We do it for the children … prison, solitary, torture, trauma, and beyond

June 26, 2023 by Leave a Comment

“In a democracy, we do not put children in cages. Period. There is no debating it. Nothing you can say to me will justify putting children in cages.”             Patricia Okoumou

Ethan Weinstein, a reporter for the VTDigger, covers southeastern Vermont. Of late, he’s had reason to cover the Vermont Department of Corrections. In a recent interview, speaking of the high and rising number of deaths, and particularly suicides, in Vermont’s prisons and jails, Weinstein noted, “There’s a belief that things are going to be messed up there, that you’re not going to be receiving adequate care. And so it has felt like, in order for something to be a story, someone has to die. You know, it’s not enough to hear that a person has a concussion, and they can’t see a doctor, or a person has been prescribed a medication their whole life and has been refused it once they’ve been incarcerated. It just seems as though our tolerance for issues within our prisons is so high that it can be hard to get people to care about this.” What if that person is a child? Does that matter? Does it matter to you? Recent news reports would suggest the answer is No.

For years, the United States has `struggled’ with an epidemic of seclusion rooms and physical restraints in schools. Time and again, one district or another has been forced to `discover’ its own alarming propensity for torture of children in the name of schooling. This past week, Alabama put a new twist on an old story by … doing absolutely nothing. Last week, Al.com, Alabama’s largest news site, reported that, after six years waiting, the state had still not provided any requested data on school seclusion and restraint incidents. In March 2017, Al.com requested data. Nothing came. In 2020, they tried again, and, again, no response. In June 2022, they tried again, and again received nothing. Public school districts are required to turn over information to the U.S. Department of Education every year. The last year Alabama reported on was 2017 – 2018. As far as Al.com can tell, Alabama’s state department doesn’t seem to care. The Alabama state department is supposed to collect information from every school district every year. It doesn’t, and what it does manage to get doesn’t seem to undergo any review.

In 2017 – 2018, Alabama reported nearly 600 incidents of seclusion, of putting a child in a locked room often for hours, and often for days, on end. The use of seclusion rooms in schools was outlawed by the Alabama legislature in 2011, but it’s not significant enough to warrant enforcement.

In 2021, an Aboriginal youth, Michael, was `referred’ to Cleveland Youth Detention Centre, in Queensland, Australia. Cleveland is almost always described as “troubled.” Michael, who lives with intellectual disability, was charged with a violent assault. He spent 744 days in detention, awaiting trial. On Friday, at trial, it was `discovered’ that Michael had spent 500 days in solitary confinement, “regularly locked in his cell for more than 20 hours a day.” The explanation for this was “staffing issues”. Rodney Dillon, a Palawa man and Indigenous rights advocate, has a better explanation, “This system is not about looking after human beings, this is about torture. It’s a torture chamber, that’s what it is. The effect this will have on this kid’s life is irreparable. That kid will be damaged for the rest of his life; that kid will never, ever move on from what’s happened. That is the worst thing you can do to any human being, is put them in solitary confinement … We need to change this system, the racism that’s in this system, and the hatred.”

What exactly are children meant to learn, the ones thrown into solitary, the ones watching their friends go into solitary? Why are we so invested in seclusion and restraint of children, generally, and of children living with disabilities, particularly? What terrible crime have these children committed that entire systems invest so much in maintaining practices that constitute torture?

What terrible crime have these children committed? Must they die to be a story, for us to care? Remember Alan Kurdi, the two-year child who drowned September 2015 and was famously photographed, dead, on the beach? Remember? In England, in 2018, ten-year-old Muhammad Amin entered and won a youth poetry contest. Rather than throwing children into solitary, rather than torturing them, rather than only hearing (of) them when they’ve died, we should listen to them. Listen to Muhammad Amin listening to Alan Kurdi:

Alan Kurdi
by Muhammad Amin

Alan Kurdi lies on the beach
Like autumn’s fallen leaf
Seagulls soar in the sky
Singing a song of grief

His eyes are bright pools
Swimming in the deep
Are forgotten faces full
Of pain, faces that weep

Alan Kurdi doesn’t breakfast
No sugar puffs or corn flakes
Snap, crackle and pop. Bombs
Fall like little earthquakes

He has never played nintendo
Nor xbox, truth or dare
Only hide-and-seek with IED’s
Landmines and the snipers stare

The water lapping at his feet
His body lies on the sand
Still, silent, frozen, frail
A ragdoll from another land

Alan Kurdi’s voice reaches me
“Amin, Amin listen to me
I was put into the sea
Like Moses. Don’t you see?”

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Anna Vignet)

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No end to the torture: Throw the children into solitary, lock the door, walk away

December 23, 2021 by 29 Comments

A seclusion room in a Cedar Rapids elementary school: padded walls, a window, a door that locks from outside

Another year ends with stories of children, young children, being thrown into `seclusion rooms’, solitary confinement chambers, in schools across the country. What exactly are children meant to learn, the ones thrown into solitary, the ones watching their classmates and friends go into solitary? What’s the lesson plan, the educational goal? Why are we so invested in seclusion and restraint of children, generally, and of children living with disabilities, particularly? What terrible crime have these children committed that entire systems invest so much in maintaining practices that clearly constitute torture?

In November, U.S. Department of Justice investigators conducted on-site inspections of schools in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. They also demanded thousands of documents. This story begins in 2017, when a parent complained at the abuse her daughter suffered. Apparently, the girl wouldn’t stop crying, and so she was placed in a seclusion room. In the 2019-2020 school year, elementary school children were tossed into seclusion 237 times. In October, 2020, the Department of Justice notified the Cedar Rapids School District that they were opening an investigation.

In 2018, the U.S. Department of Education released a report on school climate and safety for 2015 – 2016. It found that Iowa rates had doubled. For example, in 2013, 23 school districts in eastern Iowa had 2514 reported instances of seclusion or restraint. In 2015, that number rose to 4,904. A 2018 Iowa State report described Davenport as in “systemic non-compliance” of Federal laws concerning the education of students living with disabilities. According to the report, the situation for students of color in Davenport was particularly dire, systemically so. Both of Iowa’s U.S. Senators called for a Federal investigation into the use of seclusion rooms. Davenport’s U.S. Representative Dave Loebsack called for a ban on seclusion rooms.

In 2017, a complaint was filed against the Iowa City school district, charging that the district’s use of seclusion rooms violated Federal law, primarily because parents don’t know that the seclusions rooms existed and were being used and because the use of seclusion rooms is broader and more `ordinary’ than the law allows. During the 2013-14 school year, most of the students dumped into solitary confinement were students with diagnosed disabilities and individualized education plans. Half of the students with education plans who were sent to seclusion rooms were Black. Other than students with education plans, ALL of the students dumped into seclusion rooms in the 2013 – 2014 were Black. Black students comprised about 19% of the school population.

Cedar Rapids is no outlier, not in Iowa, not in the United States. December 31, 2020, the Department of Justice settled with North Gibson School Corporation in Princeton, Indiana, where “students as young as five years old were secluded and restrained improperly and repeatedly, resulting in days, and sometimes weeks, of lost instructional time.”

On October 24, 2021, the U.S. Department of Education and the Saco School District, in Saco, Maine, reached agreement to resolve restraint and seclusion compliance. Saco’s not a big school district, but it boasts big seclusion numbers. From 2017 to 2020, Saco schools engaged in 392 incidents of seclusion. Of that number, 324 involved children in K-2. 83% of those thrown into solitary were children 5 to 7 years old. After extensive investigation and negotiation, they `reached agreement.’

On November 24, 2021, Fairfax County Public Schools, in northern Virginia, reached a settlement with parents of children living with disabilities and advocacy groups to ban all seclusion in all its schools by the beginning of school year 2022 – 2023. This ends a suit that was filed in 2019, after a local news station reported that the county routinely put children with disabilities in seclusion rooms and routinely failed to report the incidents.

A week later, on December 1, the U.S. Department of Justice reached a settlement with the Frederick County Public School District “to address the discriminatory use of seclusion and restraint against students with disabilities …. The investigation, opened in October 2020, revealed thousands of incidents of seclusion and restraint in just two and a half school years. Although students with disabilities make up only 10.8% of students enrolled in the district, every single student the district secluded was a student with disabilities.” When the settlement was reported, many expressed shock, demanded answers, called for responsibility. The county’s school superintendent resigned quickly, and was given $800,000 in compensation. In 2017, that county superintendent was named Superintendent of the Year by the state association of school superintendents.

Every report, every agreement and settlement, evokes shock. How can people be shocked when there are thousands of incidents, as many as ten a day, in small towns and big counties? That the government has returned to some sort of vigilance concerning the systematic abuse and torture of children is welcome, inasmuch as it’s better than inaction. But the real need here is a soul searching, no holds barred transformation. We torture children. We cannot be shocked by that. We send children into days, weeks, of solitary confinement because … they can’t stop crying. And we call that education.

A seclusion room in another Cedar Rapids elementary school

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit 1:  KCCI / Liz Martin/The Gazette)) (Photo Credit 2: KCRG / (Josh Scheinblum)

 

 

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Missouri regulates the use of seclusion rooms and restraints … finally!

August 29, 2021 by 4 Comments

A “blue room” seclusion room in Missouri

American education remains haunted by inhumane treatment of children, especially those living with disabilities. Yesterday, Saturday, August 28, a new law went into effect in Missouri regulating and, in some instances, curtailing the use of seclusion rooms and physical restraints in all public, private and charter schools in the state. This is a welcome move, won by long hard struggle of children, parents, allies, advocates. Why is it so difficult to abandon practices that are clearly harmful and inhumane?

In May 2009, the Missouri state legislature passed a law giving school districts two years in which to devise written policies governing the use of seclusion rooms. Before that, there were no policies, only the practice of solitary confinement of school children without a single written guideline or rule. Nothing came of that. Nothing happened as a result of this non-compliance.

Eleven years later, in January 2020, 11-year-old Ryphath Knopp stood before a committee of the Missouri state legislature and described being put into solitary confinement in the Columbia, Missouri, school system. Knopp told the legislators he lives with autism, anxiety, and depression. He described beings placed in a small padded room “almost all day, every day” until his parents took him out of school and homeschooled him. Knopp called seclusion rooms “an adapted version of solitary confinement, which was a form of torture, may I remind you.”

Mothers of other children in the Columbia school district recounted similar experiences. Shawan Daniels described the room her fourth-grade child was locked into: “These rooms didn’t have vents in them, water, or anything.” Another mother said the isolation had caused her son emotional trauma, asthma attacks, and head injuries. Both used the same phrase to describe Columbia schools’ treatment of their children: being “thrown into a box.” At that point, Missouri had no rules and no oversight over the use of restraint or seclusion in its schools.

In March 2020, Missouri legislators passed House Bill (HB 1568) that would establish a ban on seclusion and restraint rooms “except in cases where there is imminent danger to the student or others”. Who decides the exception? No guidelines were provided, and besides, it didn’t really matter. Apart from completely discretionary guidelines, Missouri still had neither rules nor oversight concerning the use of restraint or seclusion in schools.

All that changed, for the better, yesterday. In its latest session, the Missouri legislature passed House Bill 432, which regulates and codifies the use of restraint and seclusion in schools. Missouri now has actual guidelines for the use, and not, of restraint and seclusion rooms. The guidelines include rules on documentation of any use of seclusion or restraint, annual uniform training of faculty and staff concerning the use of seclusion or restraint, and new protection for whistleblowers.

Ryphath Knopp attended school in Columbus, Missouri. Frankie Bono attended school in St. Charles, Missouri. According to his mother, “My son was locked in a closet. He didn’t have the skills and ability to appropriately communicate what was really happening at school. We were driving in the car recently and a song came on the radio, and he just started sobbing. That was a song that had been playing in the room, one of the times they had tackled him, held his face against the cold floor, grabbed him by the hair and dragged him into the seclusion room.” Frankie called it “the blue room”.

According to the most recent federal data, in school year 2017 – 2018, 50.9 million students were enrolled in public schools. 101,990 were subjected to physical or mechanical constraint or seclusion. 27,538 were subjected to seclusion. In that school year, 13% of the students enrolled were classified as living with disabilities. Of those subjected to physical restraint, 80% were living with disabilities. Of those subjected to mechanical constraint, 41% were living with disabilities. Of those subjected to seclusion, 77% were students living with disabilities.

This is a war against children, and exactly what crime have these children committed? Why do we routinely send children into solitary confinement? What are we teaching children, all the children in all the schools, when we torture their classmates and then call it “seclusion” and “restraint”? How many more children must suffer the “blue rooms” of torture? Perhaps Missouri will shed a light on that cold floor.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune / ProPublica)

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American school seclusion rooms continue to form a landscape of atrocity

May 29, 2021 by 7 Comments

Just another seclusion room somewhere in the United States

On Wednesday, June 2, Senators Chris Murphy, of Connecticut, and Patty Murray, of Washington State, will introduce, or more precisely re-introduce, the Keeping All Students Safe Act, “To prohibit and prevent seclusion, mechanical restraint, chemical restraint, and dangerous restraints that restrict breathing, and to prevent and reduce the use of physical restraint in schools, and for other purposes.” In 2009, the Government Accounting Office released a major study documenting the severe harm rendered by seclusion rooms in schools, especially for students living with disabilities. In the same year, National Disability Rights Network released a major study, School is not supposed to hurt: Investigative Report on Abusive Restraint and Seclusion in Schools. Since 2009, versions of the Keeping All Students Safe Act have been introduced, all to no avail.  And so here we are: “There are no federal laws governing how seclusion and restraints can be used in schools, and there are no sweeping federal laws with specific guidelines for police use of force on children in general.” Loaded with evidence and good intention … and completely stalled in place for twelve years and counting. What is the U.S. investment in torturing and damaging children, and in particular children living with disability? Why is the United States so committed to an endless war on children living with disabilities?

Three years ago, the U.S. Department of Education released data that showed that students living with disabilities constituted 12% of all students enrolled. 12 percent. That very small sector of students living with disabilities constituted 71% of all students restrained and 66% of all students “secluded.” This year, the most update study shows that students living with disabilities make up 13% of all students enrolled and constitute 80% of those physically restrained, 41% of those `mechanically’ restrained, and 77% of students subjected to seclusion: “Physical restraint is a personal restriction that immobilizes or reduces the ability of a student to move his or her torso, arms, legs, or head freely. Mechanical restraint is the use of any device or equipment to restrict a student’s freedom of movement. Seclusion is the involuntary confinement of a student alone in a room or area from which the student is physically prevented from leaving.” These are the numbers and key words of education for children in the United States. 

While restraint and seclusion directly assault children living with disabilities, it impairs all those children who are forced to stand as helpless, and themselves restrained, witnesses. Why is there no federal law, why is there no national will to end this torture of the innocents? Why is this left to the discretion of individual states, counties and cities? Three years ago, almost to the day, we asked, “What crime have these children committed? What is their terrible sin? Why do we continue to send these children into solitary confinement? Why do we continue to torture those who are most vulnerable? When will we stop this practice? What do you think we’re teaching children, all the children in all the schools, when we torture their classmates and then call it `seclusion’ and `restraint’?” Why has there been no answer? American school seclusion rooms continue to form a landscape of atrocity. Where is the outrage? Where is the action?

 

An eleven-year-old describes how it feels to be in class (left) and how it feels to be in seclusion (right)

 

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo, Image Credit: ProPublica)

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Seclusion rooms, prisons, jails: The empire strikes back

March 18, 2020 by Leave a Comment

In schools across the United States, seclusion rooms exist as a “last resort” practice for educators to restrain and lock “misbehaving” children in isolated rooms. This practice criminalizes behavior at an early age and normalizes the use of solitary confinement. Data on the use of seclusion rooms is often underreported or nonexistent, making them hard to regulate. In Wilmington, North Carolina, for example, there were over 930 reported instances of seclusion reported in Hanover County in 2019. The school district failed to include protocols for these seclusion rooms as well as a crisis management plan on how to meet the needs of children in their yearly handbook. A lack of accountability accompanies these failures. How often does absence of data excuse action? 

With seclusion rooms currently under the spotlight, there have been efforts across the United States to control their use through legislation. On March 4th, Missouri legislature made strides in a House Bill (HB 1568) that would establish a ban on seclusion and restraint rooms “except in cases where there is imminent danger to the student or others”. Who decides the exception?

Recently, it was reported that high schools in Leeds, England place students in isolation rooms for doing as little as forgetting books or wearing earrings. How does punishment for actions as minor as this in the education system set a precedent for how individuals are treated by the state as adults? 

While legislation to address the use of seclusion rooms is a step in the right direction in terms of initiating conversations and setting precedent, it does not ensure they won’t continue to be used and abused. This exception is seen in cases facing the courts in the United States right now that impact women, such as the recent prosecution of Harvey Weinstein. His sentencing may have shed light on the issues of sexual harassment and misconduct, but it isn’t a cure-all for the deep rooted problem of why it exists and persists. Loopholes and justifications of abuse will continue, especially against women and people of color. How can we make sense of that and move forward knowing that most women behind bars have been victims of physical and sexual violence or other trauma? 

How much persistence does it take to dismantle structures and systems? 

The Atlanta City Detention Center, a Georgia jail for minor violations such as walking in the roadways or shoplifting, was shut down in May 2019 following years of organizing efforts by Women on the Rise. Led by women impacted by the criminal justice system, Women on the Rise spent years organizing to prevent and repeal legislation that funneled many into the jail. Built in 1996, the jail was intended to hide undesirable residents including the homeless during the Olympics, a testament to how individuals in the city were/are grouped and deemed disposable. 

Across the country, 75% of people housed in jails aren’t convicted of a crime and are awaiting trial. If women are the fastest growing populations behind bars, and women of color make up approximately two-thirds of that population, what impact does that have?

The prison system doesn’t function like a recycling center, but a garbage dump. Actions and behaviors of individuals are not assessed for mitigation but deemed unworthy of salvaging. Even short jail time puts individuals, particularly women of color, at risk of losing the security of their jobs and their homes both in the present and the future. It’s a branding that lingers through the presence of the checkbox on job applications and federal documents that accompanies the question: “Do you have a criminal record?”

Why is it okay to uproot someone from their community without justifiable means, assuming their life is expendable? So many individuals with low income jobs worked their way to be where they are. They can’t afford to spend time in jail, and they can’t afford to miss work. 

Now in a sudden global health crisis with the novel coronavirus outbreak, it is predicted that the lack of paid sick leave in the United States will make the epidemic even worse. What happens to single moms with multiple jobs and lower incomes that can’t work remotely or afford to take off work? These systemic issues are manifesting into health concerns, but it isn’t anything new. Roughly 25 percent of workers in the United States do not have paid sick leave. On top of that, no federal legislation has ever been passed for paid family leave. What impact does that have on women? Job security in the hands of the employer leaves workers with little or no choice.

It’s almost as if these issues are being brought to light not out of concern for those impacted by them, but out of concern for the well-being of the rest of the population. They are a threat. It’s as if the argument is being raised that in a wealthy democracy, there should be a mandate for paid leave…but not because it’s the right thing to do, but for the public safety of everyone else. It’s a protection of the empire. 

(Photo Credit: Workers World / Women on the Rise) (Image Credit: Communities Over Cages: Close the Jail Atlanta)

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England’s school seclusion rooms still form a landscape of atrocity and shame

January 18, 2020 by 9 Comments

A primary school seclusion room

England learned this week that, across England, schools are converting toilet stalls into “isolation booths”. Other English schools use portable isolation booths. That means a cardboard box is brought to the classroom and placed over the child. Educators like to point out that there are isolation rooms and there are confined booths, and they’re not the same. Isolation rooms are solitary confinement. Confined booths are stalls where children face the wall in perfect silence, often for hours on end, often for days and even weeks at a time. These are the distinctions that are meant to prove the humanity and educative function of time spent in school. At least your six- or eight- or ten-year-old child is not spending hours in a cardboard box. A salient problem in this narrative is that England learned this lesson last year, and the year before, and the year before that. Meanwhile, sales of isolation booths to schools are booming.  

Last week, another report alerted the nation to the widespread use of seclusion rooms. The Centre for Mental Health published Trauma, challenging behaviour and restrictive interventions in schools. Though disturbing the findings are not surprising, are in fact altogether familiar: “Exposure to trauma is relatively common among young people … Challenging behaviour and trauma are associated. Young people who show challenging behaviour are more likely than average to have been exposed to trauma … Thousands of young people are subject to some form of restrictive intervention in schools in England every year for challenging behaviour. There is reason to believe that these interventions have a negative impact on mental health, irrespective of previous trauma exposure. Young people who have experienced trauma in the past are especially at risk of experiencing psychological harm from restrictive interventions. For example, exclusion and seclusion can echo relational trauma and systemic trauma …As a result, these interventions may cause harm and potentially drive even more challenging behaviour.”

Solitary confinement harms children. Solitary confinement is infinitely and measurably worse for vulnerable children. Solitary confinement creates a cycle that begins in trauma and then cycles, repeatedly, through trauma, each time more deeply felt and each time more damaging. Isolation booth sales are booming.

Anne Longfield, Children’s Commissioner for England, says she has heard “horror stories” of children in isolation for days, weeks, months on end. What qualifies as “challenging” behavior. One school website boasts, “Students with inappropriate hairstyles will be placed in isolation.” In another instance, a child was placed in isolation because she forgot to bring her planner. Her father was told either bring the planner or bring £5: “The school said bring in £5 for a new planner and she can come out. It’s ridiculous, having to pay a ransom to get your daughter out of ‘prison’ just because she forgot her planner for the first time ever.”

These isolation rooms and booths and boxes are not some underground, hidden, clandestine practice. They’re widespread, on websites, in official policy. They are and they have been, and they form today as they have formed a landscape of atrocity and shame. While research reports are important, the last five years of reports demonstrates that that is not enough. How many more times must we “discover” that throwing children into seclusion rooms, no matter what they’re called, is wrong? Why do we need to discuss whether the rooms “work” or are too “costly”? What about the cost to children’s lives? What about the cost, as well, to the very concept of education? What does a child learn when exclusion is called inclusion, terror is called calm, and a war on children is called education? But there is a flickering light. Later this month, advocates are holding a Lose the Booth conference. Another school is possible.

 

(Photo Credit: BBC) (Image Credit: Centre for Mental Health)

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Isolation Rooms and “The Feral Child”: What Impact Does Social Deprivation Have On Children?

June 18, 2019 by Leave a Comment

Earlier this year, a young student in the United Kingdom attempted to take her own life in an isolation room at her school where she had quietly spent her days for more than a month. The child, whose identity has not been disclosed, lives with mental health issues as well as an autism spectrum disorder. 

Isolation rooms have become a common form of punishment for students in the United States as well as in the U.K. Often, the children who are sent to spend their days alone and in silence, without stimulus, in these spaces have autism spectrum disorders or other special learning needs. 

While there is little scientific evidence to track the impact that days spent in quiet isolation have on developing minds, anyone familiar with child psychology knows that a lack of socialization and stimulus is detrimental to development. In fact, a landmark case in developmental psychology directly deals with the results of being kept in isolation early in life. 

In 1970, thirteen-year-old Genie Wiley was discovered by social services in her family home in California, where she had spent most of her life in isolation, locked away in a small room. Genie’s father often tied her to a chair and discouraged her from speaking, crying or making any noise at all. 

When Genie was finally taken out of isolation and taken into the care of psychologists, the thirteen-year-old tested on the mental level of a one-year-old. She was originally thought to be autistic. She was mute and incontinent, and only responded to her own name and the word “sorry.” Her mannerisms were described as rabbit-like and she was branded as “the feral child”.

Genie’s case is most well-known for the insight it provided into the process of language acquisition. Although she was a strong non-verbal communicator, psychologists struggled to teach her language, and especially grammar, suggesting that she missed the critical window of language learning. However, Genie’s extreme case also shows the drastic impacts that a lack of socialization and stimulus can have on a child. 

After working with psychologists, Genie became able to communicate with drawings and did well on intelligence tests. She grew to enjoy music and learned to play. However, after years spent in isolation, she was never able to communicate or socialize normally. Eventually, research funding ran out and she was sent to live in a foster home, and little is known about what happened to her since. 

Genie’s case was a drastic one. She was abused and kept in near complete isolation for a decade. Yet, she demonstrates that putting a child away in isolation is not a neutral action. It is a punishment that instills its own kind of trauma, particularly for developing children. This trauma is heightened for children on the autism spectrum or others who may have difficulties socializing with their peers and yet schools often use isolation rooms as a “dumping ground” for exactly this kind of student.

Genie Wiley

(Photo Credit 1: Cambridgeshire Live) (Photo Credit 2: The Guardian)

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Restraint and seclusion in Maine schools is an atrocity

May 14, 2019 by 11 Comments

Yesterday, May 13, 2019, Disability Rights Maine, DRM, released a report on the use of restraints and seclusion rooms in schools in Maine, an update on its 2017 report. Conditions in Maine have worsened: “DRM found: 1) the use of restraint and seclusion has increased every year since 2014 – from 12,000 to more than 20,000 in 2018; 2) data remains incomplete because multiple covered entities fail to report every year; and 3) students with disabilities continue to be disproportionately subjected to restraint and seclusion, as a majority of the restraints and seclusions in Maine take place in special purpose private schools for children with disabilities.” The report concludes, “Restraint and seclusion are dangerous and ineffective practices. They are supposed to be reserved for emergency situations, but as the data shows, they are being used at alarming rates and it continues to rise every year. Just last school year, there were an estimated 20,000 restraints and seclusions in Maine schools and likely more. This translates to a restraint or seclusion every 5 minutes that school is in session. Something has to change … Maine students are restrained and secluded at rates over four to eleven times the national average, and students with disabilities are subjected to these practices at significantly disproportionate rates.” Every 5 minutes, a child in Maine is tortured and they call it education.

In 2017, New Zealand banned seclusion rooms, calling them unreasonable and oppressive. Last year, Alberta, Canada, was forced acknowledge and begin to address its use of seclusion and restraint as a form of torture of children living with disabilities. Last year, England was forced to begin to acknowledge its use of seclusion and restraint of schoolchildren as a form of torture. In the United States, Georgia has `struggled’ with its seclusion rooms for the last decade. In 2004, Jonathan King, 13, hanged himself in a Georgia seclusion room, an 8-foot-by-8-foot cell called a “timeout room.” In 2009, the National Disability Rights Network published School is not supposed to hurt: Investigative Report on Abusive Restraint and Seclusion in Schools. It’s 2019, and schools across the United States today hurt more children more intensely.

Why have we declared war on children living with disabilities? Why have we chosen to do something worse than criminalizing children living with disabilities? In the name of education, we have chosen to torture children until they seek their own death. What terrible sinhave these children committed? Why do we continue to send children into solitary confinement? Why do we continue to torture those who are most vulnerable? When will we stop this practice? What are we teaching children, all children in all schools, when we torture their classmates and then call it “seclusion” and “restraint”? Why does it take so much time and energy to stop torturing children? Solitary confinement in prisons is torture. Seclusion rooms in schools is torture. This is us: children dying in seclusion rooms across the country. 

Now it’s Maine’s turn to suffer the children. Maine legislators will sit through heartrending testimony of parents of children who have been `secluded’: “She was a different kid when she came back. It was months before she genuinely smiled or laughed again. And this happened in Maine, to my daughter, to my girl. And it’s not OK.” It’s not OK. It never was.

 

(Infographic Credit: Kennebec Journal)

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In New Jersey, the Monroe School District is Putting Children in Solitary Confinement

November 28, 2018 by Leave a Comment

Whitehall Elementary seclusion room

In New Jersey, Monroe Townships School Districts are using solitary confinement, hidden as “timeout rooms” or “calm-down spaces” to punish children in their school districts. A child who has ADHD and is on the autism spectrum came home from Whitehall Elementary School, recounted to his mother and father that he had, “been put in a room for time out.” When asked to describe the room, he called it a little room, almost like a jail. The truth of it was even worse. When parents visited the school, they were given firsthand views of the time out room, and the description of a jail was generous. “This is solitary confinement,” the father, Scott Reiss said of the padded room. “This is unacceptable.”

The seclusion room is a space sectioned off in a corner of a special needs classroom, with padded walls and floors that are usually found in a gym. The room, as explained by Superintendent Richard Perry, “is utilized in conjunction with special education related services and interventions, involving behavioral disabilities in which students may become violent toward other students and staff and/or causing harm to themselves. Also, other students, who are classified, utilize this space as a means of safety when they feel emotionally overwhelmed.”

But the seclusion room looks more like solitary confinement than a room where disabled students can “calm down.” It doesn’t seem like any student can potentially calm themselves after outbursts in such a small, confined space. Instead, it pushes disabled children in a space where they can neither be seen nor heard. While the superintendent claimed that every parent is informed of the room and a report is filed when a child is put in the room, after Reiss went public with the photos, other parents voiced their concerns because they also didn’t know the room existed.

Instead of padded walls, an inviting space could be infinitely more successful in calming a student. Stephanie Reiss, the child’s mother suggested an area with partial walls, beanbag chairs and child-friendly accommodations: “All I want is a better, acceptable space for the kids to calm down. That’s all I want.”

The use of physical restraint and seclusion techniques on students with disabilities is permitted by a state law enacted by Christie in January before he left office. The measure does not specify what a seclusion space should look like. However, it does require prior written consent of the student’s primary care physician, unless the space is needed in an emergency to keep the student or others physically safe. The state law does not apply to the use of “timeout” which it describes as “the monitored separation of a student in a non-locked setting and is implemented for the purpose of calming.”

Though the bill had wide bipartisan support, it raises questions. Lacking specific guidelines on seclusion or time-out rooms, instances like the padded solitary room in Whitehall can be considered an acceptable form of removing an unruly student.

Even though Superintendent Perry has stated that the room is not used as a punishment, the padded walls and mats look far more punitive than relocating a student to have them calm down. If grown adults are affected negatively from such solitary confinement, why do we subject young children to the same? “This is unacceptable.”

Inside the seclusion room

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England’s seclusion rooms form a landscape of atrocity and shame

October 21, 2018 by 21 Comments

In 2017, New Zealand banned schoolhouse seclusion rooms. On Friday, a report came out indicating that across England primary and secondary schools are routinely using “seclusion rooms”. The report suggested that both the scale and frequency of use is much higher than expected: “Many schools use them as part of an escalating set of disciplinary measures. Our research found over two-thirds of the country’s largest academy trusts have schools that use some form of isolation, although with varying labels from `inclusion units’ and `consequence booths’ to `time-out spaces’ and `calm rooms’.” The isolation cells are used from the first year. Primary school students can stay in for a day at a time; secondary school students can stay in for five consecutive days. The torture of solitary confinement clothed in the language of inclusion, consequence, time-out and calm is the lesson children across England – and Canada and the United States and beyond – are learning in an age of expanding and intensifying zero tolerance. While A Critique of Pure Tolerance once inspired a generation of activists to action, today we need A Critique of Zero Tolerance. We need it, and, even more, our children and grandchildren need it … now.

In August, a report noted that exclusion, or out-of-school suspension, was rampant in secondary schools across England. 45 schools suspended at least 20% of their students, with some schools topping 40%. In September, a follow up report noted the rampant use of isolation booths, variously referred to as “consequences rooms” or “internal exclusion.” The line from “internal exclusion” to alienation to abnegation to death-in-life to lifelong trauma is direct.

August, September, October, another month, another discovery … of a phenomenon taking place all over the country. Founded in 2013, the TBAP Multi-Academy Trust “supports learners who are experiencing difficulty with or have been excluded from mainstream education.” The people at TBAP Multi-Academy Trust know that seclusion rooms don’t work and, equally important, are bad for all children and all learners. Last year, TBAP Multi-Academy Trust Chairman of the Board Paul Dix wrote, “A room with isolation booths is the bleakest sign of an institution giving up. It shouts ‘we don’t know what to do’ at children who often don’t know what they’ve done wrong. Look around inside any isolation room where children are separated for long periods of time from the rest of the school, and I would lay good money that more than 80% of the children in there have additional needs. Some will have a diagnosed special educational need or disability, others will be struggling with hidden that are all too obvious to those who work with them every day: trauma, anxiety, attachment, grief, or plain old-fashioned neglect. The sins of the adult world are soaked up by a minority of children. Then we stick them in a booth and call it education. The booths are a shame on all of us, not the children who are forced to sit in them.”

How many more times must we “discover” that throwing children into seclusion rooms, no matter what they’re called, is wrong? Why do we need to discuss whether the rooms “work” or are too “costly”? What about the cost to children’s lives? What about the cost, as well, to the very concept of education? What does a child learn when exclusion is called inclusion, terror is called calm, and a war on children is called education? We should all be ashamed. Are we?

(Photo Credit: Cambridgeshire Live)

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