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JC/DC ACTION ALERT:  Children in Adult Prisons

SB 793 has been placed on the calendar for hearing in the Judiciary Committee.

Currently Missouri law incarcerates children who have been charged as adults in adult prisons.  While they have been charged with serious offences, these children have not yet been convicted of a crime. SB 793 would require children to be prosecuted in juvenile courts unless the child is certified as an adult or is being prosecuted for a traffic or curfew violation. Additionally, the bill specifies that no person under the age of 18 may be detained in an adult jail unless the person has been certified as an adult. This bill does NOT change the ability of the court to certify youth as adults for heinous crimes and hold these offenders in adult facilities.

Dear Senator,

Children who commit serious crimes should be held accountable for their actions.  However, incarcerating children charged, but not convicted, in adult facilities is a sentence in itself.  Children are not the same as adults and until they are found guilty should be afforded extra protections.  When children are incarcerated in adult prisons they face a dramatically increased danger of sexual assault and have higher risks of suicide.  These facilities do not afford children the opportunities of education and rehabilitation services available in the juvenile detention system.  Instead of working to rehabilitate these children when their mental development is at its’ capacity to learn we are teaching them to be hardened criminals.

 The Missouri Model has long been the national model with regard to state juvenile justice systems. This allowance to house charged but not convicted children with adults is a flaw we need to recognize and correct.  Please vote yes on SB 793 to keep kids 17 and younger out of adult prisons.

Sincerely,

You name and PTA

 

Senate Judiciary Committee:

Bob Dixon, [email protected]

Bob Onder, [email protected]

Ed Emery, [email protected]

Andrew Koenig, [email protected]

Scott Sifton, [email protected]

 

Carla Wiese

VP Legislation and Advocacy

Missouri PTA

[email protected]


Community and Parent Engagement Toolkit

DESE has launched a Parent and Community Engagement Toolkit to help schools and organizations gather feedback on building Missouri’s school report cards. If you want parents and other members of your community to have input, you can volunteer to host a focus group session. We’ll provide all the tools you need including a facilitator guide, script and three feedback activities. Each session should only take one hour of participants’ time. The deadline for feedback is Feb. 1, 2018. Find out more and volunteer to host an engagement session here: https://dese.mo.gov/build-mos-report-card.

Thank you!

Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education | Communications | 573-751-3469 | dese.mo.gov


Missouri Budget Project Report

The Missouri Budget Project released an analysis today showing that bills being considered by the Missouri Senate Ways & Means Committee will do little for most Missouri families, pass on costs to middle and lower income Missourians, and leave our communities reeling.

A few highlights of the report:

Both bills would provide giveaways to Missouri’s wealthiest at the expense of low and middle income taxpayers:

  • In 2019, Missourians with average incomes of $1.387 million would get around $11,000 under SB 617, while most working Missourians would see little impact or even tax increases.
  • In fact, an analysis by the Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy found that 91% of the tax cut would flow to the wealthiest 20% of Missourians.
  • Like in Kansas, Missouri would have little alternative but to move toward regressive sales taxes, making our tax system even more unfair for lower income earners.

The consequences of the bills would leave our communities reeling:

  • The tax provisions included in the bills that would increase revenue are not enough to make up for the size of the new giveaways for top wealth holders. In fact, the net effect of SB 617 would cut $464 million from state general revenue in 2019, while SB 611 would reduce state revenue by more than $1 billion. These cuts would come at a time when Missouri is struggling to meet its budget needs due to numerous loopholes and corporate giveaways, and would require additional and steep cuts to community agencies.
  • In addition, SB 617 would eliminate the individual income tax over time, increasing its cost each year and eventually resulting in an annual cut of $6.6 billion. Individual income tax currently provides $6.6 billion to support the FY 2018 budget, or 36% of all state-source funding (not including federal funds). There would simply be no way for Missouri to compensate for the loss of revenue.
  • Both bills would place Missouri on a fiscal path that would make Kansas’ recent experience with tax cuts look like a cake walk.

Read the full report here.


JC/DC Join the Movement!

Download and use our fliers:

Male flier
Female flier

Join the Movement…

  • We cannot vote.
  • We cannot join the military.
  • We have not graduated from high school.
  • We have just begun to think about our future.
  • We are not adults!

BUT… we can be tried as adults and held in adult prisons.

Join the student led movement NOW to change the way we look at youth offenders. You can begin the conversation by posting the following to social media. #18in18 because 17 is to young. It is time to Raise the Age MO @molegislature @missouripta @raisetheageMO

Did you know Missouri is only one of five states that has not raised the age to 18?  Society has labeled 18 as an adult. Why have we not done the same with the justice system. Currently children as young as 12 can be held in adult facilities. We know children do not do well in adult prisons. Not only are they not able to continue with their education but are subject to horrific abuses at the hands of adult offenders. Missouri PTA asks all our Units but especially our student members to join the movement. Often youth do not feel their voice matters, this is an issue that may affect any of our youth.  Missouri legislators do listen to what constituents are saying via social media. Students, you can help us work for change by sharing and posting to social media the red post above. Not a student? Your help is just as important. This January join with us as we urge our legislators to Raise the Age and protect the children of Missouri.

For more information contact Will Wiese, Advocacy Chair at [email protected] or Carla Wiese, Vice President of Legislation and Advocacy at [email protected].

 

Thank you,

Will Wiese

MO PTA Advocacy Chair