From Roots to Results: Breaking the Chains Project

Dominique Smith

POL 480: Senior Seminar

Dr. Tom Ellington
December 10, 2014

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My Story
I was a child who grew up with a parent who was in and out of jail and prison
most of my life. I suffered with some behavioral problems in school and identity issues at
home because my younger siblings had my mother and their father. I felt a huge void in
my life and for a time felt I did something to make my biological father not want to be
there. Unlike other caretakers or school officials, my mother sensed that my behavior
was my reaction to my father being incarcerated and missing from my life. She found an
after-school program called In Arms Reach, Inc. that supported children with incarcerated
parents by providing mentoring and tutoring services as well as transportation for prison
visits to help children maintain a relationship with their incarcerated parent in New York
State.
The program picked up participants from area elementary and middle schools
every day and brought us to a nearby college where we received tutoring from the college
students who also served as mentors. Celebrities would come and speak with us on the
importance of doing well in school and accomplishing our dreams in spite of what or who
was missing in our lives. But the most important message was that we mattered and were
important. Many weekends we would go on trips to visit our incarcerated parents and
around New York City; and in the event that was not feasible, we would spend time
writing letters to our parent as a way to get our feelings out on paper.
In Arms Reach, Inc. helped strengthen me emotionally and academically. I was
finally more than a statistic. I was no longer obligated to carry a secret that my biological
father was in prison. I was freed to accept everything about myself and learned that I
could choose to live a life different than my father.

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The United States has the worlds largest prison system with a population of over
1.5 million people incarcerated at year end 2013 (Carson, 2014). The mass incarceration
trend that took place over the past thirty years decimated communities of color and many
children were left without one or both of their parents (Alexander, 2012). The United
States maintains one of the largest, most expensive, and most profitable prison systems in
the world. However, the group that has suffered and lost the most is the children of
incarcerated parents. These children may experience serious antisocial behavior that may
have a huge impact on their success, particularly in school. According to Hairston
(2007), The arrest and removal of a mother or father from a childs life forces that child
to confront emotional, social and economic consequences that may trigger behavior
problems, poor outcomes in school and a disruption or severance of the relationship with
the incarcerated parent that may persist even after the parent is released from prison. As
such, they are likely labeled problem kids who ultimately may be marginalized in
school. They may also fall victim to zero tolerance policies that have been adopted in
many schools as a means of discipline and get kicked out of school all together.
Zero tolerance policies have been shown to penalize more children who live in
poverty, more children who come from communities of color, and I would imagine many
who have suffered the trauma of losing a parent to incarceration. Most schools are not
aware or equipped to address the impact of incarceration on youth and zero tolerance
policies have become a punishment system that has created the school-to-prison pipeline
that funnels generational cycles of imprisonment. Moreover, just as the prison systems in
the United States are racially disparate with 59% of the prison population being black or
Latino (Carson, 2014), so is the number of children with an incarcerated parent.

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According to the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDOC, 2014), black males make
up 62.75% of the prison population in Georgia, while white males only 32.48%. The
GDOC also reports that 22% of incarcerated women report they have at least two
children, and 22.58% of men have at least one child (Id.). Bibb County residents make up
4.41% of the people admitted into Georgias prison system (Id.). There are children in
Bibb County who are need of services. The generational cycles of incarceration can be
broken with in-school and after-school programs that can support the needs of children of
incarcerated parents.
School to-Prison Pipeline/ Zero Tolerance Policy
One of the largest issues regarding high incarceration rates in the U.S. and
particularly in the south is the school to prison pipeline also known as the zero
tolerance policy. Youth have become the prime target for addressing social problems
that may lead to crime. Instead of schools serving as a safety net to catch youth who
have fallen to the despair of family dysfunction (like parental incarceration) and poverty,
they are serving as the gatekeeper to the penal system. Over the past twenty years,
schools across the nation have moved to enforce zero tolerance policies that have
initiated the school-to-prison pipeline. The NAACP describes the pipeline as the
funneling of students out of school and into the streets and the juvenile correction
system (NAACP, 2010). While school administrators have the responsibility of
maintaining a safe and disciplined learning environment, the public still has a
responsibility of ensuring the educational system effectively responds to the educational
and social needs of all children.

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Zero tolerance policies in schools were a product of the tough on crime era
where public officials sought ways to deal with students, who violated school policies,
particularly gang violence in schools that involved shootings and fights. In 1994,
Congress passed the Gun-Free Schools Act (GFSA), which required schools to have
policies that mandated the expulsion of any student that brought a firearm to school. For
example, in Kalamazoo, MI an eighth grader who was attempting to run away from home
with friends went to school to meet the friends and was caught with .22 caliber rounds in
his pockets (Hall, 2011). Although it was known that this youth had no history of
violence, was not considered an immediate threat, and had made the conscious decision
to not bring the firearm with him into the school, because of the states zero tolerance
policy it was mandatory for the principal to expel the student from school (Hall, 2011).
But many states have enhanced their policies to include other kinds of weapons
and infractions committed by students that involve drugs, alcohol, fighting, or other acts
of aggression. Peterson (2008) reports that as time went on, schools also began to apply
strict disciplinary sanctions for minor or non-violent violations of rules such as tardiness
and disorderly conduct. However, there is little data that supports the notion that zero
tolerance policy creates a deterrent effect on violence and disruption or improves the
climate of schools. The Advancement Project, a nonprofit civil rights law and policy
organization based in Washington, D.C. argues, that there are several factors that have
contributed to zero tolerance policies taking hold as a disciplinary practice in the U.S.
school system: the war on drugs; the media hype that has played up the existence of
juvenile super-predators; and the shootings at Columbine High School in 1999 (BrownDianis, 2011). Zero tolerance policies may have created the illusion of more safety in

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schools but it has completely eradicated the common law concept of parense patriae,
which is a Latin term that means parent of the country. It was a term that was used to
articulate the states responsibility to protect those who cannot protect themselves and
became the basis for the countrys rational for state intervention in the lives of troubled
youth in the early 1800s (Parry, 2005).
Zero tolerance policies started out as predetermined, nonnegotiable punishments
for specific acts of misbehaviors but morphed into a broad, sweeping set of harsh
disciplinary practices that exclude children from learning for a range of misbehaviors,
even the most trivial (Browne-Dianis, 2008). School systems that have adopted zero
tolerance policies have revised their disciplinary codes to criminalize what used to be
considered school infractions. In fact, acts such as truancy, excessive tardiness, petty
vandalism or other wayward behaviors are now punished with out-of-school suspensions
or even arrests that lead to juvenile justice detention, which defeats the purpose of trying
to keep the youth engaged in school.
Schools are not only enforcing harsh, draconian discipline policiesthey are also
increasingly treating student misbehavior as criminal. Many schools have turned
to law enforcement and juvenile courts for discipline enforcement. Although no
national data exist to track the number of arrests of students in schools, a look at
representative states and districts exposes this trend (Browne-Dianis, 2011).
These policies have also had a disproportionate impact on youth of color (Hirschfield,
2008; Verdugo, 2002).
The Advancement Project report ends with a cogent statement that policymakers
must consider: Lack of tolerance is a dead-end solution (Verdugo, 2002). School

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discipline codes should be revised to include graduated sanctions and the elimination of
out-of-school suspensions for school infractions that have no criminal nature such
attendance issues, disobedience or defiance, or fights not involving weapons (BrowneDianis, 2011). Several school districts have modified their disciplinary code and have
drastically reduced the number of suspensions in their schools and improved, even
changed, youth behavior in their schools. One school that made a notable transformation
was Belmont High School in Dayton, Ohio. It went from being a low performing school
that was considered dangerous to one that has few disciplinary problems and high
graduation rates. David White, the principal who took over the school in 2009,
implemented a disciplinary model that made students and teachers accountable through
five behavior expectations: 1.) Be prepared; 2.) Be on time; 3.) Be respectful; 4.) Be
accountable, and 5.) Be consistent. The Belmont High School transformation was the
result of collaboration between students, teachers, parents, law enforcement, and the
juvenile justice court. Statistics from Belmonts 2009-2010 school year showed that
compared to the 2008-2009 school year:
Fights went from 143 down to 17, an 89 percent reduction.
Assaults went from 83 down to 10, an 88 percent reduction.
Arrests went from 58 down to 1, a 99 percent reduction (Buffenbarger, 2011).
In addition to disrupting the school climate where an arrest takes place, the
consequences of an arrest are often serious for the student involved, who may be
handcuffed, transported to a police precinct, incarcerated, and forced to be absent from
school in order to appear in court. Furthermore, the arrest and its short-term
consequences are just the beginning; conviction for a criminal offense creates long-term

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challenges for the young person who will face more severe punishments if she or he is
rearrested in the future. She may face a wide range of formal and informal barriers as she
seeks to obtain higher education, employment, or housing (Cahn, 2006; Clear, 2001). In
2010, in a New York City middle school principal had school safety officers (NYPD
officers) arrest a 12-year old girl for drawing non-offensive teenage doodles on a desk
with a marker (Chen, 2010). She was handcuffed and taken out of school by police
officers for violating a school code about vandalism. If she had been prosecuted, which
she was not because of the public outcry, she could have faced a long list of hurdles as
she progressed in school.
In 2006, the American Psychological Association (APA) released a report to
respond to the controversy that existed around the use of zero tolerance policies and
procedures used in elementary and secondary schools as a method to achieve safe
learning environments. The APA convened a Task Force to evaluate research on zero
tolerance policies and to make appropriate recommendations about the approach. The
Task Force assessed the extent to which current practices of that time benefitted students
and schools, particularly if it reduced incidences of violence or other disruptions. The
Task Force did an extensive review of the literature and found that despite a 20-year
history of implementation, there was little data that could directly test several
assumptions that have been used to justify the need for zero tolerance policies. They
found that the available data contradicted five key assumptions that have been used to
support the argument for zero tolerance policy:

School violence is at a crisis level and increasing, thus necessitating

forceful, no-nonsense strategies for violence prevention.

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Through the provision of mandated punishment for certain offenses, zero

tolerance increases the consistency of school discipline and thereby the
clarity of the disciplinary message to students.

Removal of students who violate school rules will create a school climate
more conducive to learning for those students who remain.

The swift and certain punishments of zero tolerance have a deterrent effect
upon students, thus improving overall student behavior and discipline.

Parents overwhelmingly support the implementation of zero tolerance

policies to ensure the safety of schools, and students feel safer knowing
that transgressions will be dealt with in no uncertain terms.

The Task Force concluded that zero tolerance policies may negatively affect the
relationship of education with juvenile justice and appear to conflict to some degree with
current best knowledge concerning adolescent development. However, another important
finding to note was that students who had been suspended or expelled were more likely to
drop out of school. Thus, zero tolerance policies have a negative effect on youth, their
families, and communities particularly in low-income urban school districts (Verdugo,
2002).
Most practitioners who work within the education and juvenile justice systems all
agreed that the system was not fail-proof but that it was necessary to ensure swift and
immediate response to serious code violations. However, they also agreed that
sometimes there were situations where they thought administrators should have more
discretion in determining the sanctions imposed on youth. The juvenile probation officer
described zero tolerance policies to be akin to mandatory sentencing. Parents, youth, and

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advocates believe zero tolerance policies should be eliminated because they are applied
too rigidly and do not take into account any relevant circumstances.
The participants also agreed that zero tolerance policies did not do anything to
stop or deter any youth who wanted to cause real harm. It does not serve as a deterrent,
simply as a punishment mechanism, which does not adequately serve as a violence
prevention method. While there appeared to be a shift in thinking about the use of zero
tolerance policies in localities across the nation, the jury is still out on what works to
reduce violence in the schools. However, some jurisdictions are not waiting to find out
and are simply using innovative approaches to come up with solutions. Some school
districts have begun to use restorative justice models in their disciplinary activities
(Wachtel, 2011). Restorative justice model has three main goals:

Accountability. Restorative justice strategies provide opportunities for

wrongdoers to be accountable to those they have harmed, and enable them to
repair the harm they caused to the extent possible.

Community safety. Restorative justice recognizes the need to keep the

community safe through strategies that build relationships and empower the
community to take responsibility for the well being of its members.

Competency development. Restorative justice seeks to increase the pro-social

skills of those who have harmed others, address underlying factors that lead youth
to engage in delinquent behavior, and build on strengths in each young person
(Ashley & Burke, 2009).

The restorative approach helps schools to effectively address behavior and other
complex school issues, produce a supportive rather than oppressive environment that can

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improve learning, and offers alternatives to suspension and expulsion (Ashley &Burke,
2009).
The community and practitioners within the education and juvenile justice
systems agree that zero tolerance policies do not offer enough discretion in with
discipline nor does it foster a learning opportunity. But how much discretion should be
given to principals, teachers, and other staff? Although research has shown that the
theories of punishment that zero tolerance policies are based updeterrence, retribution,
and incapacitationdo not work to reduce crime, more research is necessary to establish
the use of other models as a way to address deviant behavior in youth.
The Consortium to Prevent School Violence issued recommendations to help
school districts return to using a more contextualized approach to disciplining students
and an ethic of care (Findlay, 2008).

Give discretion to administrators and teachers to consider mitigating

circumstances in determining severity of punishment.

Employ a wide variety of disciplinary consequences in student codes of conduct,

and indicate that the use of these should be tailored to the specific circumstances
of the student and the violation.

Specify graduated categories of inappropriate or undesirable behaviors, and align

them with categories of consequences.

Minimize the use of exclusionary (expulsion or out-of school suspensions)

disciplinary punishments.

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Include an amnesty clause where non-violent students who inadvertently bring

banned objects to school or find them can give them to a school official without
fear of punishment.

While many schools are still in need of understanding different ways to address student
antisocial behaviors that may be influenced by outside factors like family dysfunction,
programs can be put in place to help children learn to cope and address the issues that
may trigger deviant behavior.
Many southern school districts have adopted zero tolerance policies and some
southern states have passed laws, including Georgia, that require school administrators to
contact law enforcement if a crime is committed.
Starting a Non-Profit
Before beginning the process of creating a nonprofit organization that provides
services to a community one has to research if there is a need for the service just as any
business would have to do. In my case, I needed to assess if there was a problem that
needed to be addressed. Any program that attempts to address complex social issues
should be prepared to identify a specific target group or population it would want to serve
because dealing with systemic problems like poverty, hunger, or lack education or
healthcare are huge undertakings.
Creating a non-profit organization requires thorough research of the industry and
the availability of services for which ones organization proposes to address and
understanding and compliance with federal and state guidelines. The article How to
Start a Nonprofit (National Council of Nonprofits) provides a simple five step approach
to starting your own nonprofit organization. These steps include intense research about

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your issue area, and the need for the organization; state law research to ensure being in
compliance and continuing compliance. Another article titled How to Start a Nonprofit
Organization (U.S. Small Business Administration) emphasizes other aspects in regards
to beginning a nonprofit organization. The article directs the reader to focus on her
passion and stressed the importance of wanting to make a difference, before taking the
necessary steps to start a nonprofit organization.
Starting & Building a Nonprofit: A Practical Guide (Pakroo, 2013) provides
essential practical steps to operationalize all of ones ideas, plans outlined in a business
and strategic plan. Georgia Center for Nonprofit Organizations does not mention the
hardships of managing or starting a nonprofit organization. It does provide information
that pertains specifically to incorporating a nonprofit in the state of Georgia. The writer
details six steps that focus operationalizing ones plan for starting a nonprofit, with less
focus on funding the organizatiom. Most articles do not emphasize the important role of
the board of directors in a nonprofit organization.
Helmigs (2004) article provides information on some of the negative aspects to
managing a nonprofit once it is established. From an economic standpoint, managing a
nonprofit can be hard because most follow a module called an agency relation that
allows people who are not involved directly to the nonprofit to perform work, but giving
some decision making power to the agent. Some other issues are accounting and auditing
within nonprofit organizations, most nonprofits opt out of hiring accountants for their
organization. The article Insights Into Service Operations Management: A Research
Agenda (Roth, 2003) discusses the importance of proper management and leadership
skills that will help determine the success rate of a nonprofit organization.

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Some of the aspects in starting a nonprofit organization are the emotional and
psychological research necessary to receive funding, along with the psychological
research needed to prove the need for a nonprofit in the specific area. There are several
factors involving the children of incarcerated parents. According to Performance
Measure (Meyer, 2014) there are several reasons an organization will deny a grant
request. Some of these factors include trend of deteriorating financial stability, high debt
ratio, inadequate cash flow, poor revenue diversification, low program expense ratio, and
low fundraising efficiency.
Along with the emotional appeal to grant writing, the most important aspect of
looking for funding is identifying the problem necessary for the nonprofit. Being that my
organization is for children with incarcerated parents there are several aspects and
opinions when dealing with children with incarcerated parents. One of those aspects is
the type of messaging regarding the messaging and content the child has with their
parent. All situations should be treated differently, and the socioeconomic backgrounds in
these situations make a world of a difference. Most prisons do allow visitation from the
child to the parent, but more federal and state prisons are located more than 100 mile
from where the parent is from (Folk, 2012). Shannons (Shannon, 2009) article states,
complete lack of contact with fathers has been linked to poor developmental outcomes,
including poor achievement in school, impaired cognitive function, aggression and
delinquency proving that not having this figure in a childs life could cause long term
dysfunction. Delivering Services to Incarcerated Teen Fathers: A Pilot Intervention to
Increase the Quality of FatherInfant Interactions During Visitation created a program
called the Elmo Project with parents in prison and their infants, to monitor the progress

Smith 15
infants would have if they had constant contact with their father throughout their lives.
The program featured a video after each visit. By the conclusion of their experiment they
were able to recognize a significant difference in the infants progress.
Over time there have been changes within the system to cater to the children of
incarcerated parents. There have been changes with visitation to be more accessible, and
more friendly visiting environments. Although there has been growth within communities
with organizations, the growth has not been significant.
Breaking the Chains Project
Mission Statement: Breaking the Chains Project was founded to educate, counsel, and
provide resources for children with incarcerated parents, and to produce and sustain high
functioning members of society, regardless of their circumstances.
Program Activities:

An after-school program, that meets Monday through Wednesday, where the

children in Macon, Georgia receive tutoring from local college students. At the
program dinner and snacks will be provided for the children.

Weekly letter writing to the incarcerated parent. This will help build and continue
the relationship with the incarcerated parent. This will also help the child with
growing a sense of identity that are not based on ideals and stories about who
their parent actually is.

Monthly visits to see the incarcerated parent(s). This will also help maintain a
healthy relationship, and motivate the parent to stay on their best behavior while
incarcerated.

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Monthly meetings with caretaker/foster parent(s) to talk about the childs growth.
Potential issues at home, and how Breaking the Chains is available to help with
these in home issues.

Conclusion
Incarceration is systematic and cyclical. If appropriate programs do not exist that will
help children with incarcerated parents, the cycle will continue. Recidivism rates have
been reduced over the past few years, due to the increase of reentry programs across the
nation. The decrease of barriers to employment in larger cities have also helped with the
decrease of recidivism rates.

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