Do you ever feel like your school or your child's school is a pre-prison?
Have you or your child ever received a truancy ticket or any other kind of ticket at school?
Have you experienced or witnessed abuse, intimidation or excessive force by school police?
What do you see or experience at your school that makes you feel like its a "pre-prison?
Please Share Your Stories with Pre-Prison Diaries!
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Voices From the Students "My friend got into a confrontation with someone. They weren't fighting though, just arguing verbally. The school police officer came over and sprayed mace in his face! He then handcuffed him and shoved him to the ground. This made me upset because he was already sprayed and couldn't resist and yet he got thrown to the ground." -Black female, 12th grade, Westchester High School
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"Pre-Prison Diaries" is a series from the Community Rights Campaign
in which organizers, students and parents share stories and
observations about truancy tickets, police in schools, zero tolerance,
and other "pre-prison" conditions and experiences in schools and surrounding communities.
We hope this space can be one where we collect important stories to help the "No to Pre-Prison [2]" campaign but also where you can learn from each other, give thoughts, advice, and ideas. So often, we are taught to feel shame when experiences such as tickets and police abuse occur. On the contrary, we say the shame should be on the system for allowing such "pre-prison" conditions and civil rights violations to occur!
You may submit a "pre-prison" diary entry on anything that you feel is a "pre-prison" experience in your school or community. We encourage you to also comment on each other's entries, being respectful of the different experiences people may have.
To submit an entry all you have to do is scroll down to the bottom and write it into the "add comment" section. Then, hit submit!
Check out our Most Recent Pre-Prison Diary:
What the Community Rights Campaign Means to Me: [3] "What I have learned here is this: social struggles go beyond challenging the ubiquity of violence in our society. It is, to a very high degree, about doing it alongside comrades that represent a collective conscious. I commute to The Center because I like surrounding myself with impacting and knowledgeable individuals and because it is hard to realize a mindset without first finding like-minded individuals."
Check Out Past Pre-Prison Diary Entries!
November 11, 2009: California's future of education cuts and expanding prisons [4]: "The Pre-Prisoning of Black and Brown students doesn't stop when your high school education has ended. The push out and tracking of young Black and Brown students also occurs at the university and college levels..."
October 25, 2009: A Black Mother Takes Action to Challenge a "Guilty" Verdict on a Truancy Ticket [5]: "My son received a truancy ticket for staying home from school. But I think they ticketed him unfairly. You see, I had given him permission to stay home..."
October 13, 2009: [6]Truancy Tickets Aftermath [7]: "I received a truancy ticket when I was in 10th grade in high school. I never went to court to deal with it because I knew my mother could not afford it. Little did I know, ignoring the ticket was a bad idea because the courts suspended my license until I turn 21..."
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