Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
The Justice Department is investigating a Mississippi school district that is accused of sending predominately black and disabled children to jail without probable cause for minor offenses, the Associated Press reports.
A suit filed by the Justice Department said jail is used as “a medium for school discipline,” the AP reported.
The city of Meridian and Lauderdale County have policies that permit officials to arrest and ship students 80 miles away to a juvenile detention center without probable cause.
Superintendent Alvin Taylor said the district has been cooperating with feds.
“We’ve changed our discipline policies, our procedures in the district,” Taylor told the AP. “When I got here in the summer of 2011, I made a lot of changes during that period. We basically changed how we did a lot of things — how we handled discipline, how we handled academics, how our administrators handled procedures in their buildings.
