Solitary confinement will continue: Oregon schools install “isolation rooms” instead of “booths”


Published on Sep 5, 2013 by Police State USA

PORTLAND, OR — Last year, a parent’s outrage over a government school locking her child a padded cell without her knowledge or permission caused so much outrage that a new state law was passed, prohibiting schools from purchasing or using free-standing “seclusion cells” or “isolation booths,” as they are called. With the new law soon to take effect, some schools are scrambling for a way around the new law, so they can continue to place students in solitary confinement at their discretion.

READ MORE: http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/so…

Jared Harrison, a 7th grader at the McCornack school in the Eugene district, testified in front of legislators that he was placed in an isolation room hundreds of times — “at least every day” — as a punishment for the smallest things. His punishments began in the 1st grade, and continued for years. Anything from not following directions, to throwing paper balls, could earn Jared time in the cell.

“You have two adults dragging you into a room and locking the door behind you and you’re just a little kid and you don’t know what’s going on,” Harrison told lawmakers. “You’re not going to be calm. And I know no one else in the room was calm. They were all freaking out because their friend’s being locked in a room. It didn’t help the situation at all. It made it worse — much worse than it would’ve been if I had just sat in a timeout chair for five minutes.”

The new law defined the cells as free-standing units — like the one used in Longview, WA — to avoid the unintended prohibition of using rooms in the school for normal purposes. But it is easily circumvented.

The same policy of locking children in solitary confinement will continue, as long as the cells are built-in to the building, rather than in free-standing booths.

RELATED (2012 coverage) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op8GoD…

FAIR USE / SOURCE:
http://www.katu.com/news/local/School…

2 thoughts on “Solitary confinement will continue: Oregon schools install “isolation rooms” instead of “booths”

  1. I can’t begin to describe how sick this is. It’s bad enough in a prison, but when this happens in a kid’s school it can only mean that this country has gone a long way around a wrong turn.

    We need to know the names of everyone involved in this psychotic practice. If this is happening in a school near you please keep records for future reference, because any school official involved with this is a sick bastard who needs to answer for his sadistic little power-grab over the babies.

  2. Back in the Catholic grade school I was forced to attend, the nuns would either make you sit in the trash can in front of the entire class, because you were ‘worthless’ and they let the class know.

    Or that raging butch dyke principal would swoop down on you like Judgment Day, and use her 1″ thick oak yardstick to beat your knuckles until they turned purple.

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