A new DOJ coordinator must deal with the racial realities
Poor, rudderless children
Without fathers around, many of those children not only wind up poor, but rudderless. Many wind up committing crimes.
And many wind up mired in a juvenile justice system that metes out the same lopsided punishments that took the adults out of their lives.
Which is why Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris’ decision to find a new settlement coordinator to navigate an agreement among the U.S. Department of Justice, the Juvenile Court and the county to fix the way it treats black juveniles was wise.
It was wise because back in May, the current coordinator, Judge Paul Summers,wrote that race wasn’t a factor in how Shelby County juveniles are treated — a claim that was contradicted by federal monitor Michael Lieber,who said the court still had work to do in reducing the disproportionate contact that black youths had with the police and the court system, and ensuring equal treatment of black youths in particular.
Fresh approach to juvenile justice
When Summers’ contract ends in October, Harris intends to replace him with Herman Morris, a Memphis attorney who once served as a juvenile court referee. Harris said he wants the county to take a fresh approach to juvenile justice, and to “rehabilitate as many young lives as possible.”
But to do that means whoever is coordinating the agreement must understand that race not only has an impact on how African-American juveniles are dealt with, but that rehabilitating them means avoiding mistakes that now have them living in communities that make incarceration seem like an inevitability, said Shelby County Commission Chairman Van Turner.
“We have to be focused on lessening the interaction between our (black) youths and juvenile penal systems,” Turner said. “We all know that if you’re in the right zip code here, you can get away with a lot of things, and that’s patently unfair.
“This is symptomatic of many problems, and spending more time in juvenile detention won’t make it better.”
Addressing systematic discrimination
Rhodes College history professor Charles McKinney, who blasted Summers’ comments back in May, praised Harris’ decision to hire a new DOJ coordinator.
But, he said, Harris has some challenges ahead of him in resolving the memorandum of agreement, which the county has been under since 2012 after a DOJ investigation found systemic discrimination against African-American youth, as well as failure to provide due process and decent housing conditions
While the DOJ terminated portions of the agreement last October, it stopped short of removing total oversight, which former Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell’s administration twice requested.
“Lee is going to have to figure out how to be comfortable with the reality of the racial disparities that exist in the system, and figure out how to boldly go forward with crafting solutions to deal with that,” McKinney said.
McKinney is right. Harris does have a job ahead of him.
But he’s already made a good start by allowing Summers’ contract to end - because racial disparities that African-American youths struggle with in the juvenile justice system here are part of the same system that spawned the disparate incarceration rates that many adults in their families and communities struggle with.
And while it will be difficult to end that cycle, realizing that race plays a part in it has to be the place to start.