THE SCHOOL TO PRISON PIPELINE Schools inevitably must deal with disciplinary action when it comes to misconduct in students. However, at what point should the courts and law enforcement intervene? “Zero tolerance” policies started as a trend in the school setting during the 1990s in “response to the widespread perception that juvenile violence was increasing and school officials needed to take desperate measures to address the problem” (Aull 2012:182-183). However, national statistics indicated a decrease in juvenile’s share of crime during the influx of zero tolerance policies in schools (National Crime Justice Reference Service 2005). ‘Zero-tolerance’ policies criminalize minor infractions of school rules, while high-stakes testing programs encourage educators to push out low-performing students to improve their schools’ overall test scores. Students of color are especially vulnerable to push-out trends and the discriminatory application of discipline (Gabbard 2013:33). Gabbard’s (2013) application of zero tolerance policies goes hand in hand with this phenomenon known as the school-to-prison pipeline (STPP). Archer (2009:868) defines the STPP as “the collection of education and public safety policies and practices that push our nation’s schoolchildren out of the classroom and into the streets, the juvenile justice system, or the criminal justice system.” When Fowler (2011:16) studied the STPP, they concluded that “...the single greatest predictor of future involvement in the juvenile system is a history of disciplinary referrals at school.” Because of its huge predictor of criminality, this is a serious issue that must be analyzed to prevent a catastrophic and vicious cycle that forces society’s children out of school, int... ... middle of paper ... ...n attempting to research this phenomenon. The research of juveniles and especially of their criminal conduct brings up many ethical issues and dilemmas. Participants’ guardians should be made aware of the research being conducted and participant confidentiality should be one of the researcher’s main priorities. An issue that may arise is the lack of guardian support for involvement in the research. In order to overcome this possible dilemma, informational packets should be created to hand out to guardians, which will include information about the research experiment. Confidentiality should be stressed and other than the survey or in-person interview, the observations by the researcher will be primarily unobtrusive, so guardians should be reassured that their approval in their child’s participation is only beneficial to bring about policy changes in school settings.
This decision makes it clear the most important thing for a school to do is to protect the students. It also states that the board of education, whose role is to oversee the schools, must make sure that the staff of the schools is protecting those children. This case highlights that long-term abuse can happen in schools if there are not clear policies or, if there are, that there is no one ensuring that those policies are
Martinez, S. (2009). A system gone berserk: How are zero-tolerance policies really …..affecting schools? Preventing School Failure, 53(3), 153-157. Retrieved from …..http://search.proquest.com.ezproxylocal.library.nova.edu/docview/228530113?acco…..untid=6579
A new policy is needed and most certainly should start out with holding schools to handle their own discipline situations, rather than relying on school security and police (Wilson, 2014). School administrators must be able to differentiate between what is a true discipline situation and when a student simply made a mistake. The rate of school suspensions have skyrocketed over the last thirty years from 1.7 million nationwide to 3.1 million and growing today (ACLU, n.d.). Each school needs to create policies of when to get school security involved and what the school’s security job involves. Unless there is a true threat to the safety of the school and/or its student’s law enforcement should never be called (Wison, 2014). The instinct to dial 911 at every infraction has to stop. Furthermore the schools must develop a gender and racial fairness; black children should not be receiving harsher punishments for similar infractions of white students (Wilson,
The school-to-prison pipeline is the idea that schools funnel students into the prison system. This theory is narrow-minded and ignores how the government benefits from the surveillance of African Americans. With the imagery of a pipe, this complex issue is reduced to the single-minded idea that schools force people of color, most notably African Americans, and does not discuss the evolution of the larger society. The way society has evolved to discriminate against African Americans at the institutional level is a key factor in the increased incarceration rates. The school-to-prison pipeline is an outdated and prejudiced model that does not fully explain the situation many African Americans face.
The school to prison pipeline is a phenomenon that refers to the practices and policies that have pushed school children, especially the most at-risk children, out of classrooms and into the juvenile justice system. This disturbing occurrence indicates the prioritization of incarceration over the education of children. Most alarmingly, many of the children being targeted have learning disabilities or histories of poverty, abuse or neglect. Instead of being targeted, these children would much rather benefit from additional counseling and educational services. Moreover, the knowledge acquired in this course will be incorporated in this paper and used to explain the points made. In this term paper, what will be discussed is the expansion of the zero tolerance policy, the different views on the policy, who is mostly targeted, the effects on the juveniles and any alternative solutions that could diminish this dismaying occurrence for becoming a larger problem.
In the most recent years, the relationship between educational institutions and the juvenile justice system, which was once created to protect children, has displayed an ultimatum for minors through “zero tolerance” policies that result in sending individuals from school to prison to pipeline. Studies have shown that these policies are not beneficial to students or the educational environment that should be guaranteed to children. Opponents argue that the policies promote safety, but through this research it can be concluded that the policies actually increase danger. Studies demonstrate the factors that affect the enforcement of these policies which include media, the sociopolitical atmosphere, and the racial disproportionality, yet there are valid solutions for this issue that can be explored.
Kafka, Judith. 2011. The history of "zero tolerance" in American public schooling. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. http://www.palgraveconnect.com/doifinder/10.1057/9781137001962.
Following the Columbine tragedy in 1999, “school systems across the nation introduced the zero-tolerance policies aimed at the curtailment of harmful student behaviors” (Noll, 2014, p. 295). The original focus of the policies was to eliminate the use/carrying of weapons but soon after spread to restricting drugs and medication (2014). By 2006 95% of the U.S. public schools had adopted the zero-tolerance policies and more than half of them reported taking significant action against students, many of which resulted in expulsion (2014). While the zero-tolerance polices were originally welcomed by all members of a community as a means of promoting and keeping a safer environment-- as of late many individuals are questioning the relevance of some actions and some school officials (2014).
The zero tolerance policy has become a national controversy in regards to the solid proven facts that it criminalizes children and seems to catch kids who have no intention of doing harm. Although, there has been substantial evidence to prove that the policies enforced in many schools have gone far beyond the extreme to convict children of their wrongdoing. The punishments for the act of misconduct have reached a devastating high, and have pointed students in the wrong direction. Despite the opinions of administrators and parents, as well as evidence that zero tolerance policies have deterred violence in many public and private schools, the rules of conviction and punishment are unreasonable and should be modified.
Studies and anecdotes have shown that our modern approach, however, is ill-equipped to reduce crime or deal with chronic delinquents while at the same time protecting their due liberties. We now stand on the precipice of decision: How can we strike an appropriate balance in the juvenile justice system? Should we even retain a separate system for children at all? The answers are usually difficult, sometimes subtle, but always possible to attain.
However, zero tolerance policies are not the only cause of this school-to-prison pipeline. The addition of school resource officers also feeds the pipeline. As school resource officers are added to the environment, the number of criminal citations in schools increased dramatically (Shah 14). Students often find themselves being harassed by police officers in the halls for minor offenses (Middleton 1). This also increases the arrest rate in schools and paves a path to the juvenile justice system (“What is the School-To-Prison Pipeline?”). “The very policies that schools adopted to manage behavior and increase achievement are fostering failure and feeding the school-to-prison pipeline” (Wilson 50). The school-to-prison pipeline pushes students, especially African Americans and special needs children, out of schools through suspensions and expulsions leading them down a path to the juvenile justice system, which then fosters a culture of incarceration in the United States. As the pipeline becomes more of a national trend, legislatures and school administrators need to come together to eliminate the effects of the
Tulman, J. B. (2008). Time to Reverse the School-to-Prison Pipeline. (Cover story). Policy & Practice (19426828), 66(1), 22-27.
Schools that experience crimes and drug abuse are mostly found in disorganized neighborhoods. Schools attempt to ensure safety between students in staff by using mechanical devices but as we see that don’t always help. Research shows that many of the perpetrators of school crime have been or are victims of delinquency themselves. The focus of delinquency entitled “Does school crime reflect neighborhood delinquency?”
In today’s society mainly anyone growing up in poverty stricken communities, single parent homes, domestic violence or infested and drug infested areas are at risk to being abducted by the school to prison pipeline. The school to prison pipeline is a system designed for at risk teens that do not do well in school. The effect is them being thrown in jail. Economically the black and the Latino community constantly after generation and generation are getting dealt the same hand because each child in the new generation is growing up in a broken home and are falling victim to the same problems that the generation before them have faced. By compiling annual reports on the total number of disciplinary
There has been a mass increase of juvenile delinquency in the United States, which has made a notable change in our society as a whole. It also directly affects parents, teachers, families, the perpetrators themselves, and of course, the victims. Law enforcement agencies in the United States have made an estimated 2.11 million arrests of minors. These perpetrators who were arrested have either been placed in confinement or they are under court supervision. Juvenile delinquency is described as illegal or immoral behavior, generally among young people under the legal age of eighteen. In order to reduce these high rates of delinquency, parents, and other adult figures, must first ask themselves, what is causing this? What external and internal