On November 17, 2008, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released a study which has found a bit of ink for the racial disparity aspect: minority students are more likely than white students to be arrested at school for committing similar crimes. According to the report: “In 2006-07, African American and Hispanic students together accounted for 69 percent of the student population in East Hartford, but experienced 85 percent of school-based arrests. Likewise, the same year, in West Hartford, African American and Hispanic students accounted for 24 percent of the population, but experienced 63 percent of arrests” (25). To be more specific, “African American students involved in physical altercations at school in West Hartford were twice as likely to be arrested as similarly situated white students” (26) and “in East Hartford, both African American and Hispanic students involved in disciplinary incidents involving drugs, alcohol, or tobacco were ten times more likely to be arrested than were similarly situated white students” (26). The report finds that “in West Hartford, in 2005-06, for every 1000 Hispanic students in the student population, there were 30 arrests of Hispanic students, and for every 1000 African American students, there were 43 arrests of African American students. By contrast, for every 1000 white students, there were only 5 arrests” (37). If this were not infuriating enough, the ACLU writes that the disparities with school-based arrests also:
exemplify a broader trend, observed in other school districts, toward overpunishing students of color for offenses whose definition is largely subjective. No clear objective definition exists for the terms “fight,” “physical aggression,” or “physical altercation,” so the determination that a student has engaged in such conduct may require educators to exercise considerable discretion. But research suggests that educators view certain behaviors more harshly when observed in students of color than when observed in white students (e.g., a white student who talks back is cited for “insubordination,” while an African American student engaging in the same conduct is found to have engaged in “threatening.”) (41)
This part of the report is both devastating and unsurprisingly; though I do not wish to imply that this is not serious, there is more to this report which is being overlooked.
To continue with the theme of disparities, the ACLU finds that students with disabilities are “disproportionately impacted” by school-based arrests. They report:
SDE [Connecticut’s State Department of Education] itself has acknowledged that in 2004-05, nearly 12 percent of special education students statewide were suspended or expelled, while for general education students, the figure was just under 6 percent. Indeed, the same year, special education students received out-of-school suspensions at a higher rate than general education students in all three of the Hartford-area school districts we studied.
Unfortunately, as explained above, SDE declined to provide the ACLU with any information about how school-based arrest practices are affecting students with disabilities. Thus, although experience suggests it is likely that students with disabilities are arrested at school at a rate out of proportion to their representation in the overall student population, it is impossible to know for sure. (45)
Hartford school superintendent Steven J. Adamowski has not yet commented about this report on his blog.
From my prior work in various area public schools, and my current work with college students (many of whom are graduates/survivors of the region’s public schools), I am not shocked by the news that students with disabilities and students of color experience arrest on school grounds at a disproportionate rate. I have witnessed discrepancies in disciplinary action in the public schools (not arrests, but lesser punishments) and have heard the stories of college students who feel they were singled out when in k-12 schools.
While reading the report, I had to continuously remind myself of what SRO stands for. See, while growing up, we did not have these. During my work in the public schools, SROs were just beginning to pop up. Perhaps it’s disrespectful, but I’d always regarded them the same way I regarded mall cops–generally ineffective, a bit of a joke, and/or an unnecessary presence. An SRO is a School Resource Officer. It seems that these were implemented in many school systems when metal detectors and lock downs were also all the rage. The report explains that “[f]rom the late 1990s onward, an increasing number of Connecticut communities have made police officers a permanent presence in their schools by establishing SRO programs” (17). During my employment in the public schools, there was only one occasion when I felt assistance from an SRO was necessary, and it was not an arrest situation. In general, I believe that the classroom instructor can and should wield the authority to maintain control in the room. Besides the ability to escalate tension, calling on an officer (in my opinion) reduces the teacher’s authority and effectiveness. Moreover, the report finds that SROs do not always have the right kind of training: “counseling, mentoring, basic classroom teaching, child and adolescent psychology, cultural competence, applicable legal principles, problem-solving, and mediation, just to name a few” (20). I think it needs to be pointed out that children and adolescents are not adults, and that different strategies must be used to reach them. The ACLU writes:
Hartford does not impose any special training requirements on its SROs, over and above those imposed on regular police officers. Nor does Hartford’s Police Academy provide specialized SRO training, though such training is available via the Police Officer Standards & Training Council (“POST”) in Meriden. West Hartford, likewise, does not impose a special training requirement on SROs. (21)
While these disparities are astounding, we have to expect that everyone who is in contact with schoolchildren will receive adequate training so that they can avoid potential errors in judgment which can damage youth in the long run.
As for long term complications, the report cites: “psychological and emotional trauma; educational disruption and increased risk of dropping out; diminished employment prospects; and of course the threat of incarceration, with its concomitant emotional and physical dangers” (38). Our society is obsessed with safety in a myriad of ways (vehicle safety standards, Amber Alerts, and lead-based paint on toys), yet when it comes to a segment of our youth, there is little regard for their safety. Furthermore,
“arresting students at school actually increases the likelihood that those students will commit future offenses, as well as increasing the likelihood that they will be arrested and incarcerated as adults. Thus, for some students, being arrested at school means being thrust directly into the school-to-prison pipeline” (38).
Even more disturbing about all this is that these are not just teenagers being arrested. Primary school children are being arrested:
Hartford, the largest of the three districts, [is] where 86 primary-grade students were arrested during the 2005-06 and 2006-07 school years. Hartford’s absolute arrest rate also nearly doubled in 2006-07. But the highest per capita arrest rate for primary-grade students, over two years, was in East Hartford, where among a student population only about a third the size of Hartford’s, 58 primary-grade students were arrested. […] One wonders: What kind of threat did a Hispanic fifth grader in East Hartford make, during the 2006-07 school year, that required school officials to have him arrested? What could possibly have justified the arrest of two Hispanic fourth graders in West Hartford, in 2005-06, for “insubordination”? Or the arrest of two African American second graders in Hartford, the following year, one of whom was accused only of theft? Even more startling is the case of the African American first grader in Hartford who was arrested in 2006-07 for “leaving school grounds.” And perhaps most troubling of all: the decision to impose the sanction of arrest, for battery, during the 2006-07 school year, on a Hispanic kindergartner. (44-46)
What the report tells me more than the amount of discrimination is that children are considered capable of criminal behavior. They are arrestable. On one hand, they are determined unable to legally make advanced decisions (voting, driving, working, renting a car, etc.) due to mental, emotional, and biological development; they are ridiculously and simultaneously deemed capable of making advanced decisions which allow them to be arrested. They can be sanctioned, but they cannot be trusted to make choices for themselves. Worse, what this report tells us is that our (adult) attitudes toward children have become excessively rigid in certain aspects. Not long after SROs began appearing in schools, No Child Left Behind–an unforgiving product-obsessed mess–was instituted. Now, we have an obscene number of children being arrested. There is less focus on education and more on obedience and punishment. One wonders what the purpose of the public school is today.