What Might Schools Be Like When the School-to-Prison Pipeline Ruptures?
In Spring 2023, students in WWU’s ENVS 499D: Readings in Environmental Justice are learning about the intersections between environmental justice and incarceration. This post reflects some of the group’s learning and discussion
By Logan Ruch, Bianca C., & Casper Fields
What is the School-to-Prison Pipeline Exactly?
The school-to-prison pipeline came about in the 1990s when zero-tolerance policies in schools used suspension and expulsion to punish students for even nonviolent behaviors like violating dress codes or being disruptive in the classroom. Subjective violations like these lead to more students, especially children of color, being held back from access to education and support that focuses on growth rather than punishment. The school-to-prison pipeline also includes the placement of more School Resource Officers (SROs) in schools. SRO placement brings the criminal justice system directly into schools as a form of disciplinary action. More SROs in a school often lead to more arrests, but that does not always indicate that the school has a higher crime rate. In the journal article Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline: A Trauma-Informed, Critical Race Perspective on School Discipline, author Stacey Dutil uses the lens of critical race theory to understand the disproportionate rate of children of color introduced into the criminal justice system through schools. The school-to-prison pipeline and punishment in schools lead to students losing key opportunities to develop social and emotional skills in schools and increase the likelihood of more severe offenses in the future after constant criminalizing of students of color. Vox’s introductory video on the school-to-prison pipeline provides a concise description of the concept and visualizes the injustices with statistics on its impacts and disparities dating as early as preschool.
The Widespread School-to-Prison Pipeline Network
The school-to-prison pipeline isn’t a small issue, it’s widespread across schools. After asking the ENVS 499 class, out of the 25 students, 24 said they had an SRO in their high school, and a handful said they also had an SRO in middle school. This is not far from the norm, since 2018, 58% of schools have SROs, and 78% of high schools across the country have SROs roaming the halls (Paterson 2022). The school-to-prison pipeline still behaves as US incarceration rates do, with black students only comprising 15% of the United State’s public school students, but make up 33% of all arrests made by SROs (Paterson 2022). This keeps students out of school when learning should be happening. These SROs in force things like zero tolerance policies, which lets schools criminalize small infractions, like talking back, as if a student had gotten into a physical altercation with another student, according to NEA today’s article SROs in schools. If arrests are increasing when the SROs are present, and the goal is to reduce infractionable behavior, maybe we should rethink how we treat behavior in students
Hopes for a Future Without the Pipeline
We wanted to take an approach from Intersectional Environmentalist’s idea of Radical Imagination and use it to show how schools can assist children while not perpetuating the school-to-prison pipeline.
Imagine being a troubled school child. Frequently, you are being disciplined by authority figures for a whole smattering of issues, but it doesn’t have it be this way. Instead of being suspended, expelled, put in detention, or verbally reprimanded, a school counselor can ask, “what’s going on?” What is at the root of this problem, instead of dealing with its symptoms. Maybe there’s not much food at home right now, maybe they have a hard time focusing and sitting still, or maybe the family they are a part of is in troubled times. These issues are out of the child’s control, and assisting in school with an ethic of care that promotes empathy that utilizes talking instead of punishment can go a long way to improving the experience children have at school. Moving away from punishment could encourage self-growth and could make more children feel safe at school. This would likely increase their enjoyment of learning when they are in a safe space where their issues are heard, met, and dealt with in a manner that promotes care rather than punishment. The school-to-prison pipeline is one ineffective option for how to work with children in schools, more imagination offers more options for a just future.
Resources/Links
darbyk • May 30, 2023