Route 2(A)

One day, a call came from the principal informing Jill and her husband, their middle daughter was being given in-school suspension for creating a Facebook group used to make fun of another student. Called something like, “Eric is a Hairy Beast,” the group quickly filled with loads of kids making fun of a quiet Armenian boy, uploading cell phone pictures of him and becoming more brazen by the day.

These kids are “A” students, and far from brats; but most are not cognitively developed enough to recognize their behavior is hurtful to others. According to Lisa Ott, the Youth Empowerment Coordinator at the Women and Family Life Center, this is on target with research in adolescent brain development. Kids get into trouble with sites like Facebook and MySpace because they are too self-centered in their overall development to understand the impact of what they are doing, she said. Middle school age children are the most susceptible to cyber bullying, and high school students most likely to use poor judgment in giving out information.

We were really on the forefront of this stuff. Russ – this reminds me of your getting in trouble for complaining about the MCAS on your blog. Back then, because the blog was outside the classroom, I felt that the school had no legitimate juristiction to punish you for it. However, after reading anecdotes like that, I think my mind has changed…

CORI stands for Criminal Offender Record Information. It’s a MA program that originated as a recordkeeping system for the state’s criminal justice organization – the CORI includes not only convictions but any “contact” with the criminal justice system – if you’ve ever been arrested, you have a CORI, regardless of whether or not the case was dismissed, or you won, or whatever. The severity or the date of the crime doesn’t matter – if you got arrested for underage drinking when you were 15, that’ll show up.

CORIs have a second problem, which is that because of their origins, they’re written in some kind of parole officer slang. This means that, aside from the crime you were charged with, the CORI is basically incomprehensible. A lot of agencies in MA (and now employers, landlords, and lots of other agencies) will, instead of reading a CORI, just request one, and see if it comes back. Since no one can tell what the thing says, a lot of employers just assume that even having one is bad in itself.

Needless to say, this is not a good system.

i was at a panel on criminal justice inequities in Mass – specifically the problem with CORIs (if anyone is curious I’m happy to post about this) – and someone threw down this theory as an aside, and I thought it was really cute:

axiomatic:

crime committed in public space is more likely to be apprehended than crime committed in private space

people with more access to private space will shift a greater percentage of their criminal activity to private space

assume:

all individuals commit crime equally, regardless of wealth

wealthier people have greater access to private space

therefore:

poorer people will seem to commit more crime, because they are more likely to be apprehended

–

empirically, this seems reasonable: in wealthy neighborhoods, such petty crimes as minor drug use, underage drinking / disorderly conduct, schoolyard fighting, etc., take place in secluded areas – in someone’s backyard, in the woods, in parents’ houses. for poorer persons, who either live on the street (where there is no private space), or live in housing projects or tiny efficiencies, it is difficult to indulge in these activities behind closed doors, ergo they’re more likely to be caught.

when we get into more serious criminality, this model breaks down, but given that juvenile offenders are more likely to be serious criminals in part because of the devastating effects that a juvie arrest can have on job prospects, college admissions and aid, immigration, etc., this is still clearly a factor.

also, all of this ignores the tremendous amount of racism in our policing; take the same argument, but now imagine that the poor neighborhoods are also policed thrice as hard, and it’s even more striking.