6 The Hampton Roads Messenger License Plates FROM PAGE 1


similar concerns have been raised for bar codes,” the report stated. Then the study goes on to map


ways around the law, which specifically refers to “federal law or regulation.”


“By limiting the information


contained in a bar code or RFID tag to the license plate type and number, Virginia would alleviate the concerns.”


Still, the report cautions: “Because the IT infrastructure


necessary to support the technology is so extensive and the implementation costs cannot be reliably estimated, (we) could not recommend immediate adoption.”


The ACLU and Whitehead’s


group – which don’t always align politically – both say the idea should be stopped now.


The Rutherford Institute is


defending a Texas high school student who refused to wear a micro-chipped student ID on the grounds that it violated her religious beliefs, likening it to the “mark of the beast.”


“The (microchip) company


made a half-million dollars at this one school. It’s just a big money-making thing,” Whitehead asserted.


The complete list of 35


“stakeholders” who constituted the Virginia “working group” has not been disclosed.


Volume 7 Number 5


January 2013


The Shocking Details of a Mississippi School-to-Prison Pipeline


BY JULIANNE HING Cedrico Green can’t exactly


House Transportation Committee Chairman Joe T. May.


While some law-enforcement


agencies say “smart plates” would help them track lost or missing vehicles, Whitehead says police already are scanning license plates.


“This information is being put


into a central database even as we speak. Chances are, your license has already been swept.”


As for authorities’ concern that


vehicles bearing weathered or framed tags could be difficult to decipher, Whitehead has an easy answer.


“Just pull them over,” he says.


Delegate May said lawmakers will proceed carefully. “We’re gradually learning how


to write legislation so that it protects private information,” he told the Washington Times. “Virginia’s one of those states where we don’t rush into things. We’re going to make certain it’s right.”


Girls with Goals Alliance Luncheon to Be Held in Portsmouth


Second Annual Awards and Recognition Luncheon celebrates mentoring pro- gram, created to develop and guide girls and young women in Hampton Roads.


PORTSMOUTH, VA –Celebrating


National Mentoring Month, The Girls with Goals Alliance (GWGA) is having its second annual luncheon on Saturday, January 26, 2013 at 12:00 noon at the Renaissance Portsmouth Hotel and Conference Center Portsmouth, VA 23704. The luncheon will recognize and celebrate the success of the mentors, mentees, and community members who have made contributions to the program. An estimated 300 girls and women from several Hampton Roads women’s and youth organizations will be in attendance. Tickets are $35 for adults and $20 for youth (under 18).


Need help with


Proceeds benefit GWGA programs. Every year, the Girls with Goals


Alliance program manage up to15 mentor/mentee pairs. The program aims to increase awareness of educational, cultural, recreational, and career opportunities. The organizations is committed to promoting self-confi- dence, academic excellence, the need for creating strong community ties and personal accountability to name only a few.


The program targets young women


your bottom line? Advertise in the


Hampton Roads Messenger Call (757) 575-1863


ages 9-18 living in the Hampton Roads area to help prevent high school drop-out rates, drug use, teen pregnancy, violent or criminal behavior. Young women get the chance to develop one-on-one relationships with their mentors. Mentors are required to be at least 25 years or older. Volunteers ages 21-24 years old will have the opportunity to participate in the “Mentor Assist” program. GWGA is looking for girls ready to learn from accomplished women with a heart to serve our youth.


Call 877-252-3677 or


visit www.girlswithgoalsal- liance.com for sponsorship opportunities information.


or Tell us about your


Church programs Churches@hamptonroadsmessenger.com


ticket


remember how many times he went back and forth to juvenile. When asked to venture a guess he says, “Maybe 30.” He was put on probation by a youth court judge for getting into a fight when he was in eighth grade. Thereafter, any of Green’s school-based infractions, from being a few minutes late for class to breaking the school dress code by wearing the wrong color socks, counted as violations of his probation and led to his immediate suspension and incarceration in the local juvenile detention center.


But Green wasn’t alone. A bracing


Department of Justice lawsuit filed last month against Meridian, Miss., where Green lives and is set to graduate from high school this coming year, argues that the city’s juvenile justice system has operated a school to prison pipeline that shoves students out of school and into the criminal justice system, and violates young people’s due process rights along the way.


In Meridian, when schools want to


discipline children, they do much more than just send them to the principal’s office. They call the police, who show up to arrest children who are as young as 10 years old. Arrests, the Department of Justice says, happen automatically, regardless of whether the police officer knows exactly what kind of offense the child has committed or whether that offense is even worthy of an arrest. The police department’s policy is to arrest all children referred to the agency.


Once those children are in the


juvenile justice system, they are denied basic constitutional rights. They are handcuffed and incarcerated for days without any hearing and subsequently warehoused without understanding their alleged probation violations.


“[D]efendants engage in a pattern


or practice of unlawful conduct through which they routinely and systematically arrest and incarcerate children, including for minor school rule infractions, without even the most basic procedural safeguards, and in violation of these children’s constitutional rights,” the DOJ’s 37-page complaint reads. Meridian’s years of systemic abuse punish youth “so arbitrarily and severely as to shock the conscience,” the complaint reads.


The federal lawsuit casts a wide


net in indicting the systems that worked to deny Meridian children their constitutional rights. It names as defendants the state of Mississippi; the city of Meridian; Lauderdale County, which runs the Lauderdale County Youth Court; and the local Defendant Youth Court Judges Frank Coleman and Veldore Young for violating Meridian students’ rights up and down the chain.


The DOJ’s complaint also charges


that in the course of its eight-month investigation the city blocked the inquiry by refusing to hand over youth court records. Attorneys for city officials deny that claim, and say they are bound by law to protect the confidentiality of youth who’ve been through the system and so cannot share their records with the federal government.


‘Judge, Jury and Executioner’ The DOJ’s lawsuit, despite its


bombshell revelations for the rest of the country, has been a long time coming. Groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the NAACP have been concerned about Meridian for years.


The SPLC’s inquiry into Meridian


began in 2008, when attorneys started hearing reports of “horrific abuse” of youth housed in juvenile detention centers, said Jody Owens, managing attorney of the SPLC’s juvenile justice initiative in Mississippi. Advocates learned that 67 percent of youth in detention centers arrived there from the Meridian school system, Owens said. In between school and detention, students were denied access to counsel and due process, and many were never made aware of what they were even being arrested for. “The administrators were the judge, jury and executioner,” Owens said.


This practice has also appeared to


target black students. Meridian, a city of 40,000 people, is 61 percent Afri- can-American. But over a five-year period, Owens said, “There was never once a white kid that was expelled or suspended for the same offense that kids of color were suspended for.”


Among the infractions that


landed Green, who is black, in juvenile detention were talking back to a teacher, wearing long socks and coming to school without wearing a belt. He was behind bars for stretches of time as long as two weeks, and the real rub, his mother Gloria said, is that weekends didn’t count as days served. A 10-day suspension stretched to 14 actual days; time for Meridian juvenile justice officials apparently stopped on weekends. All that back and forth out of school and in juvenile took a real toll on Green’s education, and he was held back from the eighth grade.


“It was mind-boggling,” Gloria


Green said. “My son loved school and to be kicked out as much as he was, one year he just couldn’t catch up.”


“We did everything we know to


do. I went over to the school and got make-up work, and he still failed two subjects and at that point I didn’t know which way what my child was going to go.”


“We talk about the school to


prison pipeline and it’s often an abstract thing,” said Shakti Belway, an attorney who worked closely with families on the Meridian case for the Southern Poverty Law Center. “But here it is literally happening over ridiculous, minor charges.” Indeed, children as young as elementary school students have been taken directly from school and forced to serve school suspensions inside a jail cell. In its complaint, the DOJ charged the city’s police department with operating a de facto


SCHOOL-TO-PRISON PAGE 14


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