"As I walked down the hall, one of the police officers employed in the school noticed I did not have my identification badge with me. Before I could explain why I did not have my badge, I was escorted to the office and suspended for an entire week. … Walking to the bus stop, a different police officer pulled me over and demanded to know why I was not in school. As I tried to explain, I was thrown into the back of the police car."
—Michael Reynolds, 17, testifying before the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing
For not having an identification badge, Michael—a high school student in Detroit, Michigan—faced two instances of police involvement in one day and a lengthy suspension. His experience is alarming, but not unusual. It reflects the widespread use of zero-tolerance disciplinary practices—practices more likely to be found in schools with higher percentages of students of color—that can push students out of classrooms and into the juvenile justice system. This phenomenon, known as the school-to-prison pipeline, hinges on federal, state and local education and public safety policies that include school-based policing and the presence of school resource officers (SROs).
Everyone wants schools to be safe, and to many stakeholders and policymakers having police on site seems like a logical step toward reducing building-level crime or preventing a school shooting. But while the intention may be to provide a firm-but-kind role model to watch over the school, officers in schools frequently wind up enforcing zero-tolerance policies related to behaviors like cell phone use, being out of uniform or—as in Michael’s case—not carrying an identification badge.
The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) reports 260,000 students were referred to law enforcement and 92,000 were subjected to school-based arrests during the 2011–12 school year. While there is no national data on the nature of the offenses in these cases, community-level reports out of Colorado, Ohio and New York indicate that the presence of police directly resulted in larger numbers of arrests for disorderly conduct. One study out of the southeastern United States places the number of such arrests at five times higher than at schools without SROs.
Research also shows that in addition to increasing school-based referrals, ticketing and arrests, policing students for minor disciplinary infractions contributes to feelings of alienation and disengagement, distrust of authority and lower educational outcomes. And these collateral consequences are not experienced equitably. The DOE notes that, across all school settings, students of color and students with disabilities are among the most likely to be policed and referred to the juvenile and criminal justice systems. The Advancement Project has found that the same is true for gender non-conforming students and LGBT youth.
The takeaway? Experts and advocates who study school climate and the school-to-prison pipeline are raising serious equity and safety questions about school-based policing programs that put officers in the role of disciplinarian rather than protector.
Safety Enforcers or Disciplinarians?
SRO programming grew rapidly toward the end of the 1990s. Despite the fact that reported incidents of violence and crime in school were in decline at the time, the National Center for Education Statistics’ Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2013 report states that the percentage of students age 12 to 18 reporting the presence of security guards and/or police officers in their school increased from 54 percent in 1999 to 70 percent in 2003.
Recent calls for more SRO programs came after the Sandy Hook tragedy, according to Dignity in Schools Campaign (DSC) Communications Coordinator Nancy Trevino. The DSC—a coalition of local grassroots and advocacy groups in 24 states—is at the forefront of efforts to find local and national alternatives to zero-tolerance policies and school-based policing.
“After the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012, we saw a big increase … of representatives in different states wanting to increase police in schools to make schools safer,” Trevino says. “Time and time again, members of our coalition have stated that it’s not the best response [for] creating safer school climates.”
Sarah Camiscoli, an educator at a 6–12 public school in the Bronx, serves on the organizing council of Teachers Unite, a DSC member organization made up of public school educators in New York City focused on reforming inequitable discipline practices. “What we’ve seen is that when … school shootings happen, they happen predominantly in communities that are more affluent,” she says. “It’s not in schools that have a high demographic of young people of color. But when these conversations start, the first schools that they want to increase security in or put these officers in are low-income communities where the demographic [is] people of color.”
Camiscoli is right. According to the Justice Policy Institute’s Education Under Arrest report, children of color are more likely to attend schools with SRO programs. Other factors that increase student-SRO interaction include attending a large school (1,000+ students) or attending a school in an urban or high-poverty area. A policy report by the Congressional Research Service states that schools with SRO programs are more likely to have patrolled grounds and security inspections. While not a universal experience, a distinct pattern emerges: Youth who attend schools with SROs are more likely to be black or Latino, to be poor, to experience highly restrictive and monitored learning environments and to be arrested for minor infractions.
When she asked students (organizers for the advocacy group IntegrateNYC4me) how it felt to attend a school that was patrolled by police, Camiscoli received answers like “They’re always looking at us,” “Just because we are in a school with lots of black and Latino students doesn’t mean we need police” and “Police can help us, but cops being around too much feels like something is wrong.” And on the subject of passing through a metal detector: “It’s very uncomfortable to go through that experience.”
Arrests and school climate aren’t the only concerns. The Southern Poverty Law Center found that SROs in the Birmingham City Schools district in Alabama used a pepper spray/tear gas combination to discipline hundreds of mostly African-American high school students from 2006 to 2011. When bystanders are included, the number of students affected exceeds 1,000.
