BCSD schools are no strangers to field trips – even unique ones – but something about an excursion to a maximum security prison and interviewing inmates convicted of murder might hit a little differently.
It also is not a regular occurrence on a field trip to sit in on a public hearing and watch someone get a police escort out of the room.
This semester has proven to be an eventful one for students involved in Cane Bay High’s Law Enforcement Academy and the school’s Mock Trial Team. The trips to the correctional facilities actually are not new; the students actually do a couple of those trips every year. However, for the first time ever, students got to see the judicial system in action by attending a couple of Supreme Court hearings.
Thanks to the teachers’ ongoing efforts to provide learning opportunities to their students, both Mock Trial and Law Enforcement Academy participants are getting a firsthand experience in the three different branches of government, and students say these recent field trips have really solidified the paths they want to take when they graduate.
Understanding the law
The Law Enforcement Academy is part of Cane Bay High’s career and technical education (or CTE) program. It is led by two former police officers, Peter Wright and Pressley Gaskins, who are preparing students for entry-level positions in local, state and federal law enforcement.
Wright started the program at Cane Bay 10 years ago.
“I wouldn’t trade it for anything,” Wright said. “I love being able to impact individuals at a younger age. Many times in law enforcement, by the time we see these individuals, it’s too late. So this affords the opportunity to work with them at a young age, get them to understand the law, and ultimately become better citizens that we don’t have law enforcement encounters with in the future.”
During their time in the Law Enforcement Academy, students learn about the criminal justice system, Supreme Court decisions and law enforcement tactics. They also participate in hands-on drills and demonstrations.
In 2019, the school added a Ti Training Corp Use of Force Simulator, an interactive virtual reality program that provides real-life scenarios police officers face on the job.
That same year, Gaskins joined as a second instructor to the Law Enforcement Academy program. When they take Gaskins’s class, students get very familiar with the U.S. Constitution; they learn about the system of checks and balances and the three branches of government, and how they tie into each other. They dive into their Amendment rights, and how they relate to law enforcement.
When he first got hired, Gaskins started communicating with the Department of Corrections (or SCDC) to provide more learning opportunities to the students. The pandemic slowed things down for about two years, but Gaskins lobbied members of the General Assembly to advocate for lowering the minimum age of employment of correctional officers from 21 to 18. The Law Enforcement Academy can get students certified as emergency dispatchers, and this year the school received approval from the SCDC and the state Department of Education to implement a Corrections Officer Certification.
Students also have the opportunity to get additional industry certifications in areas such as Stop the Bleed, Basic Life Support and HIPPA. In the spring, the program will add two additional certifications for students: MyPi South Carolina, which is a Disaster Readiness certification, and Ready in the Middle (formerly known as Teen C.E.R.T. or Community Emergency Response Team).
A handful of students who are part of the Law Enforcement Academy are also active on the school’s Mock Trial Team (it is a school club so tryouts are open to all students). Wright took over as the team’s adviser about four years ago.
Students who try out for Mock Trial take on different roles including attorneys, witnesses, a courtroom bailiff, a courtroom sketch artist, courtroom reporter and a timekeeper. The students do not play the judge; in competitions, an actual judge usually fills that role. The scoring judges are the “jury members”, and those individuals are typically practicing attorneys or third year law students.
Cane Bay’s Mock Trial does one regional competition a year. The top 12 teams from that competition qualify for the state championships in Columbia. Wright’s Mock Trial students have raked in individual awards over the years, and in 2023 they were selected as the Alternate Team for the state championships.
Lessons learned in both the Law Enforcement Academy and Mock Trial often go hand in hand: Wright and Gaskins’s classroom students learn about law enforcement, while Mock Trial team members learn about the judicial system.
Justice system in action
A couple years ago, the Law Enforcement Academy started organizing unique field trips to state and local prisons to interview inmates. The students do these trips twice a semester to a total of four facilities: the Lieber Correctional Institute, which is a maximum-security state prison in Ridgeville; the MacDougall Correctional Institution, which is a Level 2 medium security prison also in Ridgeville; the Camille Griffin Graham Correctional Institute, an all-female prison in Columbia; and the Manning Correctional Institution in Manning.
“The whole point of the inmate Q&A session is to put a face on the inmate; you hear the stories, you read the headlines…they (the students) get to see a different point of view and actually talk to some of these inmates,” Gaskins said.
In addition to interviewing the inmates and learning what life is like in prison, students also eat lunch prepared by the inmates, and tour the facilities.
“If they don’t want a job (in the field), at least they know they don’t want to go to prison,” Gaskins said, adding, “So it serves twofold: employment and deterrent.”
In September, the South Carolina Bar contacted Wright and invited him to bring 15 of his Mock Trial members to a Supreme Court hearing that was held at The Citadel. The event was free and open to the public, held inside the Capers Hall auditorium as part of a program designed to promote the Court’s accessibility and engagement with communities throughout the state.
That particular hearing ended with an arrest after an audience member disrupted the second day’s proceedings twice before being escorted from the courtroom. The Post and Courier followed up with a story; read more.
After the event, Chief Justice John W. Kittredge extended an invitation to Cane Bay High’s Mock Trial team to the Supreme Court building in Columbia to sit in on another hearing. That field trip took place three weeks ago, and also included students from the Law Enforcement Academy.
The event in Columbia might not have had as many “fireworks” as the first one at The Citadel (no one got arrested) but the hearing related to an ongoing murder trial, and the students got to listen to details involving law enforcement evidence. During their visit, Gov. Henry McMaster also met with the students and gave them an impromptu lesson on the system of checks and balances.
Wright said the students were able to experience something that not even some trial attorneys get to do during the course of their career – an opportunity to have a case heard before the Supreme Court.
“The fact that they (the students) were involved in that process…I think they were ecstatic,” he said, “and I was over the moon – I thought it was an incredible opportunity.”
Members of both student groups can confirm how cool it was to be invited to these hearings. Twelfth grader Sophia Tiwari has served on Mock Trial for four years and wants to be a criminal defense attorney. She said it has been very helpful to see attorneys in action – not just in regular courtrooms but in appellate courts and Supreme Courts.
“This has been the most exciting year we’ve ever had in Mock Trial,” she said. “These were just incredible opportunities.”
Watching the individual get arrested at The Citadel left a few students wide-eyed.
“I was just shocked,” Tiwari said. “Usually you see scenes like that on TV shows or in movies, but to see it in real life…I did not know what to think in the moment.”
Eleventh grader Naomi Anderson is active in both Mock Trial and the Law Enforcement Academy. She is interested in a career in forensics.
“I thought it was really cool this year to finally get to go and see actual proceedings and see how attorneys actually ask questions to the witnesses,” she said. “It’s really great to hear experts talk about their fields and see how much passion they put into getting the right information.”
Closing arguments
Students say that Wright and Gaskins have provided a very immersive experience for their students, and that they love how much their teachers care about helping them figure out their plans for after high school.
Tenth grader Chase Allen is also active on both Mock Trial and the Law Enforcement Academy. He was initially on the fence about his career path after high school and entertained the idea of either being an architect or a lawyer.
His experience at Cane Bay has solidified his decision: he wants to be a defense attorney.
“All the opportunities that I’ve been given – going to the prisons and seeing what that’s like, and hearing the prisoners’ stories…This confirmed that I wanted to go into law and not do architecture,” he said.
Allen added that he is new to Cane Bay High this year and that he has found his niche with the Law Enforcement Academy and Mock Trial.
“I’ve made a ton of friends, everyone’s been welcoming and gotten me out of my shell,” he said.
Twelfth grader Jordyn Bernard said has been in the Law Enforcement Academy at Cane Bay for a year. She hopes to be a canine officer one day.
She said the class has been a great opener for students who are interested in a job related to law enforcement or courtroom proceedings.
“It’s just an amazing program to be a part of,” she said. “It’s very fun, you learn way more than you would expect to learn, but it also opens you up to a lot of opportunities post-high school…It’s also just a very good pathway if you’re trying to learn and see what you want to do; it really helps you to get immersed in that world.”
Anderson echoed similar thoughts.
“I think it is one of the coolest classes I have ever taken,” she said, adding that she originally did not have any interest in Mock Trial or a job in law enforcement, but decided to enroll in the academy – “and it was one of the best choices I could’ve ever made. We learn so much. Even if you’re not interested in the law, it is still a great thing to know: just how the world around you is going to work in the future.”
The end goal is to get these students into college, into the military, or help them find a career.
“We don’t want a kid walking across the stage who doesn’t know what he or she is going to be doing the next day,” Wright said.
However, even if they do not pursue a career as lawyers or police officers, Wright said he hopes anyone who participates in the Law Enforcement Academy will leave with a better understanding of the law.
“We’re just trying to create better citizens and better residents of Berkeley County,” he said.