New developments in case of black teenage girl who got 7 yrs. for shoving hall monitor...

[LiberalHeart]

This will take you to the first article on the case and to yesterday's stories about what has happened since that first report. The case involves 14-year-old Shaquanada Cotton, a black girl from Texas who was put behind bars for 7 years for shoving a hall monitor, while a white teen got probation for burning down the family home:

http://newsgrinder.blogspot.com/2007/03/white-teen-burns-down-family-home-gets.html

[Tyler Durden]

1. Why does this suprise you?

Two words: Amerika, Texas.

[LiberalHeart]

3. Doesn't surprise me; does infuriate me.

[Tyler Durden]

4. I may have to tune down my outrage a little.

It's starting to leak into everything I do. My temper has become very short, and the headaches are coming back.

[LiberalHeart]

7. I went through that a few years ago -- it was debilitating.

It hit me as we were going to war in Iraq, and well into the war -- but in recent months I've seen the tide turning and feel healthier. A long way to go, but still I do see signs of hope and am able to tame my fury a bit as a result (but about some things -- like this story -- I see fury as the only appropriate reaction, and healthy).

I wish you well.

[Tyler Durden]

8. I wish I had your optimism.

Every time I see another rePuke travesty unfold, I'm starting to ask myself "What con job are they running this time, and what HOLOCAUST is it distracting us from?"

The second boot is made of granite, and it falls square on my head every time.

[LiberalHeart]

9. But don't you see there's an unraveling?

People I know who believed Bush would protect us and lead us to a stronger America now see what a screw up he and his crew have been. That, to me, is progress -- and something I had no hope of ever seeing again as recently as last summer. But there's a sea change underway, in my view. It seems like there's something new every day that opens eyes and causes many to adjust their thinking about what we've been through as a country since 2000.

[Tyler Durden]

10. Oh I see it. I'm just getting tired.

I've been fighting this war since 1969, and it just keeps getting WORSE.

Everything and everybody wears out after a while. When you start daydreaming about cooking on the grill while drinking a beer at 6:30 AM, it starts feeling like a warning.

[B Calm]

2. and Tom Delay walks free.. Texas Justice

[gaspee]

5. Her case reads like a bad movie

Sometimes all I can do is shake my head and wonder why we all think this is such a great country. Day after day stories like this girl's are out there; people with no power crused by the system while real criminals run the whole damn country.

[Eric J in MN]

6. Yeah, but like a movie set decades ago.

One would hope that punishment was more appropriate to the offense in the 21st century.

But "zero tolerance" which conservatives brought us is synonymous with inappropriate levels of punishment.

[WinkyDink]

23. "Zero tolerance" except for their own crimes. Same with denigrating lawyers.

[ThomCat]

11. I want to shake someone and demand to know why

this kind of blatant racist injustice is allowed to happen. x(

People who buy into the mythology that this is the greatest country on earth are wearing blinders. They're choosing to be ignorant fools. Unfortunately, there is no greatest country on earth, but if there was, we wouldn't be it.

[ddeclue]

12. Did the hall monitor die or something? Geezz

7 years is crazy. This has to be something that can be overturned - it's extremely excessive...

Doug D.

[Joe Chi Minh]

13. What is the matter with these people. Not this person - people. It must have

taken police and a whole court to bring such unparalelled - yes, truly unparalleled - madness and shame on the US.

Wall Quimby, thou shoulds't be living now! Except that this farce is anything but funny.

I tell a lie. I remember that in the UK before the war, unmarried mothers were sometimes sent into mental institutions, and a five year-old boy, for stealing an apple. At the age of 60+, he was too institutionalised to want to leave.

I think the last one matches your turn of the 21st century insanity.

[nosmokes]

14. PARIS- The Best Small Town in TEXAS! talk about damning w/ faint praise...

good grief, what an injustice. i hope the review gets that poor girl out that hell soon. like by the end of today. but i can't help wonder why thatjudge is still employed.

[VelmaD]

15. she was not sentenced to 7 years

That's not how the system works in Texas...and I know because I work in it. She was given an indeterminate sentence to TYC. Which currently means she was given a Minimum Length of Stay. Probably about 9 months as a general offender. Which means if she works the program she would be out in 9 months. If she does not work the program, then she would stay longer...up to her 21st birthday if she doesn't progress and is very assaultive. But it is highly unlikely that she will be incarcerated until she turns 21. Most youth don't end up staying in the system that long.

I just wish people would get it right. But I guess it's easier and more inflammatory to misrepresent the situation.

That said, the other kid should be behind bars too.

[kiahzero]

17. She was sentenced to as long as the system feels like, or 7 years.

Basically, if you're a good little drone, you get out "early."

Civil rights advocates have long been concerned that Texas' system of indeterminate sentences for youths places too much discretion in the hands of prison authorities, who retain the power to hold or release youths at will. Now the sex scandal--and the concern that some victimized youths may have been threatened with longer detentions to keep them quiet--has prompted Kimbrough to examine the entire practice.

Nearly 90 percent of juveniles incarcerated inside Texas youth prisons were sent there on indeterminate sentences that could run as long as their 21st birthdays. But many of those inmates become eligible for release after serving only nine months, if prison authorities are satisfied that they have completed all the steps, or "phases," of an elaborate behavioral modification program.

"The system is wide open for abuse and corruption," said the ACLU's Harrell. "How difficult would it be for a 12-year-old kid to file a complaint on an assistant superintendent of a facility when that assistant superintendent is actually the one who is sexually abusing her and that same person gets to decide when she gets out? Basically the official gets to say, 'Comply and keep quiet or I'll keep you here until you're 21.' "

[VelmaD]

20. Do you know why Texas uses indeterminate sentencing?

While I agree that it is open to abuse and rights violation problems...there is actually a reason. The whole idea in the juvenile system is supposed to be rehabilitating the youth rather than just warehousing them. There is the concern that if you just tell a kid "you have to serve x number of days" then they'll just sit there until they're release date and not actually do any of the work involved in rehabilitation. Basically, it would turn the youth system into a copy of the adult system where inmates just sit there.

The complicated problem is how to address both sides of this issue and come up with a system that encourages youth to work on rehabilitation while still ensuring that they don't spend an excessive amount of time in it.

[kiahzero]

21. And clearly Texas is failing in solving that problem.

Of course, none of this addresses the main issue: the determination that this kid somehow needed a prison sentence, which seems to be motivated largely by race.

[VelmaD]

25. Oh absolutely...

just like in the adult system, the juvenile prisons (as well as the county juvenile lockups) have WAY more African-American and Hispanic kids in them than in the general population. That's partly pure D racism and partly because the majority of TYC kids come from the biggest counties...which, as urban areas, have a higher percentage of minority youth than most of the smaller counties. Blame that on white flight. And blame the racism behind the hanging judge/get "tough" on crime mentality that drives many of the big city judges.

There are some other factors that come into play, and racism impacts them as well. Like the ability to hire a good lawyer, the perception of "parental involvement", and whether or not the kid can get a psychologist somewhere to diagnose them to get them into "treatment" rather than jail.

[Richard Steele]

24. Yes, exactly so. Pennsylvania operated the same way when I was a teenager.

Many states do; I'm not certain of the exact number.

I'm certain it's a better system than simply telling
a kid he'll automatically be released on a certain date.

[LiberalHeart]

22. She's already been locked up 10 months. So much the minimum, eh?

[Madspirit]

39. Give it up Velma

We're Texans. They aren't. They like to make things up. The TYC does not have the power to do what people are claiming. They just like to bash our state, facts be damned.
Lee

[ecstatic]

48. well sorry, 10 months is still way too long

considering the same judge gave someone else probation for burning down a house!! Your state deserves bashing if cases like this are the norm. Apologizing and/or making excuses for TX makes you part of the problem.

[Madspirit]

49. self-delete and moved down n/t

[Lydia Leftcoast]

41. But why is she incarcerated at all?

In my day (the 1960s) shoving a hall monitor would have gotten you detention, maybe a suspension if the hall monitor was injured. But the police would not have been brought in unless the student was clearly out of his/her mind or had killed the hall monitor.

[slackmaster]

54. In the early 60s a kid would have gotten paddled for it

California outlawed corporal punishment in schools in 1963. It was still being used in New Mexico when I attended an elementary school for sixth grade there in 1968-69.

[slackmaster]

53. More information about the actual sentence

"Under the sentence handed down by Lamar County Judge Chuck Superville, she will remain at the facility until she meets state rehabilitation standards or reaches her 21st birthday...."

Whatever the heck that means.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070328/D8O4S6AO0.html

[Tsiyu]

16. We need to replace a lot of judges

Our justice system is screwn.

the color of justice is GREEN.

Many, many judges across this nation should be thrown out on their asses and replaced with those who can see the humanity and protect the rights of EVERYONE.

[WindRavenX]

18. 7 years???

:wtf:

[Tsiyu]

19. So there are sexual predators in the facility where she is housed

still working there, still collecting their paycheck, but her sentence was extended BECAUSE SHE HAD AN EXTRA PAIR OF SOCKS IN HER CELL???????????

People, this is unbelievable.

What are we doing to our kids?

I'd like to lock the Judge up with a bunch of sexual predators and see if he thinks that's a great way to reform a gal who merely shoved someone.

From the sound of it, this judge and many in Texas and in the rest of the nation are ignorant freaks. It makes me so unbelievable angry.

[VelmaD]

27. she was not extended for...

having an extra pair of socks. That by itself is not enough to get a youth's length of stay extended. It's not enough, by itself, to impact a youth's phase. TYC has two categories of "incidents"...Category 1 for serious incidents (like hitting a staff, hitting another youth, throwing bodily fluids at someone, or possessing drugs or weapons). Committing one of these acts can result in a loss of phase or even a formal extension of minimum length of stay (subject to a formal hearing). Having an extra pair of socks falls into the lower level of incidents...Category 2. This is for more minor things like failure to follow instructions, contraband that istn't weapons or drugs, and disrupting the program. A single category 2 does not impact a youth's phase. That requires multiple category 2s within a limited time span (phase is evaluated monthly).

[Horse with no Name]

29. One of the mitigating infractions was having too much

paint in her cup during art. Another was wearing a skirt an inch too high.
I'm inclined to believe that this girl has had a target on her back and possibly with the exclusion of yourself, TYC is just another corrupt agency in Texas who cannot be trusted to tell the truth about anything. Their corruption has been all over the news cycle for the past couple of weeks and I am not inclined to believe anything they might say.

[VelmaD]

30. the paint and skirt thing didn't happen at TYC...

they happened prior to that in her school. And frankly, I find it ridiculous that they were brought up in her trial/hearing.

And as for corruption in TYC, yes it exists. Any time you have charge of kids, you will get people appyling for jobs who are predators (same with teachers and coaches and the like). TYC should have been doing a better job weeding those people out.

BTW, there are a lot of good people working for TYC. A lot of people who really care about these kids and view working with them as a life's calling. (I know...that stunned me when I figured it out.) But, the job is difficult and made more so by a long-term lack of funding, difficulty hiring and retaining sufficient numbers of qualified and good staff, and a prison design forced on us by a government that wanted to build prisons on the cheap. (If you're got a few hours you don't have anything to do with...find a TYC employee and ask them what they think about 96-bed open-bay dorms.)

[Horse with no Name]

31. I know

it was one of the things that got her sent to TYC.
But as an aside, I am glad to hear that there are some in there that do care.

[VelmaD]

33. the whole story has me befuddled

I cannot figure out how a judge made the decision to send this kid to TYC given just the information in the articles. It doesn't make sense for me. TYC already suffers from over-crowding at many facilities and we're supposed to only get the kids that either commit serious offenses or chronic offenders that they haven't been able to deal with at the local level. This girl doesn't appear to fit either of those deescriptions.

That said, TYC doesn't have any say in who gets sent here. We can only deal with them once we have them. The people locally need to do something about this judge. And people in cities all across Texas would be well served to involve themselves a lot more in this type of thing. People with power will engage in all sorts of nonsense when they know the citizens aren't paying attention. And it usually takes it hitting the newspaper before anyone even pretends to care.

[LiberalHeart]

36. You have the insider's view and it's good to hear what you have to say.

What's the best ... and the worst ... thing you saw on the job?

[VelmaD]

37. the worst thing I ever saw...

didn't involve a kid. I was delivering surveys to staff on the night shift at an institution and ran into a staff member at the end of her rope. It's been years and I don't remember the particulars of her problem...but she was angry and sad and just overwhelmed to have someone from central office to tell it all to. In second place for the worst...I was doing a survey of the kids in one of the schools. The teacher in one classroom had just congratulated the kids on doing the survey with no acting out...when two kids started a fight. One hit the other in the head and head injuries, even when not severe, bleed a lot.

The best thing I ever saw happened just a couple of weeks ago. One of our youth was invited to central office for a retirement celebration for one of the staff. She read a poem that had been written by another TYC youth several years ago. It was intense. It was a youth turning all the pain that had been heaped on him in his young life into art. I cried. It's not up on the TYC web page but I highly recommend hitting this site anyway:
http://www.tyc.state.tx.us/programs/by_youth.html

One of my other favorite moments was hearing that several of our male youth at San Saba had won prizes for baked goods at the local county fair. :) (I bake as a hobby and I'm trying to get them to do the kids' recipes as a cookbook.)

on edit: It's hard to be on the inside right now. It's hard to talk about what I know and how I feel about everything happening at my agency. It's nice to have places to do that and not get jumped on. :)

[Tsiyu]

42. That's what the article said:

According to the Chicago Tribune: (emphasis mine)

"Cotton, now 15, has been incarcerated at a youth prison in Brownwood, Texas, for the last year on a sentence that could run until her 21st birthday. But like many of the other youths in the system, she is eligible to earn earlier release if she achieves certain social, behavioral and educational milestones while in prison.

But officials at the Ron Jackson Correctional Complex have repeatedly extended Shaquanda's sentence because she refuses to admit her guilt and because she was found with contraband in her cell--an extra pair of socks."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070326juveniles,0,702743.story?coll=chi-newsspecials-hed&?track=sto-relcon

You can read me the entire Texas State Code and it won't make a bit of sense to me. It's a tragic sentence to begin with.

She is locked up in a facility with serious allegations of sexual predators being employed by the facility.

There is nothing in your recitation of the rules that makes any of this sound better to me.

I am disgusted.


Edited to add link and to ask Velma: did you work on this specific case?

[VelmaD]

46. I do not work on specific cases...

I work in the central office. And what I'm telling you is that there has to be more to the story than what's in that article. Is it officials at Ron Jackson saying that's why the young woman is still in TYC...or is it what her family is saying...or what her family is saying they've been told?

All I'm saying is that in terms of behavior phase...having contraband that is not drugs or a weapon is not sufficient to demote a youth in phase. Now...her unwillingness to admit that she committed the act that got her adjudicated to TYC...yes, that could impact her movement through the Correctional Therapy phases. And I've always had a problem with that since I have no doubt that there are kids in TYC who are innocent and it can really fuck them over in terms of length of stay.

on edit: I'm going to get something off of my chest. There have been a lot of small factual errors in many of the stories that have been published about TYC recently. I have no doubt some bad things have been going on in my agency. But when reporters can't be bothered to check basic facts, like people's actual job titles, it makes me suspicious about whether or not they check bigger, more important facts.

[Tsiyu]

47. I agree with you on fact-checking

but unless you have actually worked on this specific case, you can't really speak to what's going on any more than a reporter without all the facts.

I understand your desire to paint your agency in the best possible light. Decent people do not want to work for corrupt employers, and I think you are a very decent person from your posts here at DU.

But I urge you to remember, there is probably more to these kids' cases than you even want to know as to treatment, sexual victimization and arbitrary extensions of length of incarceration.

It's best to have open eyes all the way around, whether from the inside or the outside, and to keep the pressure on so that we can reform this system. And Texas is no worse than any other state when it comes to this crap. There are towns all over America doing the same damned thing to their kids based on bigotry and a false idea of what constitutes justice.

Thanks for your input on this thread.

:hi:

[Nikki Stone1]

26. I wonder if it would help to send this to Oprah

...

[Horse with no Name]

28. I sent it to Oprah last week

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Horse%20with%20no%20Name/31

and just for kicks
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Horse%20with%20no%20Name/32

[Nikki Stone1]

32. GREAT. Did she respond?

??

[Horse with no Name]

34. Not yet

But I am hoping.

[LiberalHeart]

35. Sooo glad you sent it to her. Here's hoping something happens.

[Nikki Stone1]

51. me too!

That sentence is ridiculous

[malaise]

38. Seven years?

Are these fuggers mad?

[ChairmanAgnostic]

40. but hey, she's black and VIOLENT!

I swear, every time that I think it can't get any worse, some shit like this appears. I am sure that this is in part due to some asshole GOP pol who wears his anti-crime agenda like a an american flag on his lapel.

unbelievable. but, all too believable.

[NorthernSpy]

43. .. whereas the white girl who committed arson on an inhabited structure is merely troubled...

... hence the mild probation sentence imposed by the same judge who sent the other girl away for up to seven years.

Hell of a double standard, ain't it? Apparently, the concept of proportionality has gone right out the window.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

44. Hey, if you are GOP leader's son, you can anally assault kids in camp

and get away with it. Wasn't that the case in Arizona?

[juno jones]

45. TYC..

..aren't they the same ones caught up in the sex scandal?

[Madspirit]

50. Show Me!!

Show me this wouldn't happen in another state. Show me. Also, you're talking to someone old. I lived in progressive Cambridge and Boston during the busing riots. Crap happens...everywhere. I NEVER defend us when it's a valid complaint. Talk about our death penalty and I will be right on board with you. ...but I see stories from all over the United States with this overboard crap with kids, these days....six year old arrested for touching teacher's breast...six year old. Stuff like this is what we do. We go from one extreme to the other extreme in our culture. We love "backlash". ...but it's not just Texas. Bash us when we deserve it...and then discuss it like an intelligent adult discussing The Problems of Law and Society....not like an idiot bigot who just wants to bash some place because it's associated with some bad politicians. It's also associated with Barbara Jordon, Molly Ivins, Ann Richards, Jim Hightower, etc...and many DU members. Bigotry is bigotry and you solve nothing the way this has been approached. ...and Bush was born in Connecticut.
Lee

[kdpeters]

52. At the risk of being off-topic and nitpickety ...

Just how far are we supposed to have to dig to get to the point? This is the second post voted to the greatest page about this topic, yet neither one ever mention the arson by a white teen in the body of the post. Like the last article, a blog post that doesn't say a thing about it is linked to. This time I dug one more level only to have an entire page of the Chicago Tribune article make no mention of it either! What gives? Is it relevant or not? If it is, why so hard to find out what the point is here? If you're not going to make the point here on DU, why post at all?

Racism in the justice system? Are you kidding me? Is that supposed to be shocking or news or anything different than the justice system everyday everywhere else? What is it about these two cases that highlights something better than what I already know myself? Was it the same judge on the same day? Now THAT would be useful to clearly illustrate the racism in the system to those who would still deny it.

What gives? What's the point and why so hard to find out?