Zero tolerance policies are out of control.
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A generation ago, schoolchildren caught fighting in the corridors, sassing a teacher or skipping class might have ended up in detention. Today, theres a good chance they will end up in police custody.
Stephen Perry, now 18 years old, was trying to avoid a water balloon fight in 2013 when he was swept up by police at his Wake County, N.C., high school; he revealed he had a small pocketknife and was charged with weapons possession. Rashe France was a 12-year-old seventh-grader when he was arrested in Southaven, Miss., charged with disturbing the peace on school property after a minor hallway altercation.
In Texas, a student got a misdemeanor ticket for wearing too much perfume. In Wisconsin, a teen was charged with theft after sharing the chicken nuggets from a classmates mealthe classmate was on lunch assistance and sharing it meant the teen had violated the law, authorities said. In Florida, a student conducted a science experiment before the authorization of her teacher; when it went awry she received a felony weapons charge.
Over the past 20 years, prompted by changing police tactics and a zero-tolerance attitude toward small crimes, authorities have made more than a quarter of a billion arrests, the Federal Bureau of Investigation estimates. Nearly one out of every three American adults are on file in the FBIs master criminal database.
This arrest wave, in many ways, starts at school. Concern by parents and school officials over drug use and a spate of shootings prompted a rapid buildup of police officers on campus and led to school administrators referring minor infractions to local authorities. That has turned traditional school discipline, memorialized in Hollywood coming-of-age movies such as The Breakfast Club, into something that looks more like the adult criminal-justice system.
At school, talking back or disrupting class can be called disorderly conduct, and a fight can lead to assault and battery charges, said Judith Browne Dianis, executive director of the Advancement Project, a national civil-rights group examining discipline procedures around the country. Some of these encounters with police lead to criminal recordsdifferent laws for juveniles apply across states and municipalities, and some jurisdictions treat children as young as 16 as adults. In some states, for example, a fistfight can mean a suspension while in North Carolina a simple affray, as it is called, can mean adult court for a 16-year-old.
Some jurisdictions are so overwhelmed that they are experimenting with routing schoolchildren into specially designed courts that would keep first-time offenders from being saddled with an arrest record. Others have passed new laws or policies to dial back police involvement in school discipline.
The Justice Department and the Education Department issued guidelines this year on school discipline that warn school-based police officers to not become involved in routine school disciplinary matters, and the Justice Department has filed lawsuits challenging disciplinary procedures around the country.
Were not talking about criminal behavior, said Texas State Sen. John Whitmire, the Democratic chair of the senates Criminal Justice Committee, who helped pass a new law last year that limits how police officers can ticket students. Im talking about school disciplinary issues, throwing an eraser, chewing gum, too much perfume, unbelievable violations that were resulting in misdemeanor charges.
Police, judges and civil-rights organizations all say schools are increasingly the way young people enter the justice system. Data provided by a handful of local courts and the federal government tell a similar story. There are vast gaps in national arrest statistics, and comprehensive statistics on arrests in schools arent available.
According to the U.S. Education Departments Office of Civil Rights, 260,000 students were reported, or referred in the official language, to law enforcement by schools in 2012, the most-recent available data. The survey also said 92,000 students were subject to school-related arrests. There are no earlier comparable numbersthe Education Department requested the data because it couldnt find good national research on the topic.
Police departments first started assigning officers to schools in the 1950s as a way to improve student-police relations. More came in the 1980s to help with drug-education programs, followed by a big push in the 1990s as part of the tough-on-crime laws.
The number of school police officers rose 55% to about 19,000 in the 10 years to 2007, the last year for which numbers were available, according to a 2013 study from the Congressional Research Service.
In recent decades, a new philosophy in law enforcement had been applied to schools. It was deal with the small stuff so they wont go to the big stuff, and also it sent a strong message of deterrence, said James Alan Fox, the Lipman Professor of criminology at Bostons Northeastern University.
The zero-tolerance approach started as part of the 1994 Gun-Free Schools Act, Mr. Fox said, but it expanded to other weapons, then to drug contraband and finally into ordinary violations of school rules, disrespect, skipping. It eventually became an across the board response to discipline.
School shootings, including in Bethel, Alaska, West Paducah, Ky., and Columbine, Colo., created a greater sense of urgency.
The schools crackdown has had its intended effect. Victims surveys compiled by the Education Department show that there is a lower rate of violent crime committed in schools, falling to 52 incidents per 100,000 students in 2012 from 181 incidents per 100,000 in 1992.Supporters say that alone proves the worth of aggressive policing.
We had zero tolerance in the state of Texas because our gang problem was more prominent. You cuss out a teacher, you get a ticket, period, said George Dranowsky, president of the Texas School District Police Chiefs Association. The goal was to show no misbehavior would be tolerated so actions wouldnt escalate, he said. The No. 1 priority was safety, taking care of our kids, he said. Texas new limits on police officers in schools might lead students to think they can get away with more, he said.