Tag Archive for juvenile jail

Racism in Memphis: Shelby County Juvenile System on the Hot Seat

Say No To Racism Vector StickerThe Memphis’ juvenile jail has been found decidedly wanting in a recent federal investigation.  According to it’s findings, there have been problems at the Shelby County Juvenile Court for years, mainly concerned with overly harsh discipline, inadequate protection of the incarcerated, and a strong dose of racism in the way that the inmates are treated. 

Thomas Perez, head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division in Washington, reported Thursday that both his attorneys and outside consultants found “systemic civil-rights violations as well as patterns of discrimination against black youths, who are more likely to be detained, to receive tougher punishments and to end up in the adult system.”

Beth Warren at The Commercial Appeal gives us a bit more detail on the DOJ findings:

Detention officers have used restraint chairs to strap down juveniles and pressure-point control tactics, such as bending a youth’s wrist backward to induce pain, according to a three-year investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. Both, as practiced in Memphis, are unconstitutional, according to the report by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.

The report also found dangers in the physical layout of the jail, such as its two-level design with a balcony.

‘There is no systematic suicide-proofing of the building, no education to detention staff regarding necessary precautions and no plans to correct these risks,’ according to the report.

These issues are of grave concern, but even worse is the widespread racism endemic in the justice system. Unlike the situation inside the facility, the racist component begins on the streets. Just look at the arrest findings (via WREG TV, Memphis)

Black juveniles who were arrested in Memphis and surrounding Shelby County were twice as likely as whites to be detained in jail and twice as likely to be recommended for transfer to adult court, where a conviction generally brings harsher punishment, Perez said.

As is established in numerous reports over recent years, when you put juveniles into adult facilities the recidivism rate spikes. In other words, a much larger percentage of them are arrested again after release. The simple fact is that placing youth in facilities with adult offenders creates a training ground for criminals.

Perez has publicly stated that the goal is not to place blame, but to find a way to fix the problem. We will be keeping an eye on Shelby County and will let you know how well he does.

Image by Vector Portal, used under its Creative Commons license

Humane Exposures: The Beginning

Maggots in My Sweet Potatoes: Women Doing Time

Someone looking at our books and our film for the first time might as well ask how we got started down this particular path.

The roots of Humane Exposures go back 15 years and begin with Susan Madden Lankford’s interactions with the homeless. Having managed a successful portrait studio for years, she has decided that she wanted to do more. Renting the Seaport Village Jail, she then began photographing the homeless and collecting their narratives. Since many of those had involved incarceration, it was only natural that Lankford’s next step be touring the seven main jails in the area.

That tour brought her to Las Colinas, the county’s only all-women jail. It was then that Lankford has realized that prison reform is urgently needed, and decided to share the inmate’s situation with a the public in hopes of spurring that reform.

Mark Arner, a reporter for The San Diego Union Tribune, reported on the resulting book, Maggots in My Sweet Potatoes (also on Facebook) back when it was released in 2008:

Thirteen years ago, an inmate at the county’s only all-female jail said something startling to San Diego photographer Susan Madden Lankford.

‘Hey Susan, I have something to tell you: I found maggots in my sweet potatoes last week,’ Lankford said the inmate told her.

While her subsequent tour of the jail’s kitchen facilities revealed only clean surfaces and safe food, that one comment stuck with Lankford and became the title of the book. Here is Arner’s brief description of the book from the same article:

The 284-page book describes how Lankford obtained Kolender’s permission for the project in the mid-1990s. Primarily in 1995 and 1996, she conducted interviews and took black-and-white photographs of inmates, guards and jail overseers.

The book features 326 of those images, as well as journal entries and letters from several inmates from 1997 to 1999, research on domestic violence and drug and alcohol abuse, and a section on white-collar crime.

Since then, we have released a book of Lankford’s homeless photography, downTownUSA: A Personal Journey with The Homeless, and have even branched out into the realm of video with our documentary, It’s More Expensive to Do Nothing. All of these projects relate to an interelated set of issues:

  • Incarceration is often a factor in homelessness.
  • Education and early home life have a huge influence on children and are negative early environments, often contributing to the future criminal activity.
  • Patterns of abuse and neglect cycle through generations.
  • If we shift our societal focus to actual rehabilitation into society, we can not only impact homelessness but also greatly reduce the state expenditures incurred. For example, if homeless people had access to health care, it would cut millions in emergency services costs accrued over the course of a year.

Later this year we will be releasing Born, Not Raised: Kids at Risk, in which we will explore the troubled psyches of youngsters serving time in juvenile hall. Without education and other humane assistance, many of these youth will be caught in the revolving door of institutionalization.

All of these projects relate to each other and, taken together, try to present, one aspect at a time, the complex and interrelated nature of the societal breakdowns they address.

So, tell us, how did you discover Humane Exposures, and when? We’d love to know!

Source: “A Portrait of Jail Life,” The San Diego Union Tribune, 09/23/08
Image copyright Susan Madden Lankford, from the book “Maggots in my Sweet Potates: Women Doing Time.” Used with permission.
Visit Us on Facebook: Humane Exposures Publishing, downTownUSA, Maggots in My Sweet Potatoes, It’s More Expensive To Do Nothing.