SAN FRANCISCO TAKES STEPS TO HELP KIDS WITH INCARCERATED PARENTS IN SCHOOL AND BEYOND
The San Francisco Chronicle has an excellent series focused on the people who arguably suffer the worst consequences of mass incarceration: the children of incarcerated parents (often shortened to CIPS).
Around 10 million kids in the US have parents who are currently locked up, or who have previously been incarcerated. Many of those kids have watched a parent get arrested. Having an parent behind bars increases the likelihood that a kid will come into contact with the justice system too.
In 2014, a UC Irvine study found that having a parent behind bars can be more damaging to a kid’s well-being than divorce or even the death of a parent. There are around 1,300 kids on any given day with a parent in jail or prison in San Francisco.
Students with incarcerated mothers and fathers are more likely to receive suspensions in school, and are more likely to drop out than their peers. CIPS need extra support at school, and often don’t receive it. Only 2% of kids with a locked-up mother graduate from college, compared with 40 of their peers without incarcerated parents, says report from Pew Charitable Trusts.
The SF Chron’s Jill Tucker takes a look at what San Francisco is doing to help kids heal trauma, cast off stigma, and have better educational outcomes.
San Francisco Unified’s school board members voted in March to create an updated curriculum and specific training for teachers, counselors, and other school staff in order to to support students with locked-up parents. Under the new curriculum, teachers may show videos and assign books with characters whose parents are incarcerated. The SFUSD will also hire a liaison between SF County Jail inmates and their children.
Through a group called Project WHAT!, kids with locked up parents actually helped the San Francisco school district develop the new policy. Project WHAT! pays kids an hourly wage to speak about their experiences with local officials, law enforcement, and lawmakers, to raise awareness and push for change.
Here’s a clip from the first story in the series:
For some, a parent’s imprisonment has more severe impacts. Researchers compare the trauma experienced to that associated with child abuse, domestic violence and divorce, and say it can lead to behavioral problems, low self-esteem and drug or alcohol abuse.
Though research is mixed, some studies indicate children of incarcerated parents are up to three times more likely to enter the criminal justice system themselves.
Children of color are disproportionately affected. One in 9 black children in this country has had an incarcerated parent, compared with 1 in 28 Latino children and 1 in 57 white children, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Yet instead of finding support in school, these children are often stigmatized. And many educators are ill-equipped to understand and deal with their situation, said Rachel Davis, managing director of the Prevention Institute in Oakland, which focuses on health equity and prevention of violence, trauma and chronic disease.
“They’re dealing with that day in and day out, and then we expect them to come into a classroom and learn,” she said.
The rate of failure for such students stunned San Francisco school district leaders when they began to examine the issue earlier this year.
In March, the school board took action. It adopted one of the first resolutions in the nation requiring its staff to address the impact of incarceration on children by, among other things, increasing training for counselors, teachers and staff.
The district also will develop curriculum that addresses the impact of incarceration, perhaps in health or civics classes. And it is adding questions about incarcerated parents to its annual anonymous student survey, which has been used to assess the presence of other risk factors, like violence, drugs and sex. School enrollment forms don’t identify which students are CIPs, and officials want to know where help and support are needed most.
Board President Matt Haney, who sponsored the measure, said these children are often “invisible victims.”
“Without their schools on their side,” he said, “things can be even worse.”
The second story in the series about CIPS highlights a program in San Francisco that allows inmates and their kids to have physical contact, read books, play games, and just hang out together for an hour and a half. Here are some clips:
County jails across the country restrict visits to opposite sides of a glass partition. Only a handful, including San Francisco’s main facility in San Bruno, allow contact visits between locked-up parents and their sons and daughters.
These kinds of visits cost more and raise security concerns, but research suggests they may benefit both the child and parent. Nonetheless, even as awareness grows about an overall lack of support for children of incarcerated parents, many jails are moving in the opposite direction, pushing for video-only visitation similar to Skype or FaceTime to save money.
Maintaining contact with a locked-up parent reduces anxiety and mental health issues among the children while reducing recidivism among the parents, according to “Shared Sentence,” a recent study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a Baltimore organization focused on child health and welfare.
For inmates, just one family visit of any kind can reduce recidivism by 13 percent, according to a 2011 Minnesota Department of Corrections study of 16,000 inmates.
[SNIP]
San Francisco Sheriff Vicky Hennessy is a fan of the program.
Any extra costs are worth it, she said, because the visits keep inmates connected to their children and the outside world.
“When they eventually get out — and we have to understand, these people get out — this contributes to public safety,” Hennessy said. “It’s not a silver bullet, but what we can say is we’re trying to build better people.”
LAPD COMMISSION SAYS THREE OFFICERS WERE UNJUSTIFIED IN TWO CONTROVERSIAL SHOOTINGS
On Tuesday, the LA Police Commission found three officers involved in the fatal shootings of two mentally ill people to be in violation of use-of-force policy.
Last year, in September, two officers shot Norma Guzman, after she walked toward officers brandishing a knife, and yelled “shoot me.”
The first officer, who was closest to Guzman, was equipped with neither his Taser (which he left in the radio car), or his side handle baton or Hobble Restraint Device.
Because the officer was in danger of serious bodily injury or death, Chief Charlie Beck found both officers’ actions to be justified, but the Inspector General found fault with the actions of the first officer. (The second officer was in training, and did not make the tactical mistakes of his training officer, the OIG found.)
The OIG faulted the officer for failing to establish a plan that involved less-than-lethal force options, and for failing to “redeploy” from the vulnerable position in which the officer had placed himself as the woman advanced on him. The police commission agreed with the OIG decision on Tuesday, finding fault with the officer’s use of deadly force.
A week after the death of Guzman, two LAPD officers shot James Joseph Byrd, a schizophrenic homeless man, after the man threw a 40 ounce beer bottle through the rear window of their patrol car in Van Nuys.
The officers said they believed they were being ambushed and shot at when their window shattered. Byrd was not found to have a gun. The LAPD commission faulted both officers involved for shooting Byrd. Chief Beck found the shooting to be within policy, but not the 11 additional rounds the officers shot at Byrd.
Now Chief Beck must decide if (and what) disciplinary action will be taken against the three officers.
http://vimeo.com/56609710
LA’S CHILD WELFARE CZAR LOOKS BACK ON THE LEGACY OF ICONIC LA SUPERVISOR ED EDELMAN
Last Monday, former LA County Supervisor Ed Edelman passed away. He was 85 years old. Edelman served as a member of the board of supervisors from 1975 to 1994. During his 20 years on the board, Edelman focused his attention on issues like homelessness, law enforcement accountability, and child welfare, and successfully pushed for the creation of a children’s dependency court tailored to the needs of abused and neglected kids. Edelman also established the county’s Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) as we know it.
LA County’s child welfare czar, Judge Michael Nash, served in the Edmund D. Edelman Children’s Court for more than two decades. Nash was appointed LA County’s first director of LA County’s Office of Child Protection after 20 years of presiding over the Los Angeles Juvenile Court and supervising the Juvenile Dependency Court.
Writing for the Chronicle of Social Change, Nash explains the importance of the children’s court—“the most unique court of its kind”—and the well-loved Edelman’s legacy. Here’s a clip:
The Edmund D. Edelman Children’s Court opened in Monterey Park, Calif., in July 1992. I served there from the day it opened until my retirement from the bench in January 2015. The Children’s Court was built because of Ed’s advocacy. He said that it was important for Los Angeles County to have a courthouse that was friendly and sensitive to the needs of abused and neglected children whose cases are heard in our juvenile dependency courts. The Children’s Court was then and still is today the most unique court of its kind in the world.
With its 25 courtrooms, the Children’s Court sits at the top of a hill with a panoramic view of the San Gabriel Mountains. Except for a small satellite court in the Antelope Valley, it hears all of L.A. County’s cases of abuse and neglect of children. Currently, there are approximately 30,000 children under the court’s jurisdiction compared to close to 60,000 in 1992.
Ed’s vision for a child-sensitive facility was accomplished in three ways. First, everything about the court — from its title to its design, décor and services — sends the message that this is a facility that is about and for children and families. Second, these same features, which include the courtrooms, the children’s waiting area known as shelter care and the open, spacious and bright public waiting area, make the courthouse comfortable and friendly to the children, families and others who must be there. Third, recognizing that every child who comes to the court is a victim of abuse and/or neglect, a child-friendly courthouse that values them, welcomes then and listens to them, can contribute to the healing process that they all must go through.
An hour long PBS documentary narrated by Tom Brokaw, “The Passions and Politics of Ed Edelman,” aired in 2013. (You can watch the whole thing here.)
Guzman shooting: Evidently, the Police Commission lives in a fantasy world where every incident can be solved less lethal force. Yes, the officers should of had a taser with them as an additional force option. Based on the suspect’s actions, lethal force was clearly the only reasonable option the officers had minus not responding to call.