
A Teenager Didn’t Do Her Online Schoolwork. So a Judge Sent Her to Juvenile - paulpauper
https://www.propublica.org/article/a-teenager-didnt-do-her-online-schoolwork-so-a-judge-sent-her-to-juvenile-detention
======
nappa-leon
I think we as a society need to reevaluate what constitutes cruel and unusual.
And the way people justify all this cruelty because they "broke the law" shows
that they have entirely lost all empathy. America has effectively dehumanized
the idea of being a criminal, no matter how trivial or dumb the law is, to the
point where anything is justified, including slavery of those people.

~~~
qbaqbaqba
I disagree. It's not about her ignoring her obligation for doing her
schoolwork, it's about her not following the court's order. Law may be harsh
and fair in the same time. Being ordered to do her homework was a weak
sanction, she ignored it, so she needs a stronger stimulus. So law isn't dumb,
it's just consistent.

~~~
clawedjird
You should read the article. In short, she didn't actually ignore the court's
order to meet her academic obligations.

A law could be harsh, but fair, sure. However, an excessively harsh law is not
fair, nor is an inconsistently-enforced one. This situation ticks both of
those boxes.

> Being ordered to do her homework was a weak sanction, she ignored it, so she
> needs a stronger stimulus.

This simple-minded, old-fashioned line of thinking is out of touch with
contemporary scholarship and a major contributor to the US criminal justice
system's inefficacy.

------
WhyNotHugo
Title seems clickbaity. Apparently she was on probation for "assault and
theft", and attending school and doing homework was part of proving she was
behaving better.

If you've been put away for committing crimes, and the conditions for staying
free are doing your homework, you _better_ do you homework.

~~~
clawedjird
> If you've been put away for committing crimes, and the conditions for
> staying free...

Abstraction is often useful, but its application here seems reductionist to
the point of being deceptive.

This 15-yr-old girl (Grace) was not "put away for committing crimes" \- she
didn't narrowly avoid incarceration, then violate the terms of her parole. She
wasn't "put away," in the first place, because her "crimes" weren't worthy of
incarceration.

She got in a fight (hair-pulling and biting a finger) with her mother - who's
currently distraught that her daughter's not at home - and stole a cellphone
(which was later returned) from a schoolmate's locker.

> If ... the conditions for staying free are doing your homework, you _better_
> do you homework.

Grace was _allegedly_ locked up for not doing her schoolwork, however her
caseworker later mentioned that they didn't actually know (or even attempt to
check) whether or not her academic requirements were being met. Additionally,
her teacher stated that her performance was in line with most of the other
students in her class (despite her losing the extra academic support she
received due to her ADHD when her school switched to online classes). In any
case, she had definitely _not_ failed to meet the academic requirements
dictated by her school. I wonder how her studies are going now that she's
locked up.

I don't think the title seems "clickbaity" \- I think your comment seems like
a callous and misleading apology for authoritarianism. It brings to mind the
"Black Codes" [1] that were passed throughout the South, following the U.S.
Civil War - specifically policies related to vagrancy laws [2] and convict
leasing [3] - whereby many black Americans were _legally_ kept in conditions
similar to those of their prior enslavement. By making it illegal to exist
without a proven means of support (frequently only attainable via employment
on the plantations of former slaveholders), and instituting forced labor as a
punishment for committing said crime, Southern states were able to partially
perpetuate their antebellum social and economic structure.

Put differently, _If you 've been put away for not working the cotton fields,
and the conditions for staying free are working the cotton fields,
you_better_work the cotton fields._

1 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Codes_(United_States)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Codes_\(United_States\))

2 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagrancy#United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagrancy#United_States)

3 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convict_leasing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convict_leasing)

------
j_walter
Another oversimplification in the title of an article, but at least this one
removed the term "black teenager" like the article I had seen on Yahoo. Author
seems to have most information from the mother of the girl and less
information from the side of the court/case worker, so I take most with a
certain amount of skepticism. Does seem to be overkill especially in the time
of COVID, but at what point do you just let youth engage in certain behavior
without consequences? The girl seems troubled for sure and sees a therapist
regularly.

~~~
clawedjird
> at what point do you just let youth engage in certain behavior without
> consequences?

Uh, what? That's what you have to say about incarcerating a teenager with ADHD
amidst an unprecedented global pandemic???

Edit: I got so worked up, I for got to add the punch line: _...for not doing
their homework?!?!_

~~~
rumanator
You should really read the article. Even though it is terribly biased, it is
still clear that the teenager in question was put on probation for having been
found guilty of having committed some crime, and as part of the requirements
to be placed on probation the teenager was expected to attend school and meet
academic requirements.

Yet, the teenager failed to comply with those requirements, and therefore
violated the terms of the probation.

Consequently, the teen was jailed for having committed crimes.

~~~
clawedjird
I did read the article (I’m not sure what you mean by “it is terribly
biased”). I don’t think anyone here is questioning the logical chain of events
that led to this girl’s incarceration (I.e. arrest -> probation -> violation
-> incarceration). Presumably, anyone participating in this forum is able to
read.

The reason this is newsworthy is that the punishment seems completely out of
proportion with the “crime.” That remains true whether you consider the crime
to be not doing schoolwork (her teacher said, by the way, that her performance
was similar to most of her other students) or fighting with her mother
(pulling her hair and biting her finger) and stealing a fellow student’s cell
phone.

What’s worse, although she was supposedly incarcerated for not doing her
schoolwork, her caseworker filed a probation violation after she went back to
sleep after checking in for the day - not even bothering to check whether she
was keeping up with her academic requirements. Her caseworker also admitted
that they knew nothing about the her educational disability or the
accommodations she received because of it. Further, in response to Covid—19,
the court that decided to lock her up was supposed to be hearing only
“essential emergency matters,” and the governor of her state had encouraged
courts to send children home. Despite this, her case (based on a
misunderstanding) was apparently deemed an “essential emergency matter” and
her presence in the outside world considered risky enough to defy the
governor’s recommendation.

To me, this seems like an incredibly callous miscarriage of justice
facilitated by ignorance, incompetence, and negligence at multiple levels. The
fact that some authority has the power to exercise their authority in a
certain way has no bearing on whether that exercise of power is morally
justified, else we’d consider the actions of history’s most oppressive regimes
just.

------
mpoteat
It's worth keeping in mind that judges have a lot of leeway in determining the
conditions of probation. As well, a person is free not to agree to the terms,
and just do their time.

You don't have to break the law again to necessarily break probation.

~~~
kennywinker
Yes, judges have a lot of leeway, and that's how you get things like brock
turner's "good kid" sentence while a black teenager gets years for a minor
drug offense.

The US legal system also thrives on plea deals. Prosecutors charge people with
WAYY more than is fair, so the risk of going to court is too high (years in
jail) and defendants are bullied into plea deals that suck.

If you'd like to learn more about how messed up this system is, season 3 of
the podcast Serial is a pretty good starting place.

------
Smithalicious
Sent her to juvie for violating probation on assault and theft charges, mind.

~~~
kennywinker
The assault was a fight with her mother, and the theft was stealing stuff from
school. These are not things that make someone a threat to the general
public... or at least not enough to incarcerate someone during a pandemic -
something that has the VERY real potential to be a death sentence.

~~~
rumanator
> The assault was a fight with her mother, and the theft was stealing stuff
> from school.

Both crimes that are punishable by law with prison sentences.

~~~
clawedjird
Really? Probably not, if you're talking about her actual offenses and not
simply "assault" and "theft" in the abstract. Her age, coupled with the
relatively minor nature of her specific offenses (taking a phone from a fellow
student's locker, but ultimately returning it; taking a school iPad home
without permission; pulling her mother's hair and biting a finger - i.e. not a
premeditated attack using lethal force) point to the type of situation she was
already in - probation. Plenty of kids have done much worse and never even
enter the "system."

Unfortunately (or fortunately, I guess, if you're a sadist), an artifact of
the American criminal justice system is the potential for probation violations
to result in punishment which exceeds that of the original offense.

~~~
rumanator
> ? Probably not, if you're talking about her actual offenses and not simply
> "assault" and "theft" in the abstract.

There is no "Probably". This is a statement of fact. The crimes were serious
enough that they justified a prison sentence. The criminal was trialed, found
guilty by a jury, and sentenced.

Just because the criminal was put on probation that doesn't mean the crimes
committed by the criminal weren't serious offenses.

~~~
clawedjird
> There is no "Probably".

Either I'm missing something or you must be confused. It's extremely unlikely
that a young teenager would be sent to "prison" in the US for the crimes that
landed the girl in the article, "Grace," on probation. I used the word
"probably" only to account for unlikely possibility that, given the variation
in sentencing across US jurisdictions, a place exists where this might occur.

> This is a statement of fact. The crimes were serious enough that they
> justified a prison sentence.

This is obviously untrue. Did you read the article or any of the related news
coverage? Grace's crimes were not punishable by a prison term.

> The criminal was trialed, found guilty by a jury, and sentenced.

Where are you getting this false information? Grace was not tried and found
guilty by a jury. In fact, she wasn't even tried in a regular courtroom - this
entire process took place in _family court_. [1] For reference - out of almost
24,000 2018 Michigan family court cases involving juvenile offenders, less
than 0.01% went to trial (of those, only 12 - 0.0005% - were jury trials). [2]

Why are you making this stuff up?

1 - Family courts exist to solve legal problems involving youth and their
parents.

2 - [https://njdc.info/wp-content/uploads/Michigan-Assessment-
Web...](https://njdc.info/wp-content/uploads/Michigan-Assessment-Web.pdf)

------
Keverw
Sounds obsessive, and maybe even a ADA violations here if due to a learning
disability. Reminds me of that one judge that was doing that cash for kids
scandal. However sounds like Michigan is a police state right now, like for
example it's illegal to even buy seeds to garden in some cases, like if you
wanted to grow your own corn. A lot of overreach, something to keep in mind if
you were planning on moving.

~~~
dragonwriter
> like for example it's illegal right now to even buy seeds to garden

No, it's not.

In person sales of certain supplies in certain kinds of stores are prohibited.
The general ban is political misinformation (which is apparently still
circulating months after being both initially promoted and debunked.)

[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/14/fac...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/14/fact-
check-michigans-gretchen-whitmer-didnt-ban-flag-plant-sales/2990476001/)

~~~
s1artibartfast
I think it is interesting how much disagreement and misinformation there is on
even such a simple and verifiable fact. Neither side is presenting the issue
accurately. The governor did ban the sale of gardening supplies supplies by
stores over 50,000 sqft which were allowed to stay open and sell other goods.
Both sides are intentionally misrepresenting reality. One side posts about the
ban but conveniently omitted that it was not a complete ban. The other side
refutes the implicit claim of a general ban, and fails to acknowledge the
incomplete ban.

It is really scary how twisted the media presentation of simple facts has
become.

For example, Politifact states:

>In reality, executive order 2020-42, which went into effect April 9, 2020,
requires larger stores to block off certain areas of their sales floors as a
way of limiting the number of people in those stores. The order does not ban
gardening or the sale of any product, including, as we mentioned in a previous
fact-check, American flags.

Section 11.d.2.c of the executive order

[https://www.michigan.gov/whitmer/0,9309,7-387-90499_90705-52...](https://www.michigan.gov/whitmer/0,9309,7-387-90499_90705-52..).

>Close areas of the store—by cordoning them off, placing signs in aisles,
posting prominent signs, removing goods from shelves, or other appropriate
means—that are dedicated to the following classes of goods:... Garden centers
and plant nurseries.

