School-to-Prison Pipeline @ourreality2016-blog - Tumblr Blog

What is the School-to-Prison Pipeline?

The school-to-prison pipeline is a system that pushes students out of school and into the criminal justice system. This system’s policies disproportionately target blacks, low-income and disabled students. In this system student behaviors are criminalized and the students are treated like prisoners, who will eventually end up behind bars. The policies ensure that there is a police presence within the schools, so the officers can physically restrain students if they feel it is necessary. This pipeline begins in the classroom where a teacher is allowed to decide if and when a student should be removed from the classroom. “This recent movement is troubling not only because of the lost instruction time, but empirical studies demonstrate that a suspended or expelled student is more likely to drop out of school, commit a crime, get arrested, and become incarcerated.” (Nance)

How did this pipeline begin?

The school-to-prison pipeline is the result of the 1994 Gun-Free School Act. This act was signed by Bill Clinton that “requires each state receiving federal funds to have a state law in effect requiring local educational agencies to expel, for at least one year, any student who is determined to have brought a weapon to school.” The law is known as the the Zero Tolerance law and mandates that a “one-year expulsion is mandatory, except when a chief administering officer of such local education agency may modify it on a case-by-case basis. In addition, schools are directed to develop policies requiring referral to the criminal justice or juvenile delinquency system for any student who brings a firearm or weapon to school.” (Cerrone 163).

Statistics of the Pipeline:

“Zeiderberg & Schiraldi (2002) suggests that 52% of African American males who do not complete high school have been incarcerated at least once by the age of 30. Moreover, 68% of male prison inmates did not graduate from high school, with 35% of prisoners reporting behavior, academic problems, and academic disengagement as the main reasons for not obtaining their high school diploma (U.S. Department of Justice, 2003). These statistics suggest that issues within the educational system may offer one explanation for understanding the overrepresentation of African American males in the United States justice system.” (Darensbourg, Perez, Blake)

Who Makes Up the Pipeline?

The school-to-prison pipeline affects many students across America. The students who are affected most by the pipeline are students with disabilities and African American students. African American students are 3 times more likely to get arrested than white classmates who commit the same infractions. Students with disabilities make up 32% of youth that are in juvenile detention centers. The schools that these children attend are schools that have metal detectors and police officers upon entry and have very poor funding. These schools also have zero tolerance policies that dictate the punishment students receive, which is based on their classroom behavior. If a teacher feels threatened in the classroom they have the ability to call on an officer stationed within the school to step in and handle the situation. Many officers use force and the students are most likely suspended or even expelled from the school. Research has shown that students who drop out of school are more likely to be incarcerated than those who graduate. (Elias, 2013).

Results of the Pipeline

“Empirical research demonstrates that incarceration produces long-term detrimental effects on youth, including reinforcement of violent attitudes and behaviors; more limited educational, employment, military, and housing opportunities; an increased likelihood of not graduating from high school; mental health concerns; and increased future involvement in the criminal justice system.” (Nance 6).

Scholar Pedro Noguera explains:

“Such schools often operate more like prisons than schools. They are more likely to rely on guards, metal detectors, and surveillance cameras to monitor and control students, restrict access to bathrooms, and attempt to regiment behavior by adopting an assortment of rules and restrictions. . . . In any educational setting where children are regarded as academically deficient, and where the adults view large numbers of them as potentially bad or even dangerous, the fixation on control tends to override all other educational objectives and concerns.” (Nance 12).

How Can We End the Pipeline?

Ending the school-to-prison pipeline would require more money being pushed into the public school system, instead of the prison system. “Juvenile detention costs are extremely high, averaging $148,767 per juvenile per year and ranging as high as $352,663 in the state of New York. This extraordinary expense dwarfs the amount that on average our nation spends to educate one youth per year in our public schools ($10,700 in 2013)” (Nance 7). Even though pushing more money into the school system would benefit the school, it doesn’t mean that this would end the pipeline for good.

Another way to end the pipeline is to give teachers more training and support in the classroom. This is where the students are supposed to learn, but are causing trouble instead. Jerri Katzerman, SPLC deputy legal director, said “Teachers need a lot more support and training for effective discipline, and schools need to use best practices for behavior modification to keep these kids in school where they belong.” (Elias). Teachers have the most power to keep their students out of the school-to-prison pipeline. Teachers know their students better than anyone else in the school system and it is important that each teacher work hard to educate and develop each child instead of pushing them in the prison system.

Urban Prep Breaks Pipeline

For the fourth year in a row, every African American student in the senior class at Urban Prep in Chicago was accepted into a four year college or university. This school is educating African American boys who have troubling lives. “Graduating senior Pravione Winding, 17, endured both the loss of his grandmother to cancer and his father to a fatal shooting during a dice game on the city’s South side in January, the Chicago Tribune reports.” (NBC Chicago). Each student wears khaki pants, a white, a suit jacket and a red tie. Each student that receives an acceptance letter from a college or university receives a red and gold tie. About 85 percent of students that attend Urban Prep’s campuses are from low-income families. These students are usually two grade levels behind where they should be and are all African American males. This school is helping to break the pipeline by educating African American males and making sure that higher education is in their future.

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