Wednesday October 22, 2008
Thye Blogster is back from a day-long symposium, at CCSU, attended by about 650 people from throughout the state, on the racial and ethnic disparities in the criminal-justice system.
Organized by a state commission, it brough together a variety of stakeholders (THERE’s a wonkish word) who waqnt to create positive change.
Professor Charles J. Ogletree Jr. of the Harvard Law School and the executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice, boiled down one major solution. If we can cut the high school drop-out rate in Connecticut, there will be a corresponding decrease in the state prison population.
It’s more ammunition for the in-school suspension bill that’s been delayed in the General Assembly the last few years. Rather than send kids home to watch TV (at best) and hang around gangs on the other end, in-school suspensions would force kids to show up at school anyway for closely supervised attention. School administrators have said it’s too costly.
“What happens to a kid who doesn’t come to school?” he said. “We send them home, so they can’t come to school.”