Printed: More Killing in Chi than Afghanistan

This article is from the summer but I just re-found it and it seemed worth posting.

Facts from this article: 
- More Chicago residents - 228 - have been killed so far this year in the city than the number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan - 144 - over the same period.
- Chicago's murder rate is also currently quadruple that of New York and double Los Angeles' rate.
- The city's homicide rate is up more than 50 percent over last year.

Tio Hardiman, Illinois director of anti-violence group CeaseFire, wrote... "once you take a closer look, you will find out that the majority of conflicts stem from interpersonal conflict that escalate into a gang conflict." 
 

So sad. This reminds me of three things:

Printed: Gang Enforcement Laws

A new Illinois law was signed yesterday:

The new law is modeled after the federal racketeering law known as RICO, which was originally designed to target mobsters but in recent years has been used repeatedly by the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago to target the top leadership of street gangs.

Now the state version will allow county prosecutors to take similar action against a street gang as a whole, instead of individual members... Different crimes can be grouped into one criminal proceeding, allowing prosecutors to paint a more complete picture of a gang's criminal activity for judges and juries.

Gang members who are convicted of criminal conspiracy under the law could face more than 30 years in prison. Fines could top $250,000. The government also would be able to seize gang assets such as drug proceeds, real estate and other holdings. - Tribune

Hmm.  Not sure how I feel about this yet... I think I can see pros and cons coming out of this.  The seizing real estate thing is what worries me the most... could they just label any household with weed in it 'connected to gang activity' and take the home?  It'll be interesting to see how this actually plays out in practice. 

Uptown Update's opinion: Not sure how it will work out, but we are happy that gangbangers are finally legally recognized as the urban blight that they are.  Not "good boys just hanging with the wrong people," but members of a well-organized, intentional criminal organization. Now let's see the States Attorney and the courts put some teeth into it.

I can see their stance, but I hope we're also putting equal amounts of energy into gang prevention programs. 

Printed: Damming the Water

According to an article called Basketball Controveries: In the Name of Protecting Kids, There's a Movement to Take Their Sports Equipment Away, "the debate over whether basketball courts attract violence - or whether they're simply blamed because people are afraid of the young men of color they see playing ball - has been going on for years."

In the diverse-but-gentrifying Uptown neighborhood, where I live, the alderman recently removed the rims on the basketball hoops in a park, with the rationale that if kids don't hang out in the park, they won't engage in the gang recruitment or activity that can happen there.  However, as one resident puts it, "removing the rims obviously hasn't ended the problems, and... it will get worse because kids don't have a place to play."

In Oz Park, the rims have also been removed.  "Lincoln Park High School (across the street) has several highly regarded honors and arts programs, but 'it also has some issues around school discipline that makes some people concerned around going there,' Alderman Smith says.  What she didn't say is that while the neighborhood is well-off and white, the student body is neither.  Neighborhood parents typically send their kids to magnet or privates schools, and most Lincoln Park high sudents, commuting from other areas, are under a spotlight as they come and go."  So though eliminating groups of kids playing the park might make the white Lincoln Park residents feel 'safer,' will it actually change anything?  

While removing the rims may make parks less busy, what about attempting to give kids more productive things to do with their time, rather than less?  Build a YMCA, hire security to guard the parks so they can be usable, give schools more funding to hold after school programs - anything that will provide the millions of benefits that after school programs and sports are scientifically proven to give kids... 

Attempting to end gang violence by cracking down on symptoms of gangs is the same thing as attempting to stop water-flow by building dam after dam after dam, then getting frustrated and blaming the water when it continues to find places to flow.  The solution is to address the source of the issue.

Printed: Zero Tolerance Consequences

"The U.S. has experienced dramatic increases in the number of students suspended, expelled, and referred to law enforcement...  These practices are paving the way for higher dropout rates and involvement in the criminal justice system, a pathway often referred to as the 'school-to-prison pipeline.' (From Teaching Tolerance)

Some examples:  In Florida, a five-year-old girl was arrested and forcibly removed from her elementary school by local police for having a temper tantrum in class. 

A ten-year-od boy was dealing with sever emotional and behavioral disturbances.  Over a two-month period, other students harassed him multiple times.  James reported the harassment to school officials, to no avail.  A week after being choked by a student, James was knocked to the group by the same student while others watched and laughed.  Frustrated, angry, and frightened, James jumped to his feet shouting 'I could kill you.' When school officials called the police, James was removed from the school in handcuffs, placed alone in the back of a police van, and charged with making 'terroristic threats."


A ten-year-old girl found a small knife in her lunchbox, placed there by her mother, for cutting an apple.  She immediately gave the knife to her teacher, but was expelled from school for possessing a weapon.  

A teen in Georgia was expelled for violating school rules by talking to his mother (with whom he had not spoken in 30 days).  His mother was on deployment as a soldier in Iraq.

This is disturbing enough as it is (why is it so hard to treat students as PEOPLE?) but it gets worse when you consider that

• "nationwide, African American students are expelled at 3.5 times the rate of white students... and Latino students are almost twice as likely to be expelled as their white peers,"
• "children with mental and emotional disabilites are much more likely to be suspended, expelled, and arrested at school," 
• and that "students who are repeatedly suspended, or who are expelled, are likely to fall behind their peers academically, paving the way to eventual dropout." 

So now of course I think about my school.  I can think of students of mine that have been suspended, expelled, and arrested on school grounds in the past couple of weeks.  The article lists "after-school detention" as an effective alternative strategy for discipline, and it's so ridiculous that it's almost funny that our school has stopped holding detentions because our Dean of Students is also the Athletic Director and is now busy with basketball season (which is clearly the priority here, right?).  Students' behavior has gotten worse since they know there's no detention and teachers are frustrated by the lack of any middle-ground consequences available.  I have definitely seen students get suspended for infractions that merited only a detention.  And pretty much when students are suspended for 10 days or more, their grade is shot.

I still have mixed feelings on the automatic suspension policy for anything gang-related... how effective is it to send kids out onto the streets, aka further into the gang, when they're at their most vulnerable?  In my opinion, consequences for gang-related incidents should be paired with mandatory counseling or peer support groups that give students a space to actually discuss and explore with adult guidance the implications of joining or rejecting a gang.  The message currently given is something like "well now we know you're in a gang or considering joining one, so we're not going to let you come to school for the next 2 weeks.  Good luck completing your work by yourself.  You're really going to need luck on the tests you'll likely have when you return on material that you weren't around to learn.  You know, the top reasons for joining a gang are for a sense of belonging and for a sense of actually being successful at something... I don't see how you don't feel like you belong or can succeed at school.  But I'm not going to talk about it with you, since I don't talk about gangs." 

A friend at another west side high school shared that recently she gave her teacher a heads up that a particular student was having a rough day - rather than thinking "what can I do to check in with him or support him," his response was "well then maybe he shouldn't come to class today."  As teachers and educators, shouldn't it be our job to show students that school is a place of caring and understanding, not try to get them out of school at every slightest chance? 


Update: There is now a petition on change.org for a 6 year old girl in Georgia who was arrested at school for 'a temper tantrum.'  Her parents say Salecia has been traumatized by this experience. She's afraid to return to school and recently woke up in the middle of the night saying 'they are coming to get me.'