The School to Prison Pipeline

Written by Lucy Vaicius-Academy of the Sacred Heart, The Rosary and Maggie Gaudian - Newton Country Day School

The school-to-prison pipeline is a national social phenomenon in which children are funneled through their school system and into the juvenile justice system. Many children subjected to this increasingly present practice have learning disabilities, experience poverty, or are abused and neglected. Instead of receiving the care and attention they need, they are pushed into an unknown system and forced to “fend for themselves ” . School’ s Zero Tolerancepolicies and police presence on campus are two of the main contributors to the pipeline. Keep reading to learn more.

Police Presence The ever-growing abundance of police on high school campuses is one of the leading contributors to the school-to-prison pipeline. Often schools in under-resourced communities rely on police rather than on teachers to teach and enforce discipline to students because of expenses. This trend also is representative of how children and students coming out of underprivileged areas are likely to fall victim to the system. As police are now “enforcers of discipline ” on campus, there are more likely to be arrests made for nonviolent offenses, like the eleven-year-old boy in Virginia who was arrested for kicking a trash can (reported by The World). The commonality of nonviolent arrests is believed by many to support the criminalization and dehumanization of teens and children of color. Law enforcement in American high schools increased by a staggering 38% in just the ten years between 1997 to 2007. The NIAProjectreported that in 2010, Chicago public schools (who use police officers) were offered $25,000 to relinquish the officers and only 4 schools chose to do so. Many activists such as Ethan Viets-Vanlear, whom we spoke to this week, are working to improve the police presence for schools in the country.As more attention is brought to the current situation, hopefully we as a country can begin to move towards a more peaceful future.

Communities of Color and the Pipeline Within the trend of the school-to-prison pipeline, students of color are at a disadvantage.. Education Weekreports that: nation-wide, Black males are 3 times more likely to be arrested than their white peers, even Black female students are 1.5 times more likely to be arrested than white male students. According to ProjectNIA, in cities, such as Chicago, the majority of the public schools are made up of students of color, where 45% of students are Black and 41%

are Latinx. While Black students make up less than half of the student population of Chicago, they make up nearly 74% of the student arrests that happen within the city 's public schools. Overall, a school is 70% more likely to refer to local law enforcement rather than administrators. There are clear disparities between the way students of color and White students are treated when rules are broken.

School Zone drug laws Because of school zone drug laws across the US students are flooding into the prison system for nonviolent drug offenses.. When Richard Nixon declared the war on drugs in the 1970s, arrests for nonviolent drug crimes increased. School zone drug laws were zones around schools enacted to protect youth from the dangers of drugs, but have resulted in youth offenders facing harsher punishments for drug-related offenses. In areas around schools, there are harsher punishments for drugs and stricter enforcement, which leads to an overwhelming flow of students through the school-to-prison pipeline.

Solutions Many problems have contributed to this continuous flow of students from schools to prisons. Reforms need to be made nationally, in states, school districts, and individual institutions. In cities such as Denver and Minneapolis, schools have begun to sever ties with their local police departments to protect their students from ending up in prison. Other districts have made agreements with their local police departments on limiting the number of arrests at schools and decreasing the use of restraint for nonviolent crimes. Other states have increased training for teachers and administrators on handling crime and disobedience in their schools. The goal is to reduce reliance on police because they have ultimately caused more harm for the students than good. School institutions are encouraging eliminating no-tolerance school-to-prison policies and being more understanding of each student's situation. To ensure students have an equitable opportunity at school, administrators should provide clarity on rules and regulations (especially in regards with police).Minors are in a growing period of their lives, and they should not be treated with no tolerance policies but instead given a chance to try again.