When Did Making Adults Mad Become A Crime

[Music]

foreign

[Applause]

when did make an adults mad become a

crime

not too long after i assumed the

juvenile court bench in 1999

i had what i call uh an emotional pause

you know when you experience something

or you hear

something that shocks your conscience it

overwhelms your senses seeming like

life has come to a standstill and then

as the surreal begins to transform back

into reality

the questions begin to form like how did

this happen

why did this happen how did we get to

this place in the road

well for me that moment occurred when my

i.t folks handed me some data that

confirmed my

anecdotal fears and that was that my

core was complicit in helping the police

and the school system criminalize

normal teenage behavior now i knew from

day one

you know i saw you know

you know that what looked like an

extraordinary number of kids in front of

me

charged with minor school offenses but

before i went running off to the school

system

in the police to complain i went to my i

t

folks and i said look and can you break

these numbers down for me

can i need to confirm whether or not

what i’m

seeing isn’t indeed reality and they did

and what they handed me shocked me

so much it put me into that emotional

pause

and this is what the data said number

one

that one-third of all the filings

delinquent filings

in my court came from the school system

the school system was by

far the largest feeder of delinquent

cases in my court

the data also showed that since putting

police on campus

that the number of kids arrested

increased by 2 700 percent

but that wasn’t the worst of it the

worst of it was that 92 percent

of those filings involve typical

normal teenage behaviors okay

i mean things that i did when i was a

teenager and i’m sure that most of you

did as well

i mean i disrupted the classroom from

time to time

you know acting like a class clown

wadding up paper throwing across the

classroom thinking i was funny

i got into school fights defending my

sister

a couple friends who were being bullied

and

on a serious note i did something that

caused the police and the fire

department to come out to the school

well that’s a story for another day but

here’s the thing

none of those things landed me in front

of a judge

none did so

what’s important is that

given the fact that the studies show

that

students who are arrested on campus are

twice as likely to drop out of school

and if they appear in court they’re four

times as likely

to drop out of school then it should not

surprise you

that our data revealed that as the

arrests on campus increase

the graduation rates fail and that by

the year 2003

they fell to an all-time low of 58

look how go the overuse of suspensions

expulsions and arrests so go graduation

rates

i mean who would ever think that keeping

kids in school

would increase graduation rates right

you know

you would think that this is not a novel

concept in education but the rest of the

story

is really what happened to the kids who

got kicked out of school or dropped out

you see there’s a simple algorithm in

the world of delinquency

prevention how go graduation rates

so go juvenile crime rates that’s why

education to us

folks in juvenile justice is so

important who would have thought that

the more kids we graduate the fewer kids

committing crimes

now this phenomena years ago came to be

called the school of prison pipeline the

pipeline works like this

zero tolerance policies push kids out of

school

into the streets and then into criminal

activity

now this phenomena was happening

obviously in my county

and my it folks showed me a graph with a

line

that showed graduation rates that were

dropping okay

all right while the juvenile crime rates

were going up

forming an x okay on the graph

now when you get an x on the graph that

strongly

suggests that there is a correlation

between those variables in this case

graduation graduation rates and juvenile

crime rates

but the truth in these numbers is that

our school systems harsh disciplinary

policies was contributing to the

increase in our crime rates

think about that paradox for a moment

let me put it to you another way that i

think my resume better

our school system whose mission it is of

course is to improve the quality of life

of its citizens

was implementing policies that victimize

those citizens

sadly the kids that were affected the

most were kids of color

see at the peak of our zero tolerance

system before we acted to dismantle it

a kid of color was 12 times more likely

to be arrested

on campus than his white peers and for

the same offense

the idea that zero tolerance policies is

racial neutral it’s a myth

it’s a lie but i knew i had to do

something about it

i mean everyone was cry intercepting

right there at the juvenile court

and so what i did is i gathered the

chiefs of police the school

superintendent

uh social services mental health i i

called upon the local chapter of the

naacp to come to the table because they

had to be there because it

was the people uh the the community of

color that was getting

hurt the most and so what we did is we

hammered out agreement took us nine

months that said

these particular delinquent offenses

we’re no longer going to rest kids on

this and we’re going to replace them

with positive interventions

this agreement is called the school

justice partnership

all right and it was the first of its

kind in this country

but within six months of implementing it

the number of school arrests fell

by 54 and today the number of arrests

are down

95 and no school safety hasn’t been

compromised

in fact it’s improved and not only that

but so has the community at large

because the juvenile crime rate has

fallen

80 percent but most importantly is our

felony finance you know the serious ones

that involve guns and

robberies and car thefts and burglaries

well they’re down 64 percent

and why did this happen well i’ll repeat

it again how go graduation rates so go

crime rates

you see when we got rid of those zero

tolerance policies that were pushing

kids out of school

our graduation rates began to climb

and between starting the school justice

partnership to 2011 they increased by 24

percent i say

2011 because that’s when the department

of education changed the

reporting formula for graduation rates

but since 2011

our graduation rates have continued to

climb increasing another 23 percent

and you know who’s benefiting from this

are kids of color

because today uh you know

our kids of color are just as likely as

a white kid to be arrested on campus not

two or three or whatever more times

likely just as likely

we have more kids of color graduating

high school today

and moving onward to a positive future

and not a prison

you know folks i’m convinced that the

most significant factor to prevent and

reduce delinquency

in any community is in how we treat our

kids

it was maslow who said if all you have

is a hammer

then everything looks like a nail and i

have found throughout my 22 years on the

juvenile court bench that

what worked to turn kids around was what

looked soft on crime

not what is considered tough on crime

why is it that america

incarcerates more children than any

other country in the world

what is it about our culture that we see

kids as nails and we go right for the

hammer

and i’m not going to attempt to answer

these questions they’re deep and

complicated

but rest assured we must change our

culture by adopting practices that are

empirically proven to work

even if they look soft on crime we must

pass laws and policies that are smart on

crime

not practices that look tough for the

sake of looking tough

and because they have no impact on crime

look

if reducing school arrests by 95 percent

leads to

decreasing juvenile crime how is that

soft on crime

we need to reframe in this country what

it means to be tough on crime

by measuring what we do by its impact

on crime does it create fewer victims

but i think the good news is that at

least as far as

school systems are concerned the school

justice partnership

is making a a difference because this

model has been replicated

with similar outcomes in jurisdictions

throughout about 41 states

in fact the state of north carolina just

recently passed legislation mandated my

school justice partnership model

so let me explain a little bit more as

to

how this works when it it involves

juveniles you have to understand

teenagers first of all begins with their

brains

the prefrontal lobe cortex which is

right there okay

is what translates emotion into logic it

is what helps us to resolve conflict

without resorting to physical

altercations

but get this it’s not developed till age

this teen brain science is so powerful

that it convinced the united states

supreme court

to abolish the death penalty in life

without the possibility parole for

teenagers you see we cannot hold

teenagers to the same standards as

adults

because they’re neurologically wired to

do stupid things despite the fact

that during the lifespan of a human the

time when our brains are functioning

at its maximum intellectual capacity

which is during the teen years

look i point to mark zuckerberg who by

the age of 20 created facebook

or in the brain of a 16 year old were

the first thoughts of the concept of law

of relativity

albert einstein and i even point to

taylor swift

yes taylor swift who left home at age 14

to go to nashville to start a music

career

but despite their intelligence and their

creativity

the three of them could not purchase

alcohol until age 21

and that’s because of the pre-frontal

cortex

so normal teens are prone to risk-taking

behaviors and making poor decisions

that’s the bottom line

but what about those kids who live in

poverty and struggle almost every day

with

with home and food clothing and other

insecurities

and who witness family violence and

violence in their neighborhoods

these are our children who suffer

adverse childhood experiences or

also known as childhood trauma while the

vast majority of students

in our system that were diverted away

from arrest

and they were placed in restorative

practices and educational workshops

okay there were still the 11 percent

that reoffended

a small number but still 11

and we want to know why so we

asked the parents of these 11 percent if

we could

administer the adverse childhood

experiences survey which measures the

level

of childhood trauma in people and we

found

that among the 11 percent 86

of them suffered from serious childhood

trauma in other words

they needed more than just restorative

practices in educational workshops

they needed clinical help and so we

didn’t want to give up on them

and by 2010 we created a non-profit

that assessed and treated those 11

so they too could graduate from high

school

that system we called the system of care

and it represented

they represented a shift from targeted

reactions to population-based prevention

and intervention in other words it was a

public health approach specifically

employing the epidemiology

model which because there’s two basic

facts

in the epidemiology approach number one

diseases don’t occur by chance

and number two they’re not randomly

distributed now i’m not saying

that disruptive behaviors of delinquent

behaviors are diseases of course they’re

not

but they do behave like diseases

like diseases delinquent behaviors and

disruptive behaviors don’t occur by

chance

they’re not randomly distributed which

means they can be studied to determine

their underlying causation look it was

my father who

who retired from cdc many years ago he

worked in

immunization once said to me he said son

the problem with you people in criminal

justice is that you punish the symptom

instead of treating the cause you see he

explained to me

that delinquent behaviors are a symptom

of something affecting the child

emotionally mentally

environmentally in other ways

he says so long as you respond to the

behaviors which are mere symptoms

you will never reduce recidivism and

this conversation led me to reframe how

we view juvenile delinquency

and how to reconfigure our system to be

smarter

and how to approach our kids who find

themselves in trouble

so in closing i want to share this

anecdotal story

that really captures how we changed our

system

jane is 15 years old she’s sitting in

school in class

and a boy i’ll call him johnny leans

over and says to her what he wants to do

to her sexually

well she gets upset shouts at him

the teacher miss jones admonishes

jane well she didn’t hear what johnny

said

but jane loses it and starts throwing

chairs at her

the sro which is for school resource

officer that is a uniform officer

who’s placed on campus goes running in

there

and has to restrain jane now in the old

days before the partnership

she would have been placed in the back

of patrol car after being handcuffed

and taken down to juvenile intake

likelihood of detainer for aggravated

assault on the teacher

but today we don’t we’ve included a

pause button

we ask why remember the epidemiology

approach

determining causation behavior is the

symptom

what caused the behavior and after about

an hour

by using crisis intervention skills that

he’s been trained in

jane confided in the school resource

officer that

her mother’s living boyfriend willie was

raping her every week

and worse yet she told the mom

and the mom didn’t believe her now you

can understand in jane’s world now

when johnny leaned over and said what he

wanted to do to her sexually given

what’s going on in her life

every week and you can understand why

she lost it with the teacher not that it

was the teacher’s fault but in

jane’s world there was not a single

adult that was helping her all she heard

the teacher

do was just admonish her and that was

enough

to trigger somebody with trauma but

here’s the rest of the story

jane did not go to detention she was

placed in protective custody

initially placed in foster care shortly

after i placed with the maternal

grandparents who did not like willie

and that i knew they could protect her

and guess what else

willie gets arrested and he’s now

in a state penitentiary serving 25 years

for aggravated child molestation

i ask you which system

is truly tough on crime is it mine that

looks soft

or the one that likes to punish the

symptom

really quick where there’s no time to

hit the pause button

and ask why you see folks today

we understand that when kids are hurting

their behavior becomes their language

like jane they’re talking to us adults

don’t you think it’s time that we simply

start listening

thank you