcoming school year starts Sept. 3, the senior will serve on the school’s peer mentoring group to assist incoming freshmen.

“I’ll tell them do the right and don’t do the things I did,” she said standing beside her mother and grandmother. “Ninth-grade year is not the year to play around. Stay out of trouble. Keep your grades up. Study and do your homework. Stay away from the bad crowd.”

Juveniles assessed and charged with serious offenses such as gun possession and assault would still be processed.

Prince George’s schools CEO Monica Goldson said the focus will not only push for a decrease in the suspension rate, but also call on school resource and police officers to become mentors.

“Relationships help to breed trust and accountability,” she said. “It allows us to have our students come to them for assistance and support. The only way we can do that is to make sure we train and retrain our police officers, our investigative counselors and security assistants to make sure they become those kinds of mentors our children need.”

This post originally appeared in The Washington Informer.

Activism

U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries Speaks on Democracy at Commonwealth Club

Based on his first speech as House minority leader, “The ABCs of Democracy” by Grand Central Publishing is an illustrated children’s book for people of all ages. Each letter contrasts what democracy is and isn’t, as in: “American Values over Autocracy”, “Benevolence over Bigotry” and “The Constitution over the Cult.”

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: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries at the Commonwealth Club World Affairs Council on Dec. 2. Photo by Johnnie Burrell. Book cover: "The ABCs of Democracy" by Hakeem Jeffries.
: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries at the Commonwealth Club World Affairs Council on Dec. 2. Photo by Johnnie Burrell. Book cover: "The ABCs of Democracy" by Hakeem Jeffries.

By Linda Parker Pennington
Special to The Post

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries addressed an enthusiastic overflow audience on Monday at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, launching his first book, “The ABCs of Democracy.”

Based on his first speech as House minority leader, “The ABCs of Democracy” by Grand Central Publishing is an illustrated children’s book for people of all ages.

Each letter contrasts what democracy is and isn’t, as in: “American Values over Autocracy”, “Benevolence over Bigotry” and “The Constitution over the Cult.”

Less than a month after the election that will return Donald Trump to the White House, Rep. Jeffries also gave a sobering assessment of what the Democrats learned.

“Our message just wasn’t connecting with the real struggles of the American people,” Jeffries said. “The party in power is the one that will always pay the price.”

On dealing with Trump, Jeffries warned, “We can’t fall into the trap of being outraged every day at what Trump does. That’s just part of his strategy. Remaining calm in the face of turmoil is a choice.”

He pointed out that the razor-thin margin that Republicans now hold in the House is the lowest since the Civil War.

Asked what the public can do, Jeffries spoke about the importance of being “appropriately engaged. Democracy is not on autopilot. It takes a citizenry to hold politicians accountable and a new generation of young people to come forward and serve in public office.”

With a Republican-led White House, Senate, House and Supreme Court, Democrats must “work to find bi-partisan common ground and push back against far-right extremism.”

He also described how he is shaping his own leadership style while his mentor, Speaker-Emeritus Nancy Pelosi, continues to represent San Francisco in Congress. “She says she is not hanging around to be like the mother-in-law in the kitchen, saying ‘my son likes his spaghetti sauce this way, not that way.’”

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Activism

MacArthur Fellow Dorothy Roberts’ Advocates Restructure of Child Welfare System

Roberts’s early work focused on Black women’s reproductive rights and their fight for reproductive justice. In “Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty 1997)”, she analyzes historical and contemporary policies and practices that denied agency to Black women and sought to control their childbearing—from forced procreation during slavery, to coercive sterilization and welfare reform—and advocates for an expanded understanding of reproductive freedom.

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Dorothy Roberts. Photo courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Dorothy Roberts. Photo courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Special to The Post

When grants were announced Oct. 1, it was noted that eight of the 22 MacArthur Fellows were African American. Among the recipients of the so-called ‘genius grants’ are scholars, visual and media artists a poet/writer, historian, and dancer/choreographer who each receive $800,000 over a five-year period to spend as they see fit.

 Their names are Ruha Benjamin, Jericho Brown, Tony Cokes, Jennifer L. Morgan, Ebony G. Patterson, Shamel Pitts, Jason Reynolds, and Dorothy Roberts. This is the eighth and last in the series highlighting the Black awardees. The report below on Dorothy Roberts is excerpted from the MacArthur Fellows web site.

A graduate of Yale University with a law degree from Harvard, Dorothy Roberts is a legal scholar and public policy researcher exposing racial inequities embedded within health and social service systems.

Sine 2012, she has been a professor of Law and Sociology, and on the faculty in the department of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Roberts’s work encompasses reproductive health, bioethics, and child welfare. She sheds light on systemic inequities, amplifies the voices of those directly affected, and boldly calls for wholesale transformation of existing systems.

Roberts’s early work focused on Black women’s reproductive rights and their fight for reproductive justice. In “Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty 1997)”, she analyzes historical and contemporary policies and practices that denied agency to Black women and sought to control their childbearing—from forced procreation during slavery, to coercive sterilization and welfare reform—and advocates for an expanded understanding of reproductive freedom.

This work prompted Roberts to examine the treatment of children of color in the U.S. child welfare system.

After nearly two decades of research and advocacy work alongside parents, social workers, family defense lawyers, and organizations, Roberts has concluded that the current child welfare system is in fact a system of family policing with alarmingly unequal practices and outcomes. Her 2001 book, “Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare,” details the outsized role that race and class play in determining who is subject to state intervention and the results of those interventions.

Through interviews with Chicago mothers who had interacted with Child Protective Services (CPS), Roberts shows that institutions regularly punish the effects of poverty as neglect.

CPS disproportionately investigates Black and Indigenous families, especially if they are low-income, and children from these families are much more likely than white children to be removed from their families after CPS referral.

In “Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World (2022),” Roberts traces the historical, cultural, and political forces driving the racial and class imbalance in child welfare interventions.

These include stereotypes about Black parents as negligent, devaluation of Black family bonds, and stigmatization of parenting practices that fall outside a narrow set of norms.

She also shows that blaming marginalized individuals for structural problems, while ignoring the historical roots of economic and social inequality, fails families and communities.

Roberts argues that the engrained oppressive features of the current system render it beyond repair. She calls for creating an entirely new approach focused on supporting families rather than punishing them.

Her support for dismantling the current child welfare system is unsettling to some. Still, her provocation inspires many to think more critically about its poor track record and harmful design.

By uncovering the complex forces underlying social systems and institutions, and uplifting the experiences of people caught up in them, Roberts creates opportunities to imagine and build more equitable and responsive ways to ensure child and family safety.

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Activism

Oakland Post: Week of December 18 – 24, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of December 18 – 24, 2024

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