The bill is getting mucho opposition. A HuffPost poll at the moment shows that about 52% of parents would not sign a permission slip for a field trip like that. On the other hand, I think it's a fabulous idea. Why? Not merely on general principle. In the fourth grade Son #1 had a field trip to the Suffolk County courthouse in Islip, as part of a study by the gifted/talented program. All parents who wanted to accompany the kids were allowed to do so, and quite a few of us went.
First we got to sit through about an hour of arraignments. The kids got to hear about drug and alcohol abuse, theft, assault, and various domestic issues. In one case, it was obvious that the parents of two small children were more interested in revenge against each other than the welfare of the youngsters. In another case, a very overweight prisoner, who was cuffed, had the misfortune of her elastic waistband failing to hold her pants up as she was walking back to the bench after her arraignment. She had to wait for a male court officer to walk to the other side of the courtroom (taking his sweet time doing so) to assist her with her pants. The kids already had a big idea that it is no fun to have to go through this. Besides the amusement of the pants situation (and they were NOT allowed to laugh, or make a sound) their compassion was stoked. When they got a private audience with the judge after the arraignments were over, quite a few of them asked whether those two small children were going to be okay. They seemed very relieved when the judge told them that the court would appoint a trustworthy guardian if the parents continued in the current mode.
The other part of the courthouse they got to see was the holding area. We all went into the control booth and met the officer in charge. He was on the job 21 years. He explained that, if not for drugs and alcohol, he would have been OUT of a job. He estimated that 75 to 90 percent of the business was in some way related to drugs and alcohol: abuse, possession, sale of illegal drugs, theft to get money to buy drugs/alcohol, violence associated with any of this, and so on.
He explained that, if you were dumb enough to get arrested and charged with a crime, you had to be held in a large cell before your arraignment...with all the other prisoners of your gender. If you got locked up on Friday night, you would have to stay the weekend to wait for a Monday arraignment. Depending on who was there and how many prisoners there were, it would be possible for teens to be held with career criminals. Sometimes prisoners staged fights that were designed to ambush officers who would go in to try to break it up...so the officers waited a long time before doing so, and prisoners might get pretty badly beaten before the fights were stopped.
The control booth has a good view of the entire holding area. In addition to the cells, we were able to see the "rest room" if you could call it that: a partition that shielded the middle part of the body (torso plus a bit more) with no door and no privacy. Men and women alike had to be subjected to this. Why? Prisoners sometimes say they need to use the bathroom so they can engage in some illegal activity. Don't like that? Don't do anything that might get you locked up. Lunch in jail was two slices of white bread, one slice of cheese, and one slice of bologna. Don't like that? Too bad.
The kids were literally talking about this experience over and over for weeks afterwards. Sometimes I still hear my son mention it, five years later. I know I've personally told the story at least a dozen times (now at least a baker's dozen). I can't imagine a single negative effect on anyone who went on the field trip, parent or child. I hope some NY legislator introduces a similar bill here before my younger two kids make it all the way through the school system.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment