February 1, 2010 A 12-year-old Queens student at Junior High School 190 was led out of school in handcuffs and walked to the precinct across the street where she was detained for several hours for writing on a desk. She was suspended and assigned eight hours of community service, a book report, and an essay on what she learned from the experience.
May 2007 Bossier Parish, LA
An 8th grade student was expelled for ‘possession of a controlled substance’ for the remainder of her school year and the first nine weeks of her freshman year.
That controlled substance was ibuprofin.
March 29, 2013 A 13-year-old Massachusetts middle school student received a one-day suspension for bringing a butter knife to school. The butter knife was to cut a pear during lunch, which she cannot eat whole because of her braces.
June, 1999 Pensacola, FL
The school’s principal wanted to expel a student under the zero tolerance policy on weapons, to which her nail clippers’ two inch blade fit the description. Her case was overturned by the Escambia County Schoolboard.
2008
Elementary students in Texas and Louisiana have been suspended for pointing pencils and saying “pow.�
June, 1997 Seattle
A 13-year-old student swallowed his mouthwash after lunch. Mouthwash has trace amounts of alcohol in it, and he was suspended under this policy.
December 2008 Clay County, FL
A 9-year-old Patterson Elementary School student was accused of selling drugs. She was handing out cough drops to her friends.
The rise of the School to Prison Pipeline did not correspond with an increase in school violence. Crimes against & by youth were actually declining before zero tolerance policies took hold.
Zero Tolerance Policies directly and indirectly feed the pipeline.
DIRECT • Schools rely on suspension, expulsion, citations, summonses, and arrests to handle disciplinary problems like bringing cell phones and ipods to school, smoking cigarettes, and skipping class. Students who might easily be disciplined through a visit to the principal’s office end up in jail cells—this is the essence of the Pipeline. • Criminal charges are brought against youth in schools for violations that never would be considered criminal if committed by an adult.
INDIRECT • A child who has been suspended is more likely to fall behind in school, be retained a grade, drop out of high school, commit a crime, and become incarcerated as an adult. • The best demographic indicators of children who will be suspended are not the type or severity of the crime, but the color of their skin, their special education status, the school they go to, and whether they have been suspended before.