Aaron Carroll, a pediatrician health policy blogger, tweeted on this. His response was, "Omg."
The girl, Grace, hadn't broken the law again. The 15-year-old wasn't in trouble for fighting with her mother or stealing, the issues that had gotten her placed on probation in the first place.
Indeed. Because obviously a teenager with a history of bad fights with her mother and some petty theft should in fact be on probation, no way that could possibly compound the problem. First off, most awful teenagers grow out of it and should just be supported so that they don't fuck up their lives. Second, the poor kid is obviously overwhelmed by what's happening to her and by her positioning as a "bad" child.
I mean, if we had a better society, that girl would probably do just fine if she could have a fresh start, like living with an aunt or a friend's family - not as a punishment, just as a chance to break the patterns with her mother and the pattern of being the "bad" kid.
2: I'm curious whether there's any pressure on wealthy white parents whose white kids are having similar problems to get the police involved. I've found that there's a huge push from service providers to do so and there are some support structures you can only access after you've done that, which is often counterprouctive. (I don't know how it works because I of course haven't. We make do with what Medicaid offers.) The older workers who've been at this longer often advise against police involvement because here at least probation is mostly just hoop-jumping for the parents/guardians as the kid ends up being forced to make a poster about why violence is bad or something like that. Or end up in a situation like this one. Nightmares!