(Note:
The following commentary was originally written for the Progressive
Media Project)
America is failing its most vulnerable children.
The United States does not provide a level playing field for all children
and does not protect all young lives equally, says a recent report by
the Children's Defense Fund.
Poor children and children of color, in particular, "already are
in the pipeline to prison before taking a single step or uttering a
word," the report states. Many youth in juvenile detention facilities
have never been on the track to college or a successful life. "They
were not derailed from the right track; they never got on it,"
the organization says.
Much of the problem is due to poverty, and children of color are more
likely to be afflicted. One-quarter of Latino children and one-third
of black children are poor. Black children are more than three times
as likely as white children to be born into poverty, and are more than
four times as likely to live in extreme poverty, according to the report.
For millions of poor children, failed by their families, the child welfare
system and the juvenile justice system, a life of prison awaits them.
Prison is the only universally guaranteed program for children in America,
the study notes, as America increasingly criminalizes its youth, and
spends nearly three times as much per prisoner as it does per student.
This, in a country with 2.3 million prisoners, the world's largest inmate
population, and more prisoners than China, a nation that has four times
as many people as the United States.
And those who are incarcerated are disproportionately of color, products
of a society that has neglected and marginalized them. Children of color
are more likely to be placed in programs for mental retardation, placed
in foster care, more likely to be suspended, left back a grade, and
drop out of school. And youth of color, 39 percent of the juvenile population,
are 60 percent of incarcerated juveniles, according to the report.
A black boy born in 2001 has a one in three chance of going to prison
in his lifetime. A Latino boy has a one in six chance. Today, as a result
of unfair drug laws and draconian sentencing, failing schools and a
lack of opportunity, 580,000 black men - many of them fathers - are
doing time in state and federal prisons, while only 40,000 graduate
from college each year, an astonishing statistic.
All of this comes down to a lack of commitment by our society, misplaced
priorities and squandered resources. The Children's Defense Fund makes
a number of recommendations for dismantling the cradle-to-prison pipeline,
including full funding of Head Start, making sure that children can
read by the fourth grade, ensuring health insurance for all pregnant
women, eradicating child poverty by 2015, eliminating hunger and providing
jobs with a living wage.
The money is available. These and other recommendations are estimated
to cost around $75 billion, with $55 billion to eradicate child poverty,
the Children's Defense Fund says. Repealing the tax cuts for the top
1 percent richest people would provide $57 billion. And to put things
in perspective, the war in Iraq has cost more than $450 billion through
2007, about $100 billion a year.
The price - $500 billion - that America must pay in lost productivity
because of its 13 million impoverished children should give all of us
sticker shock. America cannot afford the cost of allowing these children
to suffer.
A nation is best judged by the manner in which it treats its children.
America's treatment of children is shameful. Now is the time to clean
up our act and give all kids an equal chance in life.
BlackCommentator.com
Editorial Board
member David A. Love, JD is a lawyer and prisoners’ rights advocate
based in Philadelphia, and a contributor to the Progressive
Media Project, McClatchy-Tribune
News Service and In These Times.
He contributed to the book, States
of Confinement: Policing, Detention, and Prisons.
(St. Martin's Press, 2000). Love is a former Amnesty International UK
spokesperson, organized the first national police brutality conference
as a staff member with the Center for Constitutional Rights, and served
as a law clerk to two Black federal judges. His blog is
davidalove.com.
Click
here to contact Mr. Love.