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Charlotte Amalie
Thursday, March 28, 2024
HomeNewsArchivesTV Judge Tells Back-to-School Conference About His Rise from Jail

TV Judge Tells Back-to-School Conference About His Rise from Jail



Reality television Judge Greg Mathis at St. Croix Educational Complex on Sunday.Judge Greg Mathis of the court reality TV show talked Sunday to a cheering crowd in St. Croix Educational Complex about the importance of education in changing his own life’s trajectory.

The Department of Education held a back-to-school conference, inviting students, parents, guardians, teachers and the public to come and kick off the school year while thinking about the role of parental involvement in education and the impact education has in the life of children and the community.

Mathis provided the keynote address in a lineup of speakers that also included Devin Robinson, a native Virgin Islander who is now a professor at Oglethorpe University in Georgia. Robinson was also received with shouts, whoops and applause as he urged parents to take a firmer hand and keep a closer eye on their kids.

They and other speakers from the community urged parents to take a tough-love approach, enforcing curfews, controlling cell-phone use, making kids sit and do homework, and not tolerating any suspicious goings-on.

"That strong educational foundation you are here to seek answers for is really the key to their success and yours," Mathis said. "We hear all the bad news from the media, but the good news is most of our young people are doing the right thing."

A wave of cheers and applause greeting his comment in the mostly full auditorium.

"The children, we must not let them go even in the face of a society that would eat them up … and spit them out into the cemeteries and prisons of the states and here in your territory," Mathis said. "If we fail to invest in our young people, our society will fail. I say we will fail because the children can’t fail us. A child is born with clean hands, mind and heart, and it is what we put in their hands, minds and hearts that determine what they become."

But once a child has gone down the wrong path, if they won’t toe the line, it may be better for the family and for the child to kick them out until they clean up their act, he said.

"Frankly, once those kids hit high school, their minds are made up," he said. "Tough love is what you have to give, otherwise they will corrupt you, corrupt your house and corrupt other children who might otherwise be heading the right way."

Keeping them at home when they are already involved in a gang or some unsavory activities doesn’t help them or keep them safe, he said.

"If he’s coming home and sleeping all day, eating all your food and going out at four in the morning to go out and do thugging, he’ll be in prison, dead or strung out on drugs, whether they live with you or elsewhere," he said. "All the time I hear, ‘Well, I let him stay here so at least I know he’s safe,’” Mathis continued, eliciting knowing laughs from some in the audience. "But you’re not safe while he’s there, and when he leaves and goes out at four in the morning, he’s not safe, either."

Mathis said more jurisdictions should allow judges to impose creative punishments such as requiring the completion of a General Education Development test, and education should be a bigger component of prison rehabilitation. His own life was turned around by exactly that sort of ruling by a judge, he said.

Before going to law school, passing the bar and being elected the youngest judge in Michigan history, Mathis was often in trouble as a teen in Detroit, he recalled.

"I found my way into the jails of Detroit, and it was a condition of the court that I get a GED," he said.

Once he got that far, he kept on going, getting into college, earning a bachelor’s degree and so on, moving quickly on a very different arc.

Robinson’s life followed a phoenix-like trajectory parallel to Mathis. A native of the Virgin Islands, he was in and out of trouble as a teenager, and was nearly beaten to death by police after being arrested, he said. He was essentially forced to join the military to avoid jail, he said, and it turned his life’s direction completely around. He became an airborne trooper and a highly decorated non-commissioned officer before his honorable discharge. He pursued his education and is now about to complete a doctorate while teaching at Oglethorpe University in Georgia. He is also the author of several self-help books.

Robinson urged parents to look around in their children’s’ rooms, find out what they are doing, keep them busy with after-school activities and evening homework, and to impose curfews, not just on going out but on using cell phones.

"When someone called my house, my mother wouldn’t just say, ‘I’m sleeping,’ or what have you,” he said. “She’d say, ‘Don’t call this house after nine at night.’"

Mathis and Robinson took questions from the audience for a few minutes afterwards, then the conference closed with a benediction.

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