My letter to the Editor printed today - Invest in People, Not Prisons.

I was in shock when I read that Scott County was going to use $5.5 million of Covid relief money to help build a new $17 million, 40-bed Juvenile Detention Center. Covid relief was meant to help individuals, businesses, and the community that were negatively impacted by Covid. It is unethical to use these funds to build a detention center. This is a manipulation of the law to continue the school-to-prison pipeline that disproportionately suspends and arrests African American youths.

Scott County supervisors even turned down a $500,000 grant to start a youth advisory program to help struggling youth. Let us invest Covid relief money in our community. Let us use it to provide affordable child care and housing and summer youth jobs. Let us invest in community resource centers, such as the Lincoln Center that serve our community. These types of investments are not just an act of prevention to divert juveniles from prison, but rather they are an investment in the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

We need to do this because otherwise we are depriving our community of the richness of each person who does not have the opportunity to live up to their potential. I invite our community to have the courage and will to create a better way of living that sustains everyone in the community. Allow all people to reach their potential and we will all be enriched. Let us support our youth and families, not incarcerate them.