Schools Barred From Handcuffing Students

ABC News
May. 29, 2012

Oh no! This is going to be a major setback! If you can't handcuff em', how else are they going to get edjumacated? - ChrisPublic schools in Jackson, Miss., will no longer be allowed to handcuff students to poles or other objects, under a settlement with the Southern Poverty Law Center reached in U.S. District Court.

Jody Owens, director of the Mississippi office of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the Capital City Alternatives school in Mississippi's largest district must immediately stop handcuffing students, a practice used to punish even such things as dress-code violations.

"The focus should be education, not incarceration and it's tantamount to child abuse when children are handcuffed to railings for something as simple as not having the appropriate belt or inappropriate shoe strings," Owens said.

[...]CCA Principal Marie Harris said in her deposition that some did handcuff students, but that it was done for student safety.

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