The State of Texas is locking up scores if teenages -- mostly poor blcak and hispanic kids -- for skipping school. In the process they are making the already hard lives of these poor kids immeasurably harder.
... more than 1,000 Texas teenagers who have been ordered to jail in the last three years on charges stemming from missing school, a BuzzFeed News investigation has found. The students get locked up with adults, sometimes inmates charged with assault, robbery and other violent crimes.
The overwhelming majority of students charged are poor, and most are black or Hispanic. Students are not sentenced to jail for missing school outright but rather for failing to follow court orders associated with their truancy charges. Many students have found themselves in a teen version of debtors prison, locked up because their families did not or could not pay steep fines stemming from their original truancy charge. ...
http://www.buzzfeed.com/kendalltagg...to-adult-jail-for-skipping-school#.ehpvXW4lW9
Yet another example of how red states continue to stack the deck against the usual suspects.
... more than 1,000 Texas teenagers who have been ordered to jail in the last three years on charges stemming from missing school, a BuzzFeed News investigation has found. The students get locked up with adults, sometimes inmates charged with assault, robbery and other violent crimes.
The overwhelming majority of students charged are poor, and most are black or Hispanic. Students are not sentenced to jail for missing school outright but rather for failing to follow court orders associated with their truancy charges. Many students have found themselves in a teen version of debtors prison, locked up because their families did not or could not pay steep fines stemming from their original truancy charge. ...
http://www.buzzfeed.com/kendalltagg...to-adult-jail-for-skipping-school#.ehpvXW4lW9
Yet another example of how red states continue to stack the deck against the usual suspects.
