If I said to you “What is a ‘justice-involved individual,” you might think, “a cop” or “a lawyer,” but you would probably think, “Uh oh, that sounds like a term meant to conceal something.”
And you would be right. “Justice-involved individuals” is the term that a new guide from the Department of Education uses to refer to “criminals. Here’s the introduction:
Beyond the Box
Increasing Access to Higher Education for Justice Involved
Individuals
Purpose of This GuideToday, an estimated 70 million Americans have been involved with the
criminal justice system. Data show plainly that people of color are more likely to come in contact with the justice system due, in part, to punitive school disciplinary policies that disproportionately impact certain student groups and racial profiling.There is also growing recognition that successful reintegration back into our society for justice-involved individuals benefits those individuals, their families, and our communities. Research also shows that education can be a powerful pathway for justice-involved individuals to transition out of prison back into the classroom or the workforce, and cuts the likelihood of returning to prison within three years by over 40 percent.
With this context, it is critical to ensure that gateways to higher education, such as admissions practices, do not disproportionately disadvantage justice-involved individuals who have already served their time. Criminal justice information (CJI), for instance, has been shown to deter potentially well qualified applicants from applying for, and enrolling in, the postsecondary education and training that economists predict is critical to meaningful reentry and labor market success.
In related news, did you know that transgenders are massively more likely to be justice-involved individuals?:
16% of transgender and gender non‐conforming people had been sent to jail or prison “for any reason” (for the general U.S. public, this figure is 2.7%)
Clearly, this is shocking bigotry. In no case can transgenders and gender non-conforming people be committing crimes at a higher rate than the general public. That would violate liberal ideology. There ought to be a federal program.
Along those lines, how are the new federal guidelines from the Department of Education ordering schools to institute racial quotas on suspensions going? The feds did this because black and Latino students are suspended at disproportionate rates. Here’s how the policy is working out in St. Paul, MN:
Under pressure from Obama educrats, public school districts are no longer suspending even violent students; but now, under pressure from Black Lives Matter, they are suspending teachers who complain about not suspending bad kids.
In St. Paul, Minn., a high school teacher was put on administrative leave last month after Black Lives Matter threatened to shut down the school because the teacher complained about lenient discipline policies that have led to a string of assaults on fellow teachers.
Last month, two students at Como Park Senior High School punched and body slammed a business teacher unconscious, opening a head wound that required staples. And earlier in the year, another student choked a science teacher into a partial coma that left him hospitalized for several days.
In both cases, the teachers were white and the students black.
Theo Olson, a teacher at the school complained on Facebook about new district policies that fail to punish kids for fighting and drug-dealing. Like dozens of cities across the country — including New York — St. Paul adopted the policies in compliance with new discipline guidelines issued by the Obama administration. The Education Department has threatened school districts with lawsuits and funding cuts wherever if finds racial “disparities” in suspensions and expulsions, arguing such disparities have created a “school-to-prison pipeline” for African-Americans children. The agency claims such disparities are the product of racism in schools.
St. Paul teacher Theo Olson is labeled a racist by Black Lives Matter for saying that a lack of discipline hurts education.
“Anyone care to explain to me the school-to-prison pipeline my colleagues and I have somehow created, or perpetuated, or not done enough to interrupt?” Olson wrote. “Because if you can’t prove it, the campaigns you’ve waged to deconstruct adult authority in my building by enabling student misconduct, you seriously owe us real teachers an apology.”Complained Olson: “Since we now have no backup, no functional location to send kids who won’t quit gaming, setting up fights, selling drugs, whoring trains, or cyber bullying, we’re screwed, just designing our own classroom rules.”
For these mild opinions, Black Lives Matter called Olson “a white supremacist” even though he had once marched with the group. Two days after Black Lives Matter met with the St. Paul school superintendent — and agreed to call off its protest — the 10-year veteran teacher was put on leave.
The world has gone mad.
Read the whole thing.
Our federal government is micromanaging school policies to make schools safer for transgenders who want to pee where they like and play on the sports team of their choice, but through its other ideology-based micromanagement, the feds are also making it more likely that everybody is less safe.
Get used to it. We’re probably going to have four more years of federal rule by liberal government-involved individuals.