15-year-old with ADHD sent to juvenile detention for not keeping up with remote schoolwork

It's fair to say a nationwide school shutdown amid the COVID-19 pandemic forced American students into an unexpected adjustment period. But for 15-year-old Grace, a rough transition landed her in juvenile detention for more than two months, ProPublica reports in a collaboration with the Detroit Free Press and Bridge Magazine.

Grace, who is Black, and her mother Charisse live in a mostly white suburb of Detroit, where schools closed in mid-March and remote learning began April 15. That monthlong break left Grace, who has ADHD, "unmotivated," and a lack of live instruction made it easy for her to get distracted, ProPublica writes. She would miss alarms in the morning, and ended up far behind on her work.

Grace had been in detention before, on charges of assaulting her mother and stealing a cell phone in a school locker room, and was on probation when the pandemic hit. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) suspended the confinement of juveniles who violate probation during the pandemic, but left an exception for children who posed a "substantial and immediate safety risk to others."

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Citing those past charges, a judge found Grace "guilty on failure to submit to any schoolwork and getting up for school" and called her a "threat to (the) community," ProPublica reports. And so Grace ended up handcuffed and taken to detention again, where she spent more than two months sleeping on a mattress on a concrete slab and locked in her room for 12 hours every day. She still hasn't worked with a teacher in person or online, and hasn't gotten more than packets of material from her school, Grace says.

ProPublica referred to Grace and Charisse by their middle names to protect their identities. Read more, including about how Black students are disproportionately incarcerated, at ProPublica.