By Steven Allen Adams, The Parkersburg News and Sentinel
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Alleging that West Virginia corrections, education and human services officials are not following state law requiring collection of data on juvenile justice outcomes, the state NAACP filed a lawsuit Thursday.
The suit was filed by the West Virginia State Conference of the NAACP against the West Virginia Department of Homeland Security, the state Department of Human Services, and the state Department of Education in Kanawha County Circuit Court. The state NAACP conference is represented by Mountain State Justice and the Democracy Forward Foundation.
The NAACP alleges the departments named in the lawsuit are not abiding by the provisions of Senate Bill 393, introduced in 2015 on behalf of then-Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin and passed unanimously by the state Senate and House of Delegates.
“The West Virginia State Conference of the NAACP has long advocated for the state to address racial inequities in how young people of color are being treated in schools and carceral settings, including racial bullying, school suspension, and truancy concerns in West Virginia,” said Loretta Young, president of the West Virginia State Conference of the NAACP, in a statement Thursday.
SB 393 was the end result of a 2014 task force created by Tomblin to review the state’s juvenile justice system. In 2013, West Virginia, Arkansas and Idaho had some of the highest juvenile incarceration rates in the nation according to the American Civil Liberties Union, with West Virginia having 276 out of every 100,000 youth in the state incarcerated.
