This essay was hard to write. We are sure that it will be hard to read.

On any given day, 54,000 juveniles in the United States are incarcerated in juvenile facilities and thousands more are incarcerated in adult prisons. 40 percent of incarcerated children are black, despite the fact that black children make up just 12 percent of the juvenile population.

It would be comforting, we suppose, if the children we, as a society, are incarcerating were committing violent crimes. But, according to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, in 2010 there were more than 1.6 million arrests: 366,000 for property crimes, 170,000 for drug abuse and 156,00 for disorderly conduct. All of these are non-violent offenses for which we are locking up children.

Adding insult to injury, the school to prison pipeline is about more than property crimes and drug offenses, it is about the criminalization of misbehavior in schools. Not far from where we live, in Prince William County, VA, in the spring of 2016 a middle-school boy, who is black, was handcuffed, arrested and charged with larceny for allegedly stealing a 65-cent carton of milk. He was suspended and was required to appear in juvenile court. This young man and his mother fought for more than a year and a half to have the charges finally dismissed. The ridiculousness continues, as it turns out, this young man qualifies for free school lunch. We wonder how he could have stolen something he was supposed to have for free?

For this discussion we also want to highlight a phenomenon that is often overlooked, what we term in our new book Policing Black Bodies, the “sexual abuse to prison pipeline.” A 2015 study conducted collaboratively by the Human Rights Project for Girls, The Georgetown University Law Center on Poverty and Inequality, and the Ms. Foundation for Women, reveal data on the depth of this sexual abuse to prison pipeline for girls. Though the data varies from state to state, between 80 and 95 percent of girls in juvenile detention were sexually assaulted or raped before they arrived there and more than half had experienced physical abuse or dating violence, as well. Much like adult women who self-medicate with drugs or pass bad checks in order to generate the resources necessary to leave an abusive relationship — putting down a security deposit on an apartment, perhaps purchasing transportation — girls who are victims of incest and partner violence engage in similar strategies. The primary difference for girls is that they are subjected to even more surveillance. For example, if they are self-medicating with alcohol they can be arrested for under-age drinking, and they can be arrested for status offenses like truancy and vagrancy, or hanging out in a park or on the streets when they are supposed to be at school. It is not uncommon at all for girls who are experiencing incest by their fathers or mother’s boyfriends to run away simply to get away from the abuse.

These young girls needed an intervention, they needed counseling and they needed therapy. They did not need prison.

Deeply troubling is the fact that while the vast majority of these black young men and women are being incarcerated for what amounts to minor, non-violent property crimes, in addition to the loss of freedom they experience while incarcerated, they are at tremendous risk for physical and sexual abuse. 42 percent of boys in juvenile detention report being physically abused in the previous year. By the time they are released, we estimate that as many as 40–50 percent of all boys and girls who are detained in juvenile facilities will have been raped by another inmate or a guard.

Children report that they are locked in solitary confinement, for days or even months. Kalief Browder was sent to Riker’s Island at age 16. He spent three long years, including more than 400 days in solitary confinement at Rikers Island, even though he was never convicted of any crime.

The tragedy continues. The United States is the only country in the world that sentences juveniles to life in prison without the possibility of parole (JLWOP). Even old Charlie Mason had the possibility of parole. There are more than 2,500 of these JLWOPs serving decades, in adult facilities, sentenced to live there until they die. 20 percent of JLWOPs were witnesses to murder, convicted of felony accomplice to murder, but didn’t actually kill anyone. And for this they serve life sentences without the possibility of parole. Only in the United States.

One of those men is Kutrell Jackson. Kuntrell Jackson was barely 14 on the night of the incident that led to his arrest. He was walking with an older cousin and friend when the boys began discussing the idea of robbing a video store. When they arrived at the store, the other two boys went in, but Kuntrell stayed outside by the door. One of the other boys shot the clerk, and then all three fled without taking any money. Because Kuntrell had prior arrests for shoplifting and car theft he was tried as an adult and convicted of capital murder. The court imposed a sentence of mandatory life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

The school to prison pipeline functions to literally remove black young women and men, many of them children, permanently from society, and is nothing short of devastating to black youth, black families and black communities. For those who do return, far too many return with the wounds of not only the incarceration itself, but also severe physical and sexual abuse. Those who do return, return with a felony record, already one-third of their way to "three strikes, you’re out." Is this how our society values black bodies, relative to the value of a 65-cent carton of milk?

The vast majority of incarcerated children need social workers and mental health care, not prison. And no child should ever be handcuffed and hauled off to prison for “stealing” a 65-cent carton of milk.

Angie Hattery

Writing since May 2018 · 1 story contributed