The Justice Department is taking a stand against an educational policy in Mississippi that incarcerates kids for just being kids.

The department says in its lawsuit that officials in the city of Meridian and Lauderdale County "routinely arrest students without determining whether there is probable cause when a school wants to press charges, and the students are routinely jailed," The Associated Press reported Wednesday.

Students get in trouble for such minor offenses as wearing the wrong color socks, flatulence in class, and swearing.

But this startling program, dubbed the "school-to-prison pipeline," doesn't seem confined to the deep south.

The American Civil Liberties Union has long been fighting what it calls the "national trend of criminalizing, rather than educating, our nation’s children."