To Ensure School Safety, We Must End the School-to-Prison Pipeline
Recent mass shootings have thrust school safety to the forefront of our national discourse, yet we must be careful about how we respond to these pressing tragedies.
Many have called for increased police presence in our country’s schools, but this will not necessarily make our schools and children safer. Instead, it has the potential to further entrench the school-to-prison pipeline and jeopardize the future thousands of our children. To ensure schools are truly safe, we must address our overreliance on school-based policing.
School should be a safe place where our kids learn and grow — not catch a criminal record.
Yet unfortunately, too many of our schools serve as pipelines into the criminal justice system, particularly for low-income students and students of color.
One significant contributing factor to the school-to-prison pipeline is our overreliance on policing in schools. School Resource Officers (SROs), or police permanently stationed in schools, too often operate with little oversight or meaningful training, disrupting children’s learning environments, jeopardizing their civil rights, and ultimately leaving them at risk of being swept into the criminal justice system. Even worse, when SROs have negative interactions with students, trust between young people and law enforcement is undermined, leading to generational tension between the police and the communities they are supposed to serve.
Take Chicago, for example, which is home to one of our country’s largest public school systems. As of April 2016, 248 police officers were assigned to 75 primary and secondary schools within the Chicago Public Schools. These officers are not required to have any specialized training other than a working knowledge of the school district’s code of conduct. As our recent report, Handcuffs in Hallways: The State of Policing in Chicago Public Schools, shows, SROs too often criminalize mental health needs or disruptive behavior.
Criminal records can strip bright futures away from our kids.
Even at a young age, contact with the criminal justice system can have negative consequences that follow children for their entire life, by creating barriers to stable housing, employment, and education, among others.
It’s time to end the school-to-prison pipeline.
If police officers are to be stationed in school, they should at least be trained. In Illinois, that’s why we’re advancing the Safe Students, Trained Officers Bill — or SB 2925 . Recently passed by both chambers with unanimous support, this legislation would require all SROs throughout the State of Illinois to undergo formal training. The curriculum for this training will be developed in consultation with organizations with experience or expertise in adolescent developmental issues, youth mental health treatment, educational administrative issues, and juvenile advocacy — so that SROs are equipped to effectively engage with and meet the needs of our children.
If signed into law by Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner, the Safe Students, Trained Officers Bill would be a crucial step towards disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline in Illinois — but it wouldn’t be the last one. Law enforcement officers shouldn’t be permanently assigned to schools in the first place, and they should only be contacted when there is a real and immediate threat to a student, teacher, or public safety. Moreover, we must also consider alternative strategies to school-based policing, including investing in mental health and special education services, afterschool programs, and restorative justice practices.
All children deserve a safe place to learn.
Instead of incarcerating our children, we should ensure that they have access to the services they need to thrive. Instead of criminalizing adolescent behavior, we should be correcting it with restorative justice practices. Instead of locking children behind bars, we should be opening doors of opportunity for them.
It’s time we made that a reality — in Illinois and throughout the entire country.
Trevor Brown contributed to this blog post.
*Editor’s note: This post is part of an ongoing series on our 2018 legislative agenda. Read more about how we’re advancing justice and opportunity in the states here.
