“United States Department of Justice Downplays Institutional Racism at Shelby County Juvenile Court” by Kerry Shakaboona Marshall.
The Department of Justice conducted a five year investigation on the juvenile court of Memphis and Shelby County, Tennessee, against the backdrop of, and informed by, the concerns expressed by Shelby County Black residents about the due process accorded children by Shelby County Juvenile Court and the disproportionate impact on Black children appearing before the court. The Department of Justice found that the juvenile court of Memphis and Shelby County’s Administration of Justice discriminates against Black children, and that Black children are disproportionately represented in almost every phase of the juvenile court of Shelby County system, violating Black children equal protection rights of the 14th Amendment and Title Six of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibiting racial discrimination. The Department of Justice case analysis data from 2005 to 2010 show that in Shelby County, Black children are 1/3 less likely to receive diversion and lenient dispositions than white children, that Black children are more than twice as likely of being detained prior to a detention hearing than white children, and that Black children are more than twice as likely to be transferred to adult criminal court to be tried as an adult than white children.
What is most troubling about the Department of Justice findings is that they do not once identify the systemic racial discrimination of Black children within the juvenile court of Shelby County as institutional racism. The Department of Justice’s findings intentionally fails to mention that Shelby County’s juvenile court system violated Black children’s human rights of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the Convention of the Rights of the Child, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Department of Justice remedial measures taken to resolve Shelby County Juvenile court’s institutional racism towards Black children are only band aid procedural measures based in the limited civil law that does not provide substantial measures, based in the encompassing human rights laws, to deal with the root cause of this racial problem. The Department of Justice acknowledged that the juvenile court of Memphis and Shelby County’s racial discrimination of Black children also exists in juvenile justice systems in most cities across America, making justice a false notion for Black children, yet they failed to even discuss a resolution of institutional racism in juvenile courts across America.
Further, the Department of Justice findings acknowledged that racial disparities also exist in police departments in most cities across America, in the rates of arrests of Black people, and acknowledged the interactions among police departments and juvenile and adult criminal systems causing structural racism across America, yet failing to even discuss a resolution of structural racism across America. The only thing the Department of Justice has exposed through the investigation of Shelby County Juvenile court system is that they, and by extension, the White House, dominated political government of America, don’t have any answers to deal with America’s race problem at all. I am Kerry Shakaboona Marshall, founding member of the Human Rights Coalition, co-founder and editor of The Movement human rights magazine, Prison Radio correspondent, and am a Child Life prisoner at SCI Rockview, P.O. box A, number BE7826 Bellefonte, PA, 16823, and can be reached at shakaboona41@gmail.com. Thank you for listening.
These commentaries are recorded by Noel Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
