Stories
Baby Eric
Eric came into the world already in the Pipeline to Prison before taking a single step. Read more
Stories
Christopher
Christopher was removed from three schools and frequently suspended from a fourth for hitting teachers and fighting with other children. Read more
Related Initiatives
Action Alert
Secure the Future - Invest in Every Child
In the richest nation on earth, 9 million children are without health coverage and more than 13 million live in poverty. We must demand that our leaders commit to helping children as a condition of our vote.
Related Programs
Cradle to Prison Pipeline® Campaign
Nationally, 1 in 3 Black and 1 in 6 Latino boys born in 2001 are at risk of imprisonment during their lifetime. While boys are five times as likely to be incarcerated as girls, there also is a significant number of girls in the juvenile justice system. This rate of incarceration is endangering children at younger and younger ages.
This is America's pipeline to prison — a trajectory that leads to marginalized lives, imprisonment and often premature death. Although the majority of fourth graders cannot read at grade level, states spend about three times as much money per prisoner as per public school pupil.
CDF's vision with it's Cradle to Prison Pipeline campaign is to reduce detention and incarceration by increasing preventive supports and services children need, such as access to quality early childhood development and education services and accessible, comprehensive health and mental health coverage. Emphasis must be shifted for the sake of our children and our nation's future.
Key Immediate Action Steps
Tens of thousands of youth are being funneled down life paths that often lead to arrest, conviction, incarceration and even death. The urgent challenge for each of us and for our nation is to prevent this waste of our children's lives and our nation's capabilities. Find out ways you and your community can step up and take action.
Innovative Solutions to Dismantling the Pipeline in Texas
The American Leadership Forum Houston/Gulf Coast Chapter has produced a report, Dismantling the Cradle to Prison Pipeline in Houston and Texas: A Study of Solutions, that documents promising approaches that are effectively shutting down the pipeline by focusing on prevention and early intervention. These programs create a more positive future for young people and save taxpayers by avoiding the costs of incarceration. The report and accompanying power point presentation can be found on the American Leadership Forum’s website.
Children's National Mental Health Awareness Day, May 7, 2009
CDF is an official supporter of this year's National Children's Mental Health Awareness Day, held on May 7. Awareness Day is an opportunity to showcase the value of investing in innovative approaches to meeting the mental health needs of children, youth and families. This year’s Awareness Day emphasizes how adolescents who receive the necessary mental health services are more likely to have positive outcomes, such as better grades and less likely to have negative outcomes, such as involvement with the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Better addressing the mental health needs of adolescents is central to CDF's Health Coverage for All Children Campaign and key to dismantling the pipeline to prison
National/California Cradle to Prison Pipeline Summit
In February 2009, CDF and several co-conveners held a two-day National/California Cradle to Prison Pipeline Summit in Sacramento, California. The nearly 500 attendees shared promising approaches and developed community action plans to stop the funneling of thousands of children down a pipeline to prison. Since the launch of the Cradle to Prison Pipeline campaign in 2007, CDF has continued to raise public awareness about this crisis, catalyze action at the local, state and federal levels to form "Cradle coalitions,” and help train the next generation of leaders committed to dismantling the pipeline through events like this. Learn more about this most recent summit and upcoming events.
CDF President Marian Wright Edelman's "The Cradle to Prison Pipeline: America's New Apartheid"
"Incarceration is becoming the new American apartheid and poor children of color are the fodder. It is time to sound a loud alarm about this threat to American unity and community, act to stop the growing criminalization of children at younger and younger ages, and tackle the unjust treatment of minority youths and adults in the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems with urgency and persistence...." Read more
Learn More about the Pipeline in Your State
Access state-level data on the various issues related to the Pipeline including poverty, health care, early childhood education, education, child welfare, juvenile justice system and incarceration, and community violence with CDF's Cradle to Prison Pipeline state factsheets. These factsheets also provide action steps needed to protect and reroute children from the pipeline.
America's Cradle to Prison PipelineSM Report
This report documents an urgent national crisis at the intersection of poverty and race. The report includes an overview of the major factors behind the Pipeline, photographs that show the faces of children in the Pipeline, case studies describing how the Pipeline affects children, calls for the hard work and persistence needed to build a transforming movement, descriptions of some promising approaches to help keep children out of the Pipeline, and research tables and state-by-state data of key child indicators. Learn more and download the report.
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