Ahmed isn’t alone: Well-behaved minority boys more likely to be imprisoned than white troublemakers

A Sudanese-American boy named Ahmed Mohamed was arrested on Monday in Irving, Tex. after a bringing a digital clock he had built to school. Educators and law enforcement officers thought the clock, which consisted of a display, a circuit board and some wiring, was a bomb.

Mohamed's creation was confiscated, and he was eventually led into a room where several police officers were waiting, Avi Selk reported for The Dallas Morning News. "Yup. That's who I thought it was," the dark-skinned Mohamed, 14, recalled one of the officers saying.

Still wearing his NASA t-shirt, Mohamed was taken to a juvenile detention facility in handcuffs, where he was released to his parents after being fingerprinted.

Mohamed hasn't yet been charged with a crime, but research suggests that relatively well-behaved students of color are more likely to be arrested and imprisoned than white students who make trouble frequently. Advocates of juvenile-justice reform say Mohamed's case is typical, and that school authorities often assume the worst of students who belong to racial and ethnic minorities.

By Max Ehrenfreund