Pages

Home

Sunday, January 18, 2015

What Does It Say About America That We Jail Teens for Having Sex or Being Late to School?

Why are we sending juveniles to jail for absurd reasons?
The reason her case attracted so much attention? Tran missed those days of school--or arrived late--due to exhaustion. She worked two jobs to help support her siblings. Her parents had split and moved out of town. She became, in essence, a poster-girl for both the recession and for the criminalization of youth. Even those local newscasters expected to be dispassionate were moved to say their "hearts went out" to this girl.

One of Tran's employers was a wedding planning business, which she assists and whose owners house her with her parents out of town. The other was a full-time job at a dry cleaning store. Her third job was going to school, where she is enrolled in several AP and honors classes, but missed 18 days. After a previous warning, a judge decided that a night in jail would teach her a lesson. He didn't see why people were kicking up such a fuss. "A little stay in the jail for one night is not a death sentence," the judge told the same local news channel. READ MORE

No comments:

Post a Comment

Just keep it civil.