Arrest or Success? — Enforcement of the School-to-Prison Pipeline in Education
How the public education systems in the United States encourage more arrests than success for minority students through the abuse of the school-to-prison pipeline.
At Skinner Middle School in Denver Colorado, there were over 300 children getting suspended per year for miniscule actions that could have and should have been handled differently (Flannery, neaToday).
“That’s just what we did in school. We suspended kids” said James Duran, the Dean of Discipline at Skinner Middle School (Flannery, neaToday).
Sadly, this is the reality for many children in the United States today. According to an article in the neaToday , getting suspended, “is the number-one predictor — more than poverty — of whether children will drop out of school, and walk down a road that includes greater likelihood of unemployment, reliance on social-welfare programs, and imprisonment”.
How is it that public schools, which are supposed to foster an environment encouraging growth and development, are now disproportionately and systematically creating criminals? This phenomenon is known as the school-to-prison pipeline and has been attributed to the increase of school suspensions and expulsions in the United States for the past 40+ years.
The Origin of the School-to-Prison Pipeline
During Nixon’s Presidency in the 1970s, his administration introduced the “War on Drugs” to call action on the addiction crisis in America. This initiative’s goal was to get “tough on drugs” by enforcing drug policies that aim to discourage the distribution and production of drugs.
This idea bled into Reagan’s Presidency during the 80s where governmental officials argued that if we work to enforce punishments on small offenses, like one’s perpetrated by middle schoolers and high schoolers, it will help prevent and decrease crime rates within adulthood all together. Because of this, public schools adopted Reagan’s reasoning and applied it to their community.
In the 1990s, the federal government officially adopted the “Zero Tolerance” policy and encouraged states to apply it to their schools disciplinary action. This soon did not become a choice because later that decade, the Department of Justice created grant incentives that enforced police presence in schools (Justice, Choice360).
As time went on, this discussion leapt from the government into popular discourse making everyone more aware of this phenomena. That means that the truth behind this structure was brought forth and there was no going back from all of the injustices that have occurred from this barbaric and unrealistic policy.
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This policy is not just barbaric though, it destroys people’s and communities lives. It has created a cycle of injustice with no intention to stop. Schools already experience inequity, but now that there is aggressive policing that is our law enforcement present on school grounds, it further exacerbates the opportunity for the school-to-prison pipeline to continue.
Elizabeth Hinton, a Yale professor, perfectly depicted the pipeline in her book titled From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime (2016). Hinton stated how the, “federal government encouraged states to invest in particular framings of youth crime and crime prevention, increasing policing of schools and school grounds, rerouting problem children into racially unequal constellations of juvenile justice, community rehab centers, and foster care — while simultaneously inflating perceptions of black crime through use of biased statistics” (Justice, Choice360).
Many may think this phenomenon does not affect as many children as it actually does. However, the most recent statistics on this matter, which comes from the 2017–2018 academic year, shows that there were over 5.3 million disciplinary cases in public schools in the U.S., with males representing over 80% of the statistic (NCES).
The pipeline is yet another discriminatory based system in the United States that disproportionately targets children of color, those from a lower socio-economic status, and students who struggle with mental health related disabilities.
According to USAfacts.org, Black students make up 30% of all suspensions and expulsions while only representing 15% of the entire student population in United States public schools. Because of this, they are 3.5% more likely to experience suspension compared to their white counterparts. Children with disabilities experience similar injustices, being twice as likely to be suspended over their non-disabled peers (Flannery, neaToday).
These statistics are the result of government and school policies that have helped to establish what is commonly accepted as the school to prison pipeline problem today. The repercussions of this pipeline continue to impact schools and students today.
New generations are starting and people who experienced the school-to-prison pipeline first hand are now creating families. Incarceration is a cycle, which means many of these adults are in jail and not present during the most critical time of their child’s development. According to the National Library of Medicine, “In a North American study, separation from a parent through imprisonment was found to be more detrimental to a child’s well-being than divorce or death of a parent”(Beresford, NCBI). With this, children who fall under these circumstances are more prone to experience mental health issues, physiological strain, anti-social behavior, post-traumatic stress, and even abuse and torment (Martin, NIJ).
The typical student who becomes part of the school-to-prison pipeline commonly experiences a great deal of hardships in and outside of school. Why is the place that is supposed to keep children safe and encourage their best self doing exactly the opposite?
School systems and society encourage the continuation of the school-to-prison pipeline without even realizing it most of the time. Because of the federal government’s enforcement of police presence in school in the late 80s, students’ disciplinary actions fall in the hands of law enforcement and not the school. The situations that lead to these arrests are almost always obscured.
Patricia Cardeans is one of many victims of this phenomenon. In middle school, she got into a fight with a girl that gained quite a crowd. Police showed up, but she never knew she had a warrant for arrest until she tried to get her drivers license over three years later (Flannery, neaToday).
Though Patricia’s story is hilariously obscure, it is the harsh reality for some children. Some do not have to do anything to already pose a threat to police officers in schools — “Studies have shown that a Black child, especially a male, is seen to be a bigger threat just because they are. They are. They exist” (Flannery, neaToday).
The school-to-prison pipeline is built on racism and injustice affects more communities than most people realize.
Waterbury Public School District
In the 2021–2022 academic year, the Waterbury school district had over 250 student arrests over misdemeanors of in-school fights, talking back to teachers, and other minor actions that should not have involved police officers.
According to a report from the State of Connecticut Judicial Branch, Waterbury had over 30% of all school-related arrests in Connecticut between August 2021 and June 2022 (Hawk, CTMirror).
This statistic displays the damages this community faces as their education system proves to lead to more arrests than successes. Students stated in a report to CTMirror that they felt that their mental health was not supported nor a priority in their education in and out of the classroom. These issues are more than usually rooted in complex situations that schools would not know about or know how to handle unless the child had the opportunity to talk to a counselor.
Because their needs are not met, these kids lash out, and rightfully so. These kids’ actions pose them as a threat to the education system and therefore deems them worthy of more police authority. But I am left to wonder how these kids are going to know how to handle situations when the decisions always fall in the hands of the police?
In 2021, these circumstances led students in the community to start working with Waterbury’s executive boards, Radical Advocates for Cross-Cultural Education (RACCE), an advocacy group that strives to foster learning environments of areas prone to the school-to-prison pipeline by helping the students to learn, grow, and create friendships.
Both adults and students within this group and Waterbury’s community have been advocating for more student centered support groups that answer both the social and cultural needs that are currently not being addressed. They hope that this direct ask helps students discuss their mental health and well being to a trusted adult. These changes will help change the mentality of both the adults and students in the community to approach situations in a healthy manner instead of calling police backup.
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Children are falling victim to a cycle before even being given the opportunity to change or get help. Education is vital to everyone’s development and without it, how are we supposed to improve the world and this inhumane system today?
These statistics must be changed and you can help.
Solutions
To create a solution to this issue is more complex than one might think. To truly see change, we need time to attack the entire system. It will take effort from teachers, police, governmental officials, and students to help foster an encouraging learning environment. However, with limited time and resources, this approach to the solution is more challenging. This means there needs to be smaller actions that can create big change, such as:
- Confront internal biases
According to The Kirwan Institute, “cultural deficit thinking,” is to blame, as it “harbors negative assumptions about the ability, aspirations, and work ethic of these students — especially poor students of color — based on the assumption that they and their families do not value education.”
These racist perceptions produce stereotypes of students of color that categorize them as disrespectful and disruptive, the type of individual that the school-to-prison pipeline targets. Betsy Johnson, a Montgomery County Middle School teacher stated how “No one wants to put it [their internal biases] on the table, but when we have those courageous conversations, when we deal with structural racism, and when we do look inward at our own biases and differences, we can begin to heal, We can begin to understand. And when we begin to understand it, we can pass it down to our children”(Flannery, neaToday).
Johnson’s approach suggests that everyone has to confront their internal biases to gain more knowledge on how their actions, whether they be well intended or not, contribute to this phenomenon. Future generations will be able to adopt this idea which will help to diminish racism within schools.
Public schools across the country need to encourage these facilitated conversations where students can discuss their internal biases and work towards changing people’s perceptions of someone based on the color of their skin.
2. Integrating Social Work into Teaching
One of the biggest struggles teachers face when dealing with students is knowing how to approach the situation correctly because each student’s needs are different. To help combat this issue, teachers need to know how to effectively discipline students, according to Learning for Justice. With this, these teachers need proper training and support from the school systems that allow them to better assess and react to situations.
A beneficial technique would be to integrate more social work practices into teaching. Social workers’ main priority is to help people overcome or get through their challenges. They study and work with a wide variety of people, ages, and races which help them become adaptable to situations where others may feel timid. Giving teachers the opportunity to access similar training will allow them to react to situations with students more effectively and safely for all parties involved.
3. More Access to Help for Students
The children attacked by the school-to-prison pipeline face issues that already make school more challenging than their peers. Allowing these children access to counselors and even psychologists can give them the opportunity to discuss their problems and find solutions to them, which would in turn, help the entire community.
Helping to solve this issue is not just limited to higher authority, students within these communities can strive to create change as well. Students can advocate for themselves by creating student-led support systems that allow everyone within the community to help one another create the education system they wish to see.
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Thomas Ried, a Scottish philosopher from the 18th century once said in his Intellectual Powers of Man essay that, “A chain is only as strong as its weakest point” defying that regardless of how resilient and strong a chain may be, the weakest points of it represent its maximum strength.
The school-to-prison pipeline can be addressed in the same manner — As communities weaken from the inability to receive education, you can cease the opportunity to change the current system in place.
So, let’s start pushing schools to have those difficult conversations and foster an encouraging learning environment by providing students the opportunity to talk to trusted adults, not police officers.
Works Cited
Beresford S, Loucks N, Raikes B. The health impact on children affected by parental imprisonment. BMJ Paediatr Open. 2020 Feb 10;4(1):e000275. doi: 10.1136/bmjpo-2018–000275. PMID: 32154384; PMCID: PMC7047477.
Flannery, Mary Ellen. “The School-to-Prison Pipeline: Time to Shut it Down.” neaToday, 5 Jan. 2015, www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/school-prison-pipeline-time-shut-it-down. Accessed 9 Nov. 2023.
Justice, Benjamin. “Schools, Prisons, and Pipelines: Fixing the toxic relationship between public education and criminal justice (June 2018): Origins of the pipeline.” Choice360, Association of College & Research Libraries, June 2018, ala-choice.libguides.com/c.php?g=832761&p=5945704. Accessed 9 Nov. 2023.
Martin, Eric. “Hidden Consequences: The Impact of Incarceration on Dependent Children.” National Institute of Justice, 1 Mar. 2017, nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/hidden-consequences-impact-incarceration-dependent-children. Accessed 9 Nov. 2023.
USAFacts Team. “Black students are more likely to be punished than white students.” USA Facts, 23 Mar. 2023, usafacts.org/articles/black-students-more-likely-to-be-punished-than-white-students/. Accessed 9 Nov. 2023.
U.S. Department of Education. “Table 233.30: Number of students suspended and expelled from public elementary and secondary schools, by sex, race/ethnicity, and state: 2017–18.” The National Center for Educational Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, 2018, nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_233.30.asp.
Wrenn, Ty Fernandes, and Jyrel Hawk. “The darkness policing brings to Waterbury schools.” CT Mirror, 2 Mar. 2023, www.google.com/url?q=https://ctmirror.org/2023/03/02/ct-policing-schools-to-prision-pipeline/&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1699584523726355&usg=AOvVaw3fRjHOc9YiK7v6n7yO24. Accessed 9 Nov. 2023.
