Judges lead program to help at-risk students
Ending so-called school-to-prison pipeline is the goal
DALLAS — The jury room was like a scene out of the movie “12 Angry Men.” On the first vote, 12 high school students were ready to convict the defendant in a mock trial of strangling his girlfriend.
But then one young man seated next to the corner of a bookshelf spoke with a quiet voice. He doubted the fictitious person’s guilt.
“I want to know,” a young man across the table barked. “Why do you think he’s not guilty?”
The evidence didn’t add up, his classmate explained.
Instead of a secret jury room in Dallas County’s high-stakes criminal courthouse, these students were in their library at Kimball High School in Oak Cliff, learning about the criminal justice system from a judges-led program called Pipeline to Possibilities.
Dallas County criminal court judges Amber Givens, Lisa Green, Shequitta Kelly and Stephanie Huff launched the nonprofit Pipeline to Possibilities in 2017 to end the so-called school-to-prison pipeline that catches children in underserved communities.
The kids recently were tasked with acting as a jury in a mock felony case presented by a real prosecutor and defense lawyer.
Givens hovered around them.
“If you can’t get a unanimous verdict, then it’s ‘not guilty,’ ” she explained. The student who argued for a conviction let out a loud sigh. Givens, a felony court judge, was empathetic.
“Imagine 12 strangers getting together and being able to agree on one thing,” Givens said. “It happens every day.”
The judges found inspiration
during a Sunday service at Concord Church where three of them are members. The Rev. Bryan Carter invited elected officials to meet the congregation.
Carter showed a clip of the documentary “The 13th” by filmmaker Ava DuVernay that spotlights the lasting impact of a clause in the 13th Amendment that still permits slavery as a punishment for crime, and statistics that show Black men are far more likely to be imprisoned than white men.
Voters in Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont approved changes in November to their state constitutions to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude. Louisiana voters rejected a similar change at the request of lawmakers who told voters the ballot measure was flawed by ambiguous language that didn’t actually prohibit
involuntary servitude, according to The Associated Press.
The four women, who are Black, sat together on the same pew. The information was not new to them. They see it every day in court. But the judges say they were called to do something.
“We all responded. It was just like this synergy we all had,” said Green, a misdemeanor court judge.
Givens said she reflected on the appearances she made in schools’ career days and other events and questioned whether those brief interactions were enough. She wanted to establish relationships with kids and make a longer lasting impact.
“It was really about not talking about disrupting the pipeline, but actively taking a sledgehammer to the pipeline from schools to prisons,” Givens said.
The judges hatched
the details for Pipeline to Possibilities in Kelly’s court chambers within a few weeks of the church service and went into the first high schools that bought into the program the next year.
The judges use Texas prison system data to target middle and high schools in neighborhoods with high rates of incarceration. The Commit Partnership, a North Texas education nonprofit, crunched the prison data in 2019 and found that the 75216 ZIP code in south Oak Cliff had the highest population of imprisoned residents in the state. The second highest ZIP code was Pleasant Grove’s 75217. Seven of the state’s 30 highest ZIP codes for incarceration were within Dallas Independent School District’s boundaries.
The program educates students not just on the criminal justice system, but also about their health and
careers even if not in the legal field.
Shyah Nelson, a 17-yearold junior at Kimball, teeters on whether she wants to be a lawyer.
Before participating in the program, she thought she wanted to become a surgeon. But whether or not she goes into law, Nelson said she is inspired by the Black female judges. In her short life, she has believed her potential is limited by her race.
“We can’t get past this level,” she said, raising her hand to the height of her eyes.
“So seeing our skin color being the head of the head,” she raised her hand two more times, above her hair. “That’s powerful to me.”
On a recent Wednesday, Spruce High School students who meet at Briscoe Carpenter Livestock Center at Fair Park were visited by mentors who taught the boys to tie ties, and a gynecologist and a makeup artist advised the girls.
For creating Pipeline to Possibilities, the judges were spotlighted last year in an episode of Apple TV’s series “Dear ... . ” In the episode, which focused on Black filmmaker DuVernay, people read letters to the industry trailblazer.
Participants, including Dallas’ judges, explained DuVernay’s influence on their work. Huff said as younger Black women, the judges are able to connect with students in ways some of their colleagues couldn’t. Huff told DuVernay one student shared that she never thought she could become a judge because she never saw one that looked like her.
DuVernay, filmed reading the letters, was moved to tears.
“That makes me emotional,” DuVernay said. “That’s incredible.”