What is the School-to-Prison Pipeline?
In the United States, the term “School-to-Prison Pipeline” is a metaphor used to describe the ways that schools have become an entry point into the justice system for minors, many of whom disproportionately come from disadvantaged backgrounds. One of the reasons for this, of course, are the increasingly harsh school policies and practices (approved by parents and teachers) that effectively label students (remember labeling theory?) as troublemakers, which results in them being excluded from school and school-related activities, thereby increasing the probability that they will become involved at some point in the juvenile justice system.
Harsh Discipline
School discipline is a big part of the problem, but so are other policies and practices, which work hand in hand with discipline to produce negative outcomes for juveniles. This includes things like high-stakes testing, the increased hiring of school resource officers (to do what administrators used to do) and federal laws that promote the referral of certain offenses to law enforcement.
What Does the Research Say?
Empirical research confirms there are predictable pathways that can deliver students from school into the juvenile justice system and even prison. One area of study looks at out-of-school suspensions and the impact it has on school dropout. Other areas look and justice system involvement and how this may leas to adult incarceration. School based arrests, court referrals after drop out, and bullying are also factors that can predict dropout and subsequent involvement with the justice system.
Despite there being gaps in the research literature, the term STPP has managed to achieve widespread acceptance in academic, political circles, and among members of the public. Acceptance is not the same as achieving absolute consensus. Some social scientists and activists argue that the actions taken by non-criminal justice institutions can have an impact on over-incarceration, even as others have been critical of the concept. To this end, some scholars find the pipeline metaphor is too narrow; that it assumes there is a deterministic link between schools and prisons.
Critical scholars, critical criminologists among them, argue that social factors like poverty, unemployment, and failures within child welfare and mental health systems are bound up with school factors, which have tended to criminalize youth who suffer from problems that cannot be attributed solely their individual accountability. In other words “it’s complicated,” when actually sit down and look at the different social circumstances that influence the harmful choices some youth make that can result in them becoming involved in the justice system.
Questions abound in regards to what reforms might be undertaken to disrupt the STPP and so more research is needed. What practices are most harmful? Which ones are effective?
Profile of a Juvenile Delinquent
The youth who are statistically getting caught up in the pipeline tend to fit the following profile:
- They have disabilities
- They may identify as LGBTQ
- They suffer from a history of poverty, abuse, or neglect.
- They lack access to education and counseling services.
- They act out in ways that cause them to be isolated, punished, and removed from school.
Researchers have identified three major contributors that help fuel the school-to-prison pipeline:
- Zero Tolerance Policies
- Implicit Bias
- Police in Schools
Less Than Zero Tolerance
“Zero-tolerance” policies criminalize minor infractions of school rules, while cops in schools lead to students being criminalized for behavior that should be handled inside the school. Suspensions throughout the country have surged over the past two decades, largely because schools have relied on these policies. When students are kicked out of classrooms, either by suspension or expulsion, the result is they are often referred to law enforcement for formal processing.
The Making of a “Superpredator”
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, as juvenile crime rates and fear of adolescent “superpredators” grew, state legislatures and school districts buckled to pressure to incorporate the no-excuses rhetoric of “tough on crime” laws into their approach to school discipline (Hager, 2015)
By 1997, 79 percent of schools around the country had implemented zero-tolerance policies, and by 2000, schools were suspending more than 3 million children per year. (By way of comparison, that’s the same number of students who will graduate from public high schools this year) (Hager, 2015)
But a growing body of research shows that students who miss many school days will return to the classroom behind on their work, confused about what they’ve missed, and all the more likely to act out. Left unsupervised during the day, without anything constructive to do, they are more likely to get arrested, go to jail, or ultimately drop out of school.
According to a 2011 report from the Council of State Governments, students who have been suspended or expelled are twice as likely to repeat their grade and three times as likely to end up in the juvenile justice system—within a year—compared to similar students at similar schools (Hager, 2015).
Research also shows that punishments like suspensions and expulsions are disproportionately meted out to black students. They are three times more likely than their white peers to be suspended and even more likely to be expelled or referred to law enforcement for the same infractions, according to civil rights data from the U.S. Department of Education (Hager, ).
Acknowledging the problem, in 2010, public schools in Boston began discouraging suspensions and expulsions, which then dropped from 743 to 120 in only two years. In 2013, Los Angeles banned the practice of kicking students out of school for subjective infractions like “willful defiance.” Suspensions there have also plummeted by more than 50 percent. And Bill de Blasio, mayor of New York City, told schools earlier this year that from now on, all suspensions must be approved by his administration (Hager, 2015).
In January 2014, the Obama administration issued new federal guidelines under which schools must reduce their reliance on out-of-school suspensions and expulsions. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has since been investigating school districts across the country that use suspensions to unfairly “push out” students of color and students with disabilities. Mississippi, which suspends a higher ratio of black to white students than any other Southern state, received the message loud and clear (Hager, 2015).
In the southeast part of the state, schools in the town of Meridian—which were investigated by the Department of Justice for routinely suspending, arresting, and sending students to jail for minor in-school infractions like using profanity, flatulence, and “disrespect”—have been ordered by their superintendent to stop calling the police unless a student commits a felony. Toni Kersh, director of school attendance for the state’s Department of Education, says, “We’re encouraging schools to start handling discipline in-house” (Hager, 2015).
That in-house discipline includes policing the hallways, having students walk through metal detectors daily, patting them down, relying even more heavily on corporal punishment and in-school detention, sending more students to alternative schools, and surveilling them with cameras. The Tupelo Public School District, in eastern Mississippi, for instance, recently promised the Office for Civil Rights that it would “ensure to the maximum extent possible that misbehavior is addressed in a manner that does not require removal from school.” In June, the school board authorized security guards to start carrying pepper spray in classrooms and hallways (Hager, 2015).
National experts on school discipline point out that these measures are not unique to the South. “You see it at charter schools a lot,” says Kathleen Nolan, a professor of teacher preparation at Princeton University and an expert on zero-tolerance policies in schools. “Straight from the model of order-maintenance policing—dress code, silence, walk in straight lines, metal detectors—except now it’s in the schools and being done by teachers with less training in this than the actual police have” (Hager, 2015).
“Broken Windows” Education (reblog Hager)
“You have to stop the small stuff to prevent the big stuff,” says Julius Lucas, principal of West Bolivar High School in Rosedale, a town in the western part of the [Mississippi] delta.
“I agree suspending so many kids raised the chances of their dropping out, getting involved with the police,” says Lynn Schneider, a 14-year veteran high school English teacher in the school district. “But we’ve gone the opposite direction—discipline has fallen apart.”
In a recent survey by the Jackson teachers’ union, two-thirds of respondents said their classroom feels “out of control” on a daily or weekly basis, 60 percent said they have been physically assaulted, and 46 percent said they are considering leaving their job or even profession because of the mayhem. Crucially, 62 percent said they saw no good alternatives to suspension, expulsion, and police involvement for students who act out.
Tardiness is a paddle-worthy offense. Behavior labeled by teachers as “defiance,” “disrespect,” “horseplay,” or “disorderly conduct” gets the same punishment. If a student wears the wrong uniform—the wrong color shirt or pants, an untucked shirt, shoes that aren’t plain black or plain white, or, in some schools, jackets with a zipper—same punishment again.
“They been coming up with all kinds of new stuff. But it’s the same thing—trying to catch us being bad,” says Keshaun, a student at D.M. Smith Middle School in Cleveland, Mississippi, 20 miles from Rosedale. Keshaun says he recently forgot his gym shorts and was taken into a back room to get paddled. “It’s called getting ‘cookies,’” he says. “They do it harder the worse they think you are.”
Chicago Police patrol the neighborhood as children arrive at Gresham Elementary School on the first day of classes Monday, Aug. 26. 2013 in Chicago (AP Photos/M. Spencer Green).
Three-strikes rules are also prevalent. In the South Delta School District, students caught twice in possession of “distracting articles” like cell phones are sent to the alternative school the third time. In the north Delta, at the DeSoto County Alternative Center, female students must “shake out” and “pop” their bras during daily searches, and boys must remove their socks, according to a report by the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi.
In rare, particularly extreme cases, teachers and administrators even use restraint and seclusion tactics, locking them in rooms, closets, or “boxes”—small, enclosed areas where teachers send kids to “cool down”—when they misbehave. In a survey by the ACLU, more than 13 percent of parents in Mississippi said their children had been restrained by staff, and about 12 percent said their children’s school had a seclusion room.
South of the delta, at the Capital City Alternative School in Jackson, dozens of kids were handcuffed to metal poles, chairs, even bus seats; uncuffed when it was time to go home; and then re-cuffed each morning—all for wearing the wrong-color belt or not completing their work. Jackson Public Schools ultimately agreed to stop using the handcuffs and hire an independent monitor.
Sabrina Mitchell’s sixth-grade daughter has a mood disorder and was whipped with a belt by the janitor at Lexington Elementary School in Holmes County, in the eastern delta. (Lexington Elementary has since been consolidated with another school and changed its name.) When she was eight years old, she was also put in a closet in the school basement.
As Tamaria, one of Stukes’s students, puts it, “My classmates, they always want attention. They always be playing while the teacher is talking. I feel like part of the reason everyone is so behind is because we waste so much time.”
Many administrators throughout the state agree but have little money to throw at the problem—to hire counselors, psychologists, tutors, special education teachers, or teachers qualified to do more than “guard” the students during detention. The state legislature regularly votes against full funding for the public schools, and in early November, voters narrowly rejected a ballot initiative to force lawmakers to do so.
And because so few qualified teachers want to take low-paying, nonunionized jobs in rural towns, many classrooms are staffed by noncertified, retired, or beginner teachers who are in basic survival mode.
“Paddling and in-school detention, it’s a short-term, low-energy solution to all of that,” says Jeremiah Smith, who helps run the Sunflower County Freedom Project, which offers after-school classes to kids in the central delta.
Who Is Most Represented?
Students from two groups—racial minorities and children with disabilities—are disproportionately represented in the school-to-prison pipeline. African-American students, for instance, are 3.8 times more likely than their white classmates to be suspended or expelled, according to a nationwide study by the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (Elias, 2013).
For students with disabilities, the numbers are equally troubling. One report found that they are 25% more likely to be referred to law enforcement. Moreover, while 8.6 percent of public school children have been identified as having disabilities that affect their ability to learn, these students make up 32 percent of youth in juvenile detention centers (Elias, 2013).
The racial disparities are even starker for students with disabilities. About 1 in 4 black children with disabilities were suspended at least once, versus 1 in 11 white students, according to an analysis of the government report by Daniel J. Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA (Elias, 2013).
Policing High School
How does school policing impact students? Does it help or harm? The answers don’t come easy. In the wake of high-profile school shootings, many Americans think the answer is to hire more school-based police officers.
The U.S. Department of Justice reports that the number of school resource officers rose 38 percent between 1997 and 2007. Jerri Katzerman, SPLC deputy legal director, said this surge in police on campus has helped to criminalize many students and fill the pipeline (Elias, 2013).
But less policing is precisely what many researchers are recommending. Research shows that the more students are suspended, the more likely they are to earn poor grades and drop out of school. They are also more likely to get involved in the criminal justice system. Moreover, suspension has not been shown to be effective in reducing incidents or increasing school safety. Students who experience the highest rates of suspensions and expulsions are, more often than not, black and Latino. Students with disabilities are also disproportionately expelled and suspended. All of these groups are more likely to receive harsh student discipline in segregated school settings where most students are black and Latino (Quinlan, 2016).
Indiana school police officers Gary Stanley, left, and Jessey Walley talk in the New Palestine High School library (Tom Russo | Daily Reporter).
Additional research out of Stanford University has shown that school resource officers are more likely to be involved in the discipline of a student if that student is black. This information suggests that although officers need training to recognize their own biases, so do teachers. For the research also showed that teachers may use harsher discipline on a black student when they misbehave a second time than they would for a white student (Quinlan, 2016).
An ACLU white paper, “Bullies in Blue: Origins and Consequences of School Policing,” explores the beginnings of school policing in the United States and sheds light on the negative consequences of the increasing role of police and links it to both the drivers of punitive criminal justice policies and mass incarceration nationwide. The report traces a line back to the struggle to end Jim Crow segregation during the civil rights movement, and challenges assumptions that the function of police in schools is to protect children. It posits that police are police, and in schools, they will act as police, and in those actions bring the criminal justice system into our schools and criminalize kids.
School Resource Officers (reblog Quinlan)
There are as many as 17,000 school resource officers in schools across the country, the most recent data shows. The number of these officers has increased throughout the past 15 years. Although officers may be an asset in some circumstances, the way many schools are using them now — to control students who misbehave — is pushing more students out of school and into the criminal justice system, U.S. Department of Education officials say (Quinlan, 2016).
In a report put out by the federal government, officials published guidelines on how to use school resource officers in a way that doesn’t endanger students’ civil rights.
“If students are to learn to their maximum potential, they must be safe in their schools and on their college campuses, but with that safety must come the safeguarding of students’ civil rights,” said John King, secretary of the Education Department, in a call with reporters. “We must better equip educators to address misbehavior and allow students to learn and grow from their mistakes”(Quinlan, 2016).
Instead of simply turning over misbehaving students to school resource officers, the department says officers need to have a positive relationship with students and focus on safety concerns.
Only 12 states require student-specific training for officers in schools, according to The Atlantic’s reporting last fall. Law enforcement officers are more likely to see a classroom disruption as criminal conduct even though no one’s safety is at risk, a 2009 study from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville found. Some of these situations involved incidents such as a student refusing to sit down. The study also found that students in schools with officers were almost three times more likely to be arrested (Quinlan, 2016).
As King pointed out, schools’ priorities are often out of whack. Although schools continue to hire school resource officers, they aren’t hiring enough school counselors. “We have 1.6 million students with sworn law enforcement officers and no school counselor and we have said that is a mistake. It is a reflection of mistaken choices about the allocation of resources,” King said (Quinlan, 2016).
Baltimore City Schools says video of officer slapping student happened late today. "Vigorously" under investigation pic.twitter.com/GW5OKeOPF2
— Christian Schaffer (@schaffer_tv) March 2, 2016
Restorative Justice – Community Involvement
How can school districts divert the school-to-prison pipeline? The education department report cited that there is an important role that might be played by community stakeholders. It went so far as to recommend that the community should be part of the process of recruiting school resource officers, to the extent that community stakeholders might participate in the interview process.
In what have been termed “restorative justice” reforms (opposite of punishment approaches) the following solutions have been suggested:
- Increase the use of positive behavior interventions and supports.
- Compile annual reports on the total number of disciplinary actions that push students out of the classroom based on gender, race and ability.
- Create agreements with police departments and court systems to limit arrests at school and the use of restraints, such as mace and handcuffs.
- Provide simple explanations of infractions and prescribed responses in the student code of conduct to ensure fairness.
- Create appropriate limits on the use of law enforcement in public schools.
- Train teachers on the use of positive behavior supports for at-risk students.
Sources
“When School Feels Like Jail,” by Eli Hager, 2015.
“What’s Wrong With the Way Schools Use Police Officers?” by Casey Quinlan, 2016
“Bullies in Blue: Origins and Consequences of School Policing,” ACLU Report, 2017.
“A Generation Later: What We’ve Learned About Zero Tolerance in Schools.” (Vera Institute Policy Brief, 2013)
“The School-to-Prison Pipeline,” by Marylyn Elias, 2013.
The Marshall Project curated a list of articles on policing in high schools. You can access it here.
Discussion Questions
Think about the research reflected here in terms of how it may/may not resonate with your own experiences in school. What do you recall from your own school experiences?
Did your school have armed police officers? What changes (if any noteworthy) did you observe over time?
In spite of the abundance of research, which shows the irreparable harm that is being done by these policies, why do people continue to support incarceration over education?
Why are there almost always limitless public dollars available to support jails, prisons, and the hiring of police?
Why are education expenditures held up to far more scrutiny?
Why are teachers paid so little?
Why do people think the answer to every social problem is always more police and more jail?
In today’s society there are police or security at almost every school. I think now people feel like the first choice for everything is calling the police when there are so many steps before hand that could be taken. Students are more willing to listen and speak to people when the adult show that they have true genuine care for them and want to help and make things easier for them. I believe if teachers could talk to the students and discuss things with them without involving law enforcement unless they’re a danger to the school and the rest of the students we could resolve a lot more issues today. With reading this article I do believe having on school police who armed is excessive because for those who have already gone through so much this may make certain students feel like there already a criminal so why try to further myself and be better if the school system has already given up on me. I believe it shows that they have no faith in growth for any of the students which could result in more issues.
Think about the research reflected here in terms of how it may/may not resonate with your own experiences in school. What do you recall from your own school experiences?
I related a lot to this article. My old high school was one of the schools known for the highest security in PA. We had many officers who were always armed on duty everyday. There were a lot of kids in my school who came from families who did not have a lot to offer. My school was too strict on behavioral issues and it seemed like everyday a kid was suspended. We had a lot of fights in my school and a lot of disciplining that was done because of it. Kids that were known for causing trouble would get disciplined from the school but it wouldn’t fix anything. A lot of students from my grade did not graduate because they didn’t care, and I believe it was because of the school with their strict policies. Multiple friends I had would get suspended nearly all the time, they would be either put back at home in OSS, where their parents wouldn’t care and they could do whatever they want while suspended (not learning their lesson) or they would be put in ISS all day just sleeping. I don’t think it’s the school’s job to discipline the kids because even when they do or try, it doesn’t seem to work. It doesn’t help anything rather than take away from the student’s education and drive them farther from focusing on their education. We also had to walk through medal detectors everyday while teachers and officers would check our bags with covid-19 happening! Which I personally believe is an invasion to privacy and that it does not follow the COVID protocol. I understand the school was trying to keep us safe but we did not need that much security just to go to school.
Reading this article really resonated and connected with me on a different level. the high school that i went to in years prior combined with Duquesne since they closed down. when that school closed down and all the students had to transfer to our high School things kind of went downhill. parents were angry that Duquesne kids were going to be merged in with EA kids, the EA kids felt like that was their school and not theirs, and the Duquesne kids honestly didn’t even want to be there they wanted their school. With those notions very quickly, our school escalated in fighting, insubordination, and drugs on an everyday basis. Very soon after our school quickly installed metal detectors, bag check polies, and police officers. Combine that with teachers who come from completely different backgrounds from most of the minority students. I really cannot think of any positive changes that came out of our school from instilling the officers, I can however testify to the negatives. i have personally seen my classmates get body slammed, hit, and violently grabbed by the officers on my school’s campus MULTIPLE times for actions that did not need that result. Additionally, my school had a different course of action for students who were constantly in trouble or getting suspended. our school had a thing called “the basement” and it’s basically school for all the “bad” kids. it was a classroom that could seat 20 kids, all the desks had a computer, there were scheduled/limited bathroom breaks, and there was only 1 teacher you saw every day. Our school basically was set up and ran like a mini educational prison. so, it’s not surprising that a lot of the outcomes happed just the same as what the article stated.
after reading this article I thought about a lot of things. I think that the behavior in schools should be one of example, values, security and respect. But I think this could be shown without making it so strong and strict. I think kids learn better when teachers or any other staff of the school show them that they care about the, and also by helping them in any conflicts. Even tho there is law enforcement in schools things still happen someway, I think these problems are more because of lack of information and counseling on students. But I think having that security figure at school has helped a lot on how young people act at school, and has also might helped on controlling bad behavior. What kinda impacted me the most of this article is looking at the numbers of who is more affected by the school to prison pipeline, just at seeing those number of minorities and people with disabilities, sometimes we see this numbers but people don’t know what these kids are going through in their life’s and they might need more help and support from professionals than people think.
In regards to this article it hit very close to me. Seeing that I went to a Alternative High School, and so did most of my friends I grew up with/ knew. I think schools are a direct pipeline to incarceration for lower income schools/ students. For many reasons, teachers want to be paid and feel safe in their surroundings, while most of those teachers who go to poverty stricken schools know little to know hardships that the kids that they are teaching are going through. They just see them as another student not knowing that most of them have already taken on more responsibility than that teacher may ever have. because so many of the teachers and administrators think about there own safety, which is important. They don’t always realize they’re just visiting that neighborhood the school is it with everything going on in it. Not thinking that thesis kids live in it they see and apart of it everyday. And if a student drops out after getting in trouble they are just seen as another statistic. That’s why I feel like schools and prison’s have so much income because, the fancy schools where people don’t get in trouble just get a slap on the wrist/ same thing with White Collar Prisons, meanwhile the schools that have a low ecconimc income for their students get harsher sentences just because they don’t have Daddy’s money or other aspects, just like regular prisons that people who don’t have money or the connections have. In the end f the day something needs to change in the schools, and while I personally don’t have the answers I hope I can help be the solution.
It is hard to imagine a time where police officers were not seen within the walls of a school; today we question how schools could function properly without them. Yet somehow they did so now we question if they are truly needed within schools at all. In my high school there were two armed officers of the township who roamed the halls from start to finish of each school day. Looking back on these experiences the students who were removed by the officers were often students of poverty who appeared to have behavioral issues. These students could have greatly benefitted from the school counselor but the lack of access to resources, such as discussed in the article, led to the “easier” solution of simply removing them from my school. These students are left with a compromised education being steered away from a decent path to the future, giving evidence to the idea of the school to prison pipeline. I did not observe students change their behavior due to an officer presence; instead the results are what changed. There was no more after school detention and a lecture from the principle; it was now just removal from the school for a short-term or permanent time. I do not believe that students felt overwhelmingly safer because of the police presence, if anything they were intimidating to students. The previous question about police within schools ties in well with the answer to why people think social problems can be helped with increased police and jail. Similar to schools removing students who conduct themselves against school rules, police remove people off of the streets who do not conduct themselves in line with the law. Instead of helping these students or citizens, we place them away from the population they should reside in because we believe it helps everyone else. This idea excludes people of violence, but many others can be helped with counseling services. People often act out because of psychological disorders that can be stabilized from different therapies and/ or medications. We just need more people to want to take time to help these people instead of throwing them away.
Did your school have armed police officers? What changes did you observe over time?
Heading into my freshman year of high school, we did not have a police officer within the high school. However, at some point during the year, one student called in multiple bomb threats into the school, which ended up with the whole school being evacuated at one point. Also, one of the secretaries in the main office accidentally pulled the “school shooter” alarm, which flung the entire school into a panic. At the time, I was in the cafeteria eating lunch and it was a complete disaster getting people out of the building. Because of these incidents, some parents and students petitioned the school board to hire a school safety resource officer for the following school year. The board listened to the pleas of the community and did hire a resource officer and even gave him a car to patrol the campus with. However, while I did feel safer with him being there, the whole mood of the school changed. Instead of feeling that I was learning, I felt that I was like a factory worker in the 1800’s listening to the sound of the bell. I think the overarching problem with the American school system is that it doesn’t educate students, it just instills compliance within them. You are told when to go to class, when to eat, what classes to take, when to leave, and so on. I think if we as a society are ever going to see change with the STTP issue, we must change the system to actually teach students, not just to instill discipline.
Did your school have armed police officers? What changes (if any noteworthy) did you observe over time?
Heading into my freshman year of high school, we did not have a police officer within the high school. However, at some point during the year, one student called in multiple bomb threats into the school, which ended up with the whole school being evacuated at one point. Also, one of the secretaries in the main office accidentally pulled the “school shooter” alarm, which flung the entire school into a panic. At the time, I was in the cafeteria eating lunch and it was a complete disaster getting people out of the building. Because of these incidents, some parents and students petitioned the school board to hire a school safety resource officer for the following school year. The board listened to the pleas of the community and did hire a resource officer and even gave him a car to patrol the campus with. However, while I did feel safer with him being there, the whole mood of the school changed. Instead of feeling that I was learning, I felt that I was like a factory worker in the 1800’s listening to the sound of the bell. I think the overarching problem with the American school system is that it doesn’t educate students, it just instills compliance within them. You are told when to go to class, when to eat, what classes to take, when to leave, and so on. I think if we as a society are ever going to see change with the STTP issue, we must change the system to actually teach students, not just to instill discipline.
After seeing all the percentages and different forms of punishment this opened my eyes. I never really actually thought about the metal detector pat down and paddles too deeply cause it was just normal, it was a normal thing to talk about and a normal occurrence. The school I went had routine checks with police drug dogs. The consequence if caught was being sent to alternative school. I never took a second to think how closely it is related to a common prison “shake down”. I myself have been suspended and I could understand when they said suspensions lead to dropout because I’ve been suspended for 10 days each time I got suspended & in my house hold it was the biggest thing to get suspended because my sibling was in alternative school and was constantly getting suspended and kicked out of school so those 10 days were really freedom from academics. The only thing that kept me from dropping out was realizing that when I came back that work missed had to be made up. And I’d miss 10 days of my friends 10 days of laughter. I never got suspended within a sports season cause sports were too important.
Seeing The impact of certain policies at certain school is so surprising to me, I went to a high-school in a town that had two other high schools and fights were very common but teachers and maybe 1 resource officer actually got involved when a fight would go down, but just this past year they built a new school and all three high schools were merged and the fights have been ridiculous there seems to be a fight every other day.I still see the same resource officers and security guards from the old school there. We already spent millions of dollars to build the school so I feel as though there at more of a loss when it comes to hiring more and more people.The”common” identifiers for a juvenile really shocked me too they said that being lgbtq and growing up in poverty can be used as a trait to identify and juvenile and I feel as though that’s completely false you could grow up in poverty and or be lgbtq and not be a juvenile all throughout or even when you grow up and become known as an adult.if there’s a negative pattern in correlation to the increase of resource officers then why keep spending money on officers and not councilors or after school help programs.
After seeing this article my heart is very heavy. I feel like there are many problems dealing with the school system and how we began to do things differently, after the ’90s and nothing really too good has become of it! For example, as it states in the article dealing with the Zero-tolerance policy, “policies criminalize minor infractions of school rules, while cops in schools lead to students being criminalized for behavior that should be handled inside the school. Suspensions throughout the country have surged over the past two decades, largely because schools have relied on these policies. When students are kicked out of classrooms, either by suspension or expulsion, the result is they are often referred to law enforcement for formal processing.” Because a scholar makes a bad decision does not make them a bad person nor a bad scholar. The world we are living in now is ridiculous and we are seeing and hearing about things on a day-to-day basis that the world has never dealt with, lets us learn to give the children credit first. Now with that being said, I know children deserve better care and respect and need that push to want to do better. A global pandemic being isolated and having to deal with another process they’ve never seen in their entire lives can be frightening. Not to justify their actions but, small infractions shouldn’t be dealt with by putting children into the criminal justice system. Doing this creates a vicious cycle at an early age preventing them from job opportunities, college opportunities, and just overall seeing the world in a different light. Unfortunately because of this policy some of them for the rest of their lives with a record will be looked at as criminals for a small mistake. Let’s try to take different approaches in situations to better these children’s lives instead of relying on suspensions, and expulsions to solve their problems!
When I was in high school from 2015-2018 I have noticed there were more officers getting hired for purposes of guarding the entrances and stop school fights from occurring. Which happened a lot in my school. Fights between girls and boys happened pretty much every day, which probably increased the hiring of police officers in the first place. What I remembered is the officers having only tasers for their assistance. And I only saw one officer tase a student in my school years. That one incident was a student not listening to the officer after she was about to fight another student, which is where the officer tased her. The student was African American, which in my school, estimated 75% African Americans and 25% White Americans of students in the district.
I believe the people who support incarceration are the ones providing money for the school and think more about themselves because they are “important.” As well as thinking having police officers, metal detectors, and other protection would show that is safe in our school. But in my opinion, I felt uncomfortable with all those precautions just to see being used after we had warnings of bomb threats or gun threats and then just going back to check our bags for 2 seconds by the teachers and move on for the day.
There are limitless public dollars because taxes are getting increased by the government who only cares about getting money from us in the first place.
There are education expenditures because schools think paying for security and other precautions will help to get students’ parents to get off their case about there being too much security or too little. Which ends up where they lose care for the student’s opinions and safety just because they don’t want to be bothered.
Teachers get paid so little because the education system cares more about keeping money to themselves for what they think is important like sports or something else.
Some people think the answer to every social problem is always more police and more jail because they think that if there was a threat, a weapon can solve the problem. As well as if we put the people who are “the danger to society” in prison will decrease the crime rates. Which in fact doesn’t, it gets worse. From this, we have overpopulated prisons because every crime committed should be accounted for like not paying a parking ticket or to shoplifting, or to other crimes that are not that extreme as murder or sexual assault.
Did your school have armed police officers? What changes (if any noteworthy) did you observe over time?
I went to a smaller public high-school and very rarely was there anything going on when I was a freshmen. Then as time went on more and more things started to happen such as school threats and people drinking. Also at that time vaping was big and you would walk into the bathroom and would be filled with smoke and there was no one monitoring. Then by the time I was a junior we had hired a school police officer. Who would always be walking around and would watch the front of the school. At first it seemed like there was no change when he had first got. But when he was catching three kids a week vaping and handing out suspensions. You started to notice less and less vaping scenarios. But the fights seemed like they didn’t get any better from what they were. But I would say that every school should have metal detectors and with at least two officers. With all these school shootings going on in todays world, my school had to cancel school several times due to kids making threats on social media and thinking that they wouldn’t get caught.
I had little interaction with school resource officers in elementary school, as the demographics of that school were predominantly White and Latino, with Black students, unfortunately, being rare. With that said, around my second year of middle school, the school hired an officer with whom I had an interaction within 8th grade due to my involvement in a rather terrible joke that I went along with. In high school, the school had about 3 to 4 officers on duty, and in cases where students did misbehave, they were often involved negatively. The officers were indeed armed and over time no significant changes were made. People likely tend to support incarceration over education because they see it as the easiest solution and is less complex than allowing students to better their education. Furthermore, there is a larger public emphasis on funding policing in schools as well as mass incarcerations due to the threat of school shootings. With that said, however, the fear of a possible shooting is overriding the general public’s ability to understand what the research data concludes. Furthermore, because the United States has the highest rate of incarcerations in the world, that is bound to overlap with education. People are more critical of spending money on education because of the higher demand for prisons and incarceration within this country. Teachers are paid less, because of this lack of funding for educational institutions. There tends to be an emphasis on policing and jailing because it’s the simplest thing to do and due to a lack of funding for education and infrastructure, people are often committing some offense in order to survive, thus creating a demand for policing.
After reading the article, my mind completely changed. At first, I always thought of suspension, school police, and expulsions in school systems provided positive outcomes for the most part. Obviously, I always knew there were a portion of students that were affected by these means of discipline, but never as drastic as the statistic that “70% of ‘in-school’ arrests” are people of color. Police in schools were always advertised to me as protection from criminals or acts of violence, such as school shootings.
Furthermore, my school did employ police. They were constantly patrolling the campus; whether it was during school hours or an athletic event, they were found at every corner. I did not notice any positive changes. Negative results were more apparent to me. I never saw an individual get arrested before high school, let alone did I expect it to be one of my peers. What did this student do you may ask? They allegedly were arguing with a school police officer. This alone supports the idea of the STPP.
However, I want to advance the argument of police being in schools by raising the following idea:
It seems that most school police officers at my alma mater are retired city or state police officers, and to be employed as a SRO (School Resource Officer) in Pennsylvania, an officer is given one school year to complete the SRO training program through NASRO before facing consequences, according to the Department of Education. This solidifies the idea that officers in schools with no training on how to develop positive relationships with the students they are policing are undertrained. They ignore healthy methods of dealing with issues and skip right to negativity, contributing directly to the STPP.
Source: https://www.education.pa.gov/Schools/safeschools/laws/Act67/training/Pages/SRO.aspx
This is a really excellent point that you raise here, Matthew. Thanks for sharing the link with us!
Think about the research reflected here in terms of how it may/may not resonate with your own experiences in school. What do you recall from your own school experiences?
Did your school have armed police officers? What changes (if any noteworthy) did you observe over time?
The first two questions caught my eye because of my high school days. I went to two different high-schools growing up and their were some differences that I noticed in the way the teachers and school dealt with behavior. The first school I went too was my freshman year and they were, in a way, more lenient but also not. Since the students there were known to misbehave and also come from families with not a lot of money or a lot of things available to them, a lot of the facility was willing to work with them. But the kids that did get in trouble and had ISS or even got expended were not always insane ‘problems’. Then there were some really problematic issues and a lot of kids at that school did misbehave and would not care about school. In the second high school that I attended they were very preppy and these rich kids who got whatever they wanted. There was not as much trouble at this school but when there was they would treat it how this article talks about it, like would instantly get into major trouble over something little. There were more cases about bullying at this school. The first school would constantly have police around the school for many reasons. The second school not so much, there would be occasional drop ins but not like the others.
Did your school have armed police officers? What changes (if any noteworthy) did you observe over time?
Going to school in a relatively upper middle class neighborhood, our district did not have a strong police presence. Every school had only one armed police officer, and the high school had an additional unarmed security guard due to class body size. Changes I saw, and that have been occurring since I graduated, have been quite big. Every school now has way more increased security and police presence. The local police departments patrol around the schools much more frequently now, and security clearance is much more difficult to obtain. Our district has also had a new high school built in the last year an it will now have a security guard and three armed officers to patrol the grounds with numerous new technological security options as well. It seems as though security will be ever increasing in schools, this is probably in large part caused by school shootings that have unfortunately been happening all too often. I felt safe having officers in the school, if you do not break rules you will not have negative encounters with them. I suppose only the future will tell how much the increasing school police force will affect the generations to come and our ever increasing prison population thanks to the school to prison pipeline.
I find it interesting that people with disabilities tend to get pushed out of schools at a higher rate. My brother was diagnosed with “Aspergers” and was quickly forced out of the school for having a temper tantrum in the 2nd grade. I’ts not uncommon for 2nd grade kids to act out sometimes but I think they chose to force him into another school based on the fact that they knew of his diagnosis. Today he is on his way to becoming a surgical technician and a fully functional contributing member of society. I believe removing him from the school was unnecessary. I think it’s defiantly true that some schools use police intervention much more than others. My school had pretty much no security, and we never had many issues. There might be two or three fights in an entire school year but it was quickly broken up by teachers and the police were never involved. I’ts crazy to me how schools have metal detectors and students are being patted down. Teacher’s who used to work in inner city schools told me it was a horrifying experience. They told stories about how they were attacked by students and how the students were impossible to control. What makes those kids so much more rebellious and violent compared to the kids I went to school with? Is it because they are poor? I personally think i’ts more about the inner city culture. I believe that the kids I went to school with had different values, goals, beliefs based on their race, culture and other influences like the education level of family members. I believe miscommunication because of cultural differences is the cause of many of our social issues.
My own personal school experience with security was not as bad as others. Starting school there were always security and police officers there, because I went to school in a so called “rough” neighborhood. I have seen my peers get arrested, kicked out, or just picked on by the authorities, but not all of them acted like that. Some security guards were cool to be around and talk to, also they were respectable and they knew us children were going to be children at the end of the day. If we did get in trouble they would not punish us they would talk to us about why our behavior was wrong and let us sit in their office with them. We had fights frequently to the point where they hired more police officers to be up at my school. They even brought their K-9 dog inside of the school to check for drugs. As a student there I never felt scared to go there, because the drama mainly happened out of school. Police in schools can be very useful for the simple fact that all these school shootings that has happened recently we need to protect our children but that is not the only solution to come up with. The media portrays it as “Safety for students” basically and it still does not guarantee overall safety for these children. Also, honestly with all the police and security guards that worked for my school nobody was properly searched for weapons or drugs, and people that did not go to my school they would get pass security with no problem. We just need more better security and police in these schools because of the school shootings as I stated previously.
My own school experiences were slim to none when it came to security. My freshmen year of high school I do remember having a private security guard. He was very old and really only was there to check for hall passes and watch students for lunch. Due to our school budget the remainder of my high school career we did not have a security guard. Instead we had our local police department come periodically to check up on the school. We never had any major issues when we needed a security guard or police. No one really thought anything of it to be honest. We did not have school resource officers in my school. We had an unarmed private security guard for one year then the police came randomly for the remaining three years of my high school career. We had maybe two major fights with two individuals in high school. That is when we did not have a security guard. I observed that we did not need a security guard on site to protect our facility. Imprisonment means more than education to most people. Teachers may be paid so little because they are paid by local and state taxes. Even though they are a main resource for our children they do not work 12 months out of the year. Also, depending on the school a teachers pay can definitely vary. I believe that people think every social problem answer is more police because that means the average person won’t have to deal with others who they don’t believe in. Meaning social status is important to most people so those who are not like them are not wanted.
I went to Thomas jefferson high school in PA. Yes, my school had one armed officer named Bob. He never caused any trouble to students and was polite as can be. However, he was considered a “safety” officer and not police. Part of me would like to think that this made him more respected by the students as opposed to being a straight up policeman but, i think people on see one color, blue.He was retired army if i recall correctly. I believe people think it is easier to lock someone up than to reeducate them or begin a mentoring relationship. In terms of public dollars being used, this can be attributed to a reckless political chess game. The people (regular citizens) are always being taken advantage of by “the man”.Education is held up on a pedestal because it deals with children directly. Teachers being paid so little is a mystery to me. If i had to guess, it would be that teaching is seen as expendable to the general public. As i said before, it is easier to lock some up and throw away the key than it is to engage them in an emotional or thought driven way. A child doesn’t want to obey you? Yank their ass out of that seat and discipline will prevail.
I definitely see the problem having police in school and I would agree that it is targeted towards low income and minority schools. When I was in high school at McKeesport High School we had metal detectors, fully armed police officers, bag searches, and random police dog locker searches. My opinion on the matter is that I think we need some type of security in schools, especially with the rise of school shootings. I honestly felt safe and secure with the level of security at my high school. I knew that nobody was getting into our school without permission and proper body search. The problem is not with these local officers, I think the problem is the way the state funnels the money towards prisons instead of education. So many of my fellow high school students (mostly black kids) are now incarcerated. The state needs to help these poor children and fund their education to keep them from getting caught in the system. It seems like the police mistreat black students and black students are labeled as not as smart, not having bright futures, and more likely to have drugs and guns. This is so unfair for them and leads to real life situations. Most of the white students I went to school with now have decent jobs or went to college, while many of the black students I went to school with, some are dead, some are in prison, and a lot are stuck where they are in life, with no help from the system,
From what I remember, my high school did have armed police officers on school grounds when school was in session. I, however, do not recall a huge effect on punishment in school. This may stem from the fact that I was never a troublemaker, but even my friends who were troublesome never complained about the police. My fellow students were usually more concerned with the unarmed security guards. Those were the ones who would deal with most physical altercations and insubordination. The security guards and some of the teachers were the feared ones. Even still most of the difficult students were friends with the security guards and teachers. As for the police officers, they occasionally made rounds around the school, but mostly they would just sit in the main lobby, check people with metal detectors, and mark down late students. I only remember them getting involved in larger scale fights and fights outside of school, but I do not remember things getting violent or abusive nor any reports of such things. As for my view of the entire issue of armed police in schools, I think it can be done but it needs to be approached with caution. Also police should not get involved in issues that should be handled in school such as disrespect and insubordination. I like how my school handled it by letting the teachers and unarmed security guards deal with it instead of the police.
I heard of the school-to-prison pipeline but didn’t really understand what it meant. At my high school we had security as well as city officers who would occasionally patrol the halls. Every student was also required to walk through metal detector before entering the school. Also they would bring in police dogs to sniff lockers but this was rare. This remained the same throughout my four years of high school. Despite all of that my high school was considered one of the best public schools in Pittsburgh, PA. I think people continue to support incarceration over education because that is what is being pushed. Many presidents have implemented get tough on crime initiatives and the public blindly follows. Which is why every social problem is answered with more police and more jail. The school-to-prison pipeline seems like it will never fade because prisons are profitable for many reasons. Bail bonds, specialized phone companies, vendors and many other things listed in the article demonstrate why prisons are growing. There are many problems that need to be addressed in this issue. Such as the pay of teachers. Some may say they are paid little because they don’t work year round. But the reality is that we are paying a lot of money to keep people locked up.
I do not like how these students who have a certain unpopular stigma are being targeted and taken right into prison. Just like the article says, “all of them would benefit from additional education services and counseling services.” I, one hundred percent agree that instead of taking them to prisons they should be getting education. A lot of bias is in todays world of policing and it continues regardless of the issue that arises. It always leads back to the unpopular bias of police officers. Then, when you get to the video of the officer slapping the student. That is just crossing the line and unnecessary. After reading the restorative justice reforms i truly feel we as a country have some serious options out there to pursue. I personally like the one which creates an agreement with police departments and court systems. This in turn would lead to a lot of decline in these over exaggerated arrests and unnecessary arrests. Another great one was to train teachers to use positive behavior for at risk students. Overall, i feel there is a lot of ground work that needs to be accomplished before the ball can get rolling on this reform in this country. It had gotten so bad to where we are taking kids out of school and a chance to gain valuable knowledge and throwing them in jail.
While I was in high school we did not have armed police in the schools, no metal detectors, or no security guards. I grew up in a school where there were not many issues that occurred, especially those of such extreme nature that have been occurring in schools recently. My high school had an in school suspension office and very rarely did anyone receive out of school suspensions. Every few months the local police would come into the school with police dogs and search the school. That was usually the most police activity that occurred within the schools. Many things have changed since I have been out of high school and I believe for the safety of the kids that police or some type of security needs to be implemented within the schools. I do not believe that they need to have people walking around with guns installing fear into the kids who attend these schools though. Their needs to be some type of middle ground of security without armed police standing at every door of every school.
In regards to this article, and everything going on now a days in the world and also the media, law enforcement in the schools system is becoming a big talking point whether it is good to have armed law enforcement in schools or not. When I was in high school, we would have unarmed security guards that would walk around and make sure everything goes well. We also had metal detectors to go through everymorning. We had our bags checked and had to empty everything in our pockets that could set the metal detectors off. If anyone would set them off, the security would use the wand and search the body for anything that could had set it off. We had plenty of security and a lot of schools now are using the same thing. Personally, I think that law enforcement should stay out of school, unless there are drugs, alcohol, or an act of violence where law enforcement would be needed (a massive fight or an active shooter on the campus). If kids go to school and see law enforcement with fully loaded pistols, then they would go to school in fear because they could believe that something terrible will happen.
In reference to the reading, I believe that the usage of police authorities on school campuses can be a bit extreme. In most public schools. Students are enforced to travel through a metal detector. Prior to walking through the metal detector students were encouraged to strip themselves of anything metal related that could potientually beep. Along side of that, school police would be posted around the perimeter of the campus with k-9’s and other tactile gear inside of their vehicles Incase they were to ever use them. I always questioned why they needed to apply so much pressure on students when most of us were are already pressured by the society and the natural layout of the schools themselves? Most campuses are isolated away from the community and students are forced to obey all rules and regulations applied to us or face consequences as if we were all delinquents. I’m all reality I believe it’s all socially and economically structured to be that way. I believe that schools were a way to oppress students and manipulate them into being statistics of crime at an early stage of their lives for an economic profit for the future. Instead of spending money on incorporating more public safty of police services, why not fund schools with better equipment to keep students engaged in their learning environments?
My school did not have armed police officers on site. I know that over time with there being two principles while being in jr/sr high school, there were several changes. My school was seventh through twelfth grade and I could tell the difference and changes made. The first principle was very nice and you could get anything by him. The second principle was also nice but he was trying to make the community as a whole a better place. He had a modo of community, excellence and integrity. Like I said before we didn’t have armed police officers on site or even secrurity guards but if there was something going on, the police would be there in seconds. My senior year of high we came back right after Christmas break and there were a few people bringing drugs to school and the principle knew this was going on and had an idea of which individuals were doing this, so the police came and brought the search dog and tried to figure it out. He was also on th ball of things. If there was a threat written somewhere we would go on lock down. Police would be there in seconds. We didn’t have any security guards or police there 24/7 but there were times where police would maybe show up and just walk around the halls just to check up. This was maybe once a week if that. I felt safe at my high school and never felt my life was at risk when going.
After reflecting on this article and comparing it to my own experience. What I can remember most are the metal detectors, armed police officers patrolling the hallways, in school suspension, out of school suspension, and detention. Now I can agree that some of the things I mentioned are a good way of handling bad behavior such as detention and in school suspension. I would even go as far to say having metal detectors are good. However when you start allowing armed guards into school that in itself can cause more problems especially if an officer who is patrolling the school is “Power-Hungry“. Some of the changes that I noticed over time is stricter punishments for small in fraction Such as having a cell phone out on your desk during class. Instead of the possibility of getting in trouble for having a cell phone in class the schools should be implementing the cell phones in class as a learning source Sense technology is one of the number one thing running our world today. I think we all know bad things can happen anywhere nowadays including in schools, churches, and in hospitals. Putting police officers in school for safety is one thing however putting police officers in school for disciplinary control is another. Increasing punishment for disciplinary action is only going to keep bringing education statistics down and raising incarceration statistics. We should be more focused on how to educate our children instead of how to discipline our children. If we shift our focus towards the education, there is no doubt statistics of African-Americans graduate will go up and the rate of incarceration will Possibly go down.
The criminal justice system in the United States is big business. They hire thousands of workers and contract billions in services. The criminal justice system needs a constant influx of criminals to keep the business running. and to generate a profit, the prison and jail population must grow. In many situations, motives by politicians implant fear into citizens, such as the war on drugs and now with Trump’s “criminal Mexicans” to direct policy and enforce laws that add to incarceration. By creating this fear, the government can easily use public dollars to advance their agenda and keep the prison business model running smoothly. They want to “keep the streets safe” meanwhile they are out arresting people on nonviolent crimes and now they are starting a lot earlier—within the school system. I also believe they will hire anyone that is available to be and officer to advance their agenda, “make it safer” because there is more people in blue out on the streets
I have always believed that their needs to be a separation from education with minors and law enforcement. I personally was in a fight in high school and I got a 10 days suspension, 2 court hearings and a mark on my criminal record. (They expunged the mark but it should of never been on there.) There wasn’t even blood drawn! Yet they called the police and made the whole process exaggerated. I don’t understand why we need law enforcement to be involved in school matters. I could of just been suspended and punished with like detention. I can see why law enforcement would be involved if there were drugs involved or even excessive bullying, but not for everything. There is no reason to bring in law enforcement in a fight in school. They are trying to scare children and it works. There was definitely a drop in fights during school, but that doesn’t mean they don’t still happen. We need to spend more time on educating children on how to stay in school, and how to become up standing people. We need to stop making people feel fear and help them learn why not to do certain things.