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\u201cIn a democracy, we do not put children in cages. Period. There is no debating it. Nothing you can say to me will justify putting children in cages.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Patricia Okoumou<\/a><\/p>\n Ethan Weinstein, a reporter for the VTDigger<\/a>, covers southeastern Vermont. Of late, he\u2019s had reason to cover the Vermont Department of Corrections. In a recent interview, speaking of the high and rising number of deaths, and particularly suicides, in Vermont\u2019s prisons and jails, Weinstein noted<\/a>, \u201cThere\u2019s a belief that things are going to be messed up there, that you\u2019re not going to be receiving adequate care. And so it has felt like, in order for something to be a story, someone has to die. You know, it\u2019s not enough to hear that a person has a concussion, and they can\u2019t see a doctor, or a person has been prescribed a medication their whole life and has been refused it once they\u2019ve been incarcerated. It just seems as though our tolerance for issues within our prisons is so high that it can be hard to get people to care about this.\u201d What if that person is a child? Does that matter? Does it matter to you? Recent news reports would suggest the answer is No.<\/p>\n For years, the United States has `struggled\u2019 with an epidemic of seclusion rooms and physical restraints in schools. Time and again, one district or another has been forced to `discover\u2019 its own alarming propensity for torture of children in the name of schooling. This past week, Alabama put a new twist on an old story by \u2026 doing absolutely nothing. Last week, Al.com, Alabama\u2019s largest news site<\/a>, reported that, after six years waiting, the state had still not provided any requested data on school seclusion and restraint incidents<\/a>. In March 2017, Al.com requested data. Nothing came. In 2020, they tried again, and, again, no response. In June 2022, they tried again, and again received nothing. Public school districts are required to turn over information to the U.S. Department of Education every year. The last year Alabama reported on was 2017 \u2013 2018. As far as Al.com can tell, Alabama\u2019s state department doesn\u2019t seem to care. The Alabama state department is supposed to collect information from every school district every year. It doesn\u2019t, and what it does manage to get doesn\u2019t seem to undergo any review.<\/p>\n In 2017 \u2013 2018, Alabama reported nearly 600 incidents of seclusion<\/a>, of putting a child in a locked room often for hours, and often for days, on end. The use of seclusion rooms in schools was outlawed by the Alabama legislature in 2011, but it\u2019s not significant enough to warrant enforcement.<\/p>\n In 2021, an Aboriginal youth, Michael, was `referred\u2019 to Cleveland Youth Detention Centre, in Queensland, Australia. Cleveland is almost always described as \u201ctroubled<\/a>.\u201d Michael, who lives with intellectual disability, was charged with a violent assault. He spent 744 days in detention, awaiting trial. On Friday, at trial, it was `discovered\u2019 that Michael had spent 500 days in solitary confinement, \u201cregularly locked in his cell for more than 20 hours a day<\/a>.\u201d The explanation for this was \u201cstaffing issues<\/a>\u201d. Rodney Dillon, a Palawa man and Indigenous rights advocate, has a better explanation<\/a>, \u201cThis system is not about looking after human beings, this is about torture. It\u2019s a torture chamber, that\u2019s what it is. The effect this will have on this kid\u2019s life is irreparable. That kid will be damaged for the rest of his life; that kid will never, ever move on from what\u2019s happened. That is the worst thing you can do to any human being, is put them in solitary confinement \u2026 We need to change this system, the racism that\u2019s in this system, and the hatred.\u201d<\/p>\n What exactly are children meant to learn<\/a>, the ones thrown into solitary, the ones watching their friends go into solitary? Why are we so invested in seclusion and restraint of children, generally, and of children living with disabilities, particularly? What terrible crime have these children committed that entire systems invest so much in maintaining practices that constitute torture?<\/p>\n What terrible crime have these children committed? Must they die to be a story, for us to care? Remember Alan Kurdi, the two-year child who drowned September 2015 and was famously photographed, dead, on the beach? Remember? In England, in 2018, ten-year-old Muhammad Amin entered and won a youth poetry contest. Rather than throwing children into solitary, rather than torturing them, rather than only hearing (of) them when they\u2019ve died, we should listen to them. Listen to Muhammad Amin listening to Alan Kurdi:<\/p>\n