children

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President Obama: “urgent humanitarian situation” #MigrantChildren

 

Two female detainees sleep in a holding cell, as the children are separated by age group and gender, as hundreds of mostly Central American immigrant children are being processed and held at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Nogales Placement Center on Wednesday, June 18, 2014, in Nogales, Ariz.

CPB provided media tours Wednesday of two locations in Brownsville, Texas, and Nogales, that have been central to processing the more than 47,000 unaccompanied children who have entered the country illegally since Oct. 1.

 

They are sent to shelters for several weeks as the government tries to reunite them with family in the U.S. The network of some 100 shelters around the country has been over capacity for months and is now caring for more than 7,600 children.

 

Source: www.chron.com

 

It seems Central America is in a major crisis right now.

I listen to the news every day and haven’t heard what has lead to this sudden urgency in migration. I mostly hear about the chaos in Iraq on the news.

 

Does anyone know what is happening in Central America that would cause parents to send their kids alone. Have thousands of parents been kidnapped or murdered?

 

One would think that the U.S. would have an interest in stabilizing Central America. Maybe I haven’t heard about stabilization efforts because I’m not tuned into the right media channels?

 

@getgln

 

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Border detention of children shames America

See on Scoop.it – Community Village Daily

 

Ruben Navarrette says when hordes of youngsters from Central America are being held by the U.S. in reportedly inhumane conditions the nation has lost itself

 

Click through for video.

 
See on www.cnn.com

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There Have Been 74 U.S. School Shootings Since Sandy Hook

See on Scoop.it – Community Village Daily

 

The gun safety organization Everytown said Tuesday’s incident was the 74th shooting in a U.S. school since the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

 
See on mashable.com

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The Unbelievable Brutality Unleashed on Kids in For-Profit Prisons

 

Michael McIntosh couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He had come to visit his son at the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility near Jackson, Miss., only to be turned away. His son wasn’t there.

“I said, ‘Well, where is he?’ They said, ‘We don’t know.’”

Thus began a search for his son Mike that lasted more than six weeks. Desperate for answers, he repeatedly called the prison and the Mississippi Department of Corrections. “I was running out of options. Nobody would give me an answer, from the warden all the way to the commissioner.”

Finally, a nurse at the prison gave him a clue: Check the area hospitals.

After more frantic phone calls, he found Mike in a hospital in Greenwood, hours away. He was shocked at what he saw. His son could barely move, let alone sit up. He couldn’t see or talk or use his right arm. “He’s got this baseball-size knot on the back of his head,” McIntosh said. “He’s got cuts all over him, bruises. He has stab wounds. The teeth in the front are broken. He’s scared out of his mind. He doesn’t have a clue where he’s at – or why.”

 

Click through to read more

 
See on www.alternet.org

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Police Reveal Details About 12-Year-Olds Accused Of Stabbing Friend

See on Scoop.it – Community Village Daily

 

“A police criminal complaint filed against two 12-year-old girls who allegedly stabbed their 12-year-old friend 19 times this past weekend offers dark reading about the vicious attack and the girls’ alleged motive.”

 

Geyser was initially hesitant to stab the victim and said, “I’m not going to until you tell me to.” Weier allegedly replied, “Go ballistic, go crazy … Now.”

The victim, despite her injuries, managed to get up and scream, “I hate you.” She attempted to walk to a nearby street, but Weier allegedly grabbed her and pulled her back. Weier told police she asked the victim to lie down and be quiet and told her she would get help, even though she did not intend to do so, police said. Weier told police she hoped the victim would die so that Weier would see Slenderman, the complaint alleges.

The victim, who sustained numerous stab wounds to her torso, legs and arms, managed to crawl out of the woods. A passing bicyclist spotted her and called 911, police said.

The complaint states that the victim told authorities she had been stabbed by her best friend, Morgan Geyser. The two suspects were arrested shortly thereafter, while walking near Interstate 94, police said.

Questioned by police, Weier allegedly said, “The bad part of me wanted her to die, the good part of me wanted her to live.”

Geyser allegedly confirmed to police much of what Weier told them, but claimed Weier was the first to stab the victim, the complaint says. Asked by police what she was attempting to do when she stabbed the victim, Geyser allegedly said, “I may as well just say it: Kill her.”

Geyser ultimately said she was sorry for what happened, according to police, but added, “It was weird that I didn’t feel remorse.”

“I would say these girls had big imaginations and believed [in Slenderman] too much,” McCann said. “[It] reminds me of the Salem witch trials — it all started with a story [and] then got out of hand.”

According to James McCann, co-founder of A Paranormal Group, Slenderman appears in crowd-sourced fiction about a demon-oriented character who stalks, traumatizes and abducts children. “It’s believed to reach his realm level, you have to kill somebody,” McCann said.

 

 

Community Village‘s insight:

 

sociopath: diminished empathy and remorse, and disinhibited or bold behavior

 

I wonder if the parents had access to mental health care for their daughters?

 

I wonder if the parents knew their daughters were sociopaths?

 

PS – Does the U.S. have a sociopathic culture? Remember when the U.S. enslaved, abused, beat and lynched Black people for hundreds of years and the majority of the U.S. didn’t put a stop to it?

Now the U.S. has New Jim Crow and ballooning mas incarceration. How long will this last? Hundreds of years?

See on www.huffingtonpost.com

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Alabama schools violating federal law by discouraging enrollment of immigrants

SPLC

SPLC

“The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) today notified 96 Alabama school systems that their enrollment practices violate federal prohibitions against denying or discouraging the enrollment of children based on their immigration status or that of their parents.

 

In many cases, school enrollment forms require a Social Security number or a U.S. birth certificate, without explaining that such disclosure, under federal law, is voluntary and not necessary for enrollment.

 

The SPLC also urged Alabama School Superintendent Thomas R. Bice to ensure that all schools within the state’s 135 districts comply with federal mandates by the beginning of the 2014-15 school year.

“It is well-established law that all children, regardless of their immigration status, have a right to attend our public schools,” said SPLC attorney Jay Singh. “Too many schools in Alabama, however, are not living up to their legal responsibility.”

 

Click through to read more.
See on www.splcenter.org

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Culture Shock: The Problem of Juvenile Justice

See on Scoop.it – Community Village Daily

 

“The prison system as a whole isn’t working, particularly so for juvenile detention centers.

 

WHEN the Center for Investigative Reporting recently visited the Santa Cruz County Juvenile Hall — widely considered one of the best juvenile detention centers in the country — they found remarkably prison-like conditions, ranging from the bare, concrete walls to the use of solitary confinement as a method of disciplining youth. There are currently no federal or state laws that regulate the use of solitary confinement for juvenile offenders, despite overwhelming evidence of its harmful effects. But the abuses don’t stop there. A 2012 report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a division of the Department of Justice, determined that youth held in adult prison facilities suffered less instances of sexual violence than their peers in juvenile facilities. And in some facilities, the rate of juvenile recidivism is over 80 percent, meaning that the bulk of these young people will eventually add to the burgeoning prison population.

There seems to be a consensus that the prison system as a whole isn’t working, and this is particularly true when it comes to juvenile detention. The United States incarcerates more young people under the age of 18 than any other industrialized country in the world. (By comparison, South Africa, our closest competitor, incarcerates its youth at one-fifth the rate of the United States.) Most juveniles who are sent to these facilities are from racial minorities. Many of them suffer abuses in prison that are heinous for adults and potentially ruinous for youth — solitary confinement, rape, repeated physical abuse, deprivation of sunlight, insufficient food and affection. Perhaps worst of all, children leave these facilities with additional traumas under their belts and no promise that their outside lives will improve.

And yet, despite protestations from all political parties that our society values children, despite the proliferation of New York Times bestsellers on how to raise children, despite growing scientific evidence that the confinement of adolescents may profoundly stunt their brain development, despite the fact that juvenile crime is steadily declining, change has not followed. Why?

In her new book, Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison, Nell Bernstein, a journalist whose previous book addresses the problems of children of the incarcerated, attempts to explore this elusive question using a mix of reporting, research, and anecdotal history. Bernstein’s basic premise, which I agree with, is that it’s mostly a matter of culture, an elusive but necessary concept. She argues that young adults and children require positive relationships with adults in order to rehabilitate, but prison, which isolates and punishes violators for transgressions, is based on just the opposite assumption. Prisons assume that those who commit crimes must be isolated from the community, both to force them to think about their immoral acts and to protect the rest of the law-abiding community. This is the direct opposite of what we should be doing for children in prison: educating them, providing them life skills and positive role models, and supporting their mental and physical development in a positive way.

 

Click through to read more.

 
See on lareviewofbooks.org