Teen sent to juvenile detention for not completing homework speaks on ‘injustice’

Teen sent to juvenile detention for not completing homework speaks on ‘injustice’

A Michigan mother and her teen daughter, who spent 78 days in juvenile detention after a judge ruled that she’d violated probation by not completing her homework, are speaking out about their experience, which they say was an injustice in the criminal justice system. Wishing to be identified only as Grace -- her middle name -- the now 16-year-old, who is Black and has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, had struggled to keep up with the transition to remote learning during the coronavirus pandemic last year. She was placed on “intensive probation” in April 2020 after being charged with assault for fighting with her mother and larceny for stealing a schoolmate’s cellphone after her mother took hers away. Grace, who lives in suburbs outside of Detroit, said that she knew there would be consequences for those actions, but she didn’t realize they would rise to such a level, and that she thinks they did because she’s Black. “If a white girl were to steal the phone and she has the same history as me, same background, same everything … they would probably look at her and say, ‘Hey, you know, you’re not brought up like this,’” Grace told ABC News’ Linsey Davis. “But for me, I feel like it was more of an ‘OK, this is what we expect from Black people.’”