The Price Kids Pay: Schools and police punish students with costly tickets for minor misbehavior

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:
Elizabeth Joh
@elizabeth_joh
·
Apr 28, 2022
Absolutely insane practice: In Illinois, schools are using *police* to impose fines on kids for doing things like being late, littering, offensive words. Parents are told pay up or kids face adult consequences *like future credit scores*. A perfect storm of policing for profit:

Elizabeth Joh
@elizabeth_joh
https://chicagotribune.com/investigations/ct-illinois-schools-discipline-tickets-fines-price-kids-pay-20220428-tpkekqt3sfcadhmczbl7xadcva-htmlstory.html… by @jsmithrichards & @Jodiscohen

chicagotribune.com
The Price Kids Pay: Schools and police punish students with costly tickets for minor misbehavior
Illinois law bans schools from fining students. But an investigation has found police do it for them, issuing costly tickets that burden families.
7:41 AM · Apr 28, 2022

https://www.chicagotribune.com/investigations/ct-illinois-schools-discipline-tickets-fines-price-kids-pay-20220428-tpkekqt3sfcadhmczbl7xadcva-htmlstory.html


The courthouse lobby echoed like a crowded school cafeteria. Teenagers in sweatshirts and sneakers gossiped and scrolled on their phones as they clutched the yellow tickets that police had issued them at school.

Abigail, a 16-year-old facing a $200 penalty for truancy, missed school again while she waited hours for a prosecutor to call her name. Sophia, a 14-year-old looking at $175 in fines and fees after school security caught her with a vape pen, sat on her mother’s lap.

A boy named Kameron, who had shoved his friend over a Lipton peach iced tea in the school cafeteria, had been cited for violating East Peoria’s municipal code forbidding “assault, battery, and affray.” He didn’t know what that phrase meant; he was 12 years old.

“He was wrong for what he did, but this is a bit extreme for the first time being in trouble. He isn’t even a teenager yet,” Shannon Poole said as her son signed a plea agreement that came with $250 in fines and fees. They spent three hours at the courthouse as Kameron missed math, social studies and science.

*snip*