Playground Jail Fuels the School to Prison Pipeline

When I head to the playground with my four-year-old son and one-year-old daughter, I expect to have a few hours of fun. My son runs like crazy with his friends all over the jungle gym, where they pretend they are astronauts or firemen, while I push my daughter on the swings.

Only a mile and a half away from our local playground, is a playground outside a public housing project called Tompkins Houses in the Bedford Stuyvesant of Brooklyn. That playground had as its main feature, a jail-themed jungle gym. Many wondered why a fake jail would be put up in the first place. Doesn't it send the wrong message to kids, especially in a neighborhood where a high proportion of the residents end up in prison? Why did the jail end up in Bed-Stuy and not in a white(r) neighborhood? Residents had been complaining about the "jail" since 2004 when it was first put in, but it was not until a week ago that something was done. A local community activist, Monifa Bandele, saw the playground jail and took pictures, which she then posted to Facebook. Word spread quickly, as did outrage from local parents, and the New York Housing Authority was forced to respond. Within days the "jail" sign was painted over.

Was justice done? Essence magazine says putting something like a jail in a playground normalizes prison as part of the daily life of children, like a post office or a firehouse. Consider the example of Destiny, a little girl who played in the playground, said she liked the fake jail: It reminded her of her father, who, Destiny's mother said, was in jail for gun possession.

The fake jail was also symbolic of what the future might hold for the local children. Disproportionate numbers of youth of color suffer at the hands of zero tolerance policies, and face disciplinary action which is often wildly out of sync with the infraction. This leads to high suspension rates, and in New York City, where the city police work as school security agents, a criminal record before graduation. The New York Civil Liberties Union calls this school to prison pipeline.

Whether the city paints over the fake jail or not, that some agency even thought to put it in at all shows a lack of consideration for a community and an frightening expectation that young people of color are going to prison. A fake jail sits in direct contradiction to national rhetoric that is focused more and more on college and career readiness. This incident indicates cthat the rhetoric needs to be supported by resources, both symbolic and real, that truly raise the expectations of all children.

In New York City, we have more police officers in schools than guidance counselors. That will not get us better-prepared students. In New York, we are fighting for a Student Safety Act which attempts to at least provide some transparency on the police activity in schools. But we need more than that, we need to provide real support for all children to get a high quality education.

Photo credit: D.reichardt