By Michael Martinez, CNN

updated 8:09 PM EDT, Fri August 10, 2012CNN) -- Officials in Lauderdale County, Mississippi,
have operated "a school-to-prison pipeline" that violates the
constitutional rights of juveniles by incarcerating them for alleged
school disciplinary infractions, some as minor as defiance, the U.S.
Department of Justice said Friday.
"Students most affected
by this system are African-American children and children with
disabilities," the Justice Department said.
The federal agency's
civil rights division seeks "meaningful negotiations" in 60 days to end
the constitutional violations or else a federal lawsuit would be filed
against state, county and local officials in Meridian, according to a
Justice Department letter dated Friday to those officials.
The letter also names two Lauderdale County Youth Court judges, Frank Coleman and Veldore Young.


State and local officials couldn't be reached immediately for comment Friday.


"The systematic disregard
for children's basic constitutional rights by agencies with a duty to
protect and serve these children betrays the public trust," Thomas E.
Perez, assistant U.S. attorney general, said in a statement. "We hope to
resolve the concerns outlined in our findings in a collaborative
fashion, but we will not hesitate to take appropriate legal action if
necessary."
In 2009, the Lauderdale
County Juvenile Detention Facility in Meridian was the target of a
federal class-action lawsuit by the Southern Poverty Law Center that
alleged children and teens were subjected to "shockingly inhumane"
treatment, the center said.
The alleged mistreatment
included youngsters being "crammed into small, filthy cells and
tormented with the arbitrary use of Mace as a punishment for even the
most minor infractions -- such as 'talking too much' or failing to sit
in the 'back of their cells,'" the center said in a statement.
In 2010, Lauderdale
County officials and the center reached an agreement to reform the jail
system and consider alternatives to sending youths to the detention
center, said the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights
group.
"I think this is
evidence of a broken system where the most vulnerable population of kids
are not receiving their constitutionally guaranteed rights," Jody Owens
II, managing attorney for the center's Mississippi office, told CNN.
On Friday, the U.S.
Justice Department accused Meridian police of automatically arresting
all students referred by the city's public schools and then sending them
to the county juvenile justice system, "where existing due process
protections are illusory and inadequate," the federal letter says.
The police department
command staff and officers characterized their agency as a "taxi
service" for the schools and juvenile detention facility, without
assessing the circumstances of the alleged charges against students, the
Justice Department said.
"The Youth Court places
children on probation, and the terms of the probation set by the Youth
Court and DYS require children on probation to serve any suspensions
from school incarcerated in the juvenile detention center," the Justice
Department letter said.