#school to prison pipeline

[reasonsforhope]

"Research on a police diversion program implemented in 2014 shows a striking 91% reduction in in-school arrests over less than 10 years.

Across the United States, arrest rates for young people under age 18 have been declining for decades. However, the proportion of youth arrests associated with school incidents has increased.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, K–12 schools referred nearly 230,000 students to law enforcement during the school year that began in 2017. These referrals and the 54,321 reported school-based arrests that same year were mostly for minor misbehavior like marijuana possession, as opposed to more serious offenses like bringing a gun to school.

School-based arrests are one part of the school-to-prison pipeline, through which students—especially Black and Latine students and those with disabilities—are pushed out of their schools and into the legal system.

Getting caught up in the legal system has been linked to negative health, social, and academic outcomes, as well as increased risk for future arrest.

Given these negative consequences, public agencies in states like Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania have looked for ways to arrest fewer young people in schools. Philadelphia, in particular, has pioneered a successful effort to divert youth from the legal system.

Philadelphia Police School Diversion Program

In Philadelphia, police department leaders recognized that the city’s school district was its largest source of referrals for youth arrests. To address this issue, then–Deputy Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel developed and implemented a school-based, pre-arrest diversion initiative in partnership with the school district and the city’s department of human services. The program is called the Philadelphia Police School Diversion Program, and it officially launched in May 2014.

Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker named Bethel as her new police commissioner on Nov. 22, 2023.

Since the diversion program began, when police are called to schools in the city for offenses like marijuana possession or disorderly conduct, they cannot arrest the student involved if that student has no pending court case or history of adjudication. In juvenile court, an adjudication is similar to a conviction in criminal court.

Instead of being arrested, the diverted student remains in school, and school personnel decide how to respond to their behavior. For example, they might speak with the student, schedule a meeting with a parent, or suspend the student.

A social worker from the city also contacts the student’s family to arrange a home visit, where they assess youth and family needs. Then, the social worker makes referrals to no-cost community-based services. The student and their family choose whether to attend.

Our team—the Juvenile Justice Research and Reform Lab at Drexel University—evaluated the effectiveness of the diversion program as independent researchers not affiliated with the police department or school district. We published four research articles describing various ways the diversion program affected students, schools, and costs to the city.

Arrests Dropped

In our evaluation of the diversion program’s first five years, we reported that the annual number of school-based arrests in Philadelphia decreased by 84%: from nearly 1,600 in the school year beginning in 2013 to just 251 arrests in the school year beginning in 2018.

Since then, school district data indicates the annual number of school-based arrests in Philadelphia has continued to decline—dropping to just 147 arrests in the school year that began in 2022. That’s a 91% reduction from the year before the program started.

We also investigated the number of serious behavioral incidents recorded in the school district in the program’s first five years. Those fell as well, suggesting that the diversion program effectively reduced school-based arrests without compromising school safety.

Additionally, data showed that city social workers successfully contacted the families of 74% of students diverted through the program during its first five years. Nearly 90% of these families accepted at least one referral to community-based programming, which includes services like academic support, job skill development, and behavioral health counseling...

Long-Term Outcomes

To evaluate a longer follow-up period, we compared the 427 students diverted in the program’s first year to the group of 531 students arrested before the program began. Results showed arrested students were significantly more likely to be arrested again in the following five years...

Finally, a cost-benefit analysis revealed that the program saves taxpayers millions of dollars.

Based on its success in Philadelphia, several other cities and counties across Pennsylvania have begun replicating the Police School Diversion Program. These efforts could further contribute to a nationwide movement to safely keep kids in their communities and out of the legal system."

-via Yes! Magazine, December 5, 2023

[long-sleeved-sandwich]

something happened recently in my small town that i think is a microcosm of white “liberalism”. it’s not a secret that since a new juvenile detention center was built a few years ago, the high and middle schools have been targeting young black men, particularly young black men with special needs/mental illness/disabilities to fill it with. the school administrators and our local judge, a corrupt, nasty, crooked white woman, are rumoured to be making a ton of money as a part of this conspiracy. my grandmother, an advocate for special needs children, and my dad and aunt(teachers), have watched the school to prison pipeline with their own eyes, and my grandmother and several others in town have been trying to build a case for years against the judge and other corrupt individuals. recently however, an old white widow who has been a teacher at the high school for almost 50 years, and beloved by all, was fired for saying the n-word. she heard some students saying it and took a few minutes to educate them on why it’s racist to say it, but in doing so, she said it several times. some students videoed her and cut it up to make it seem like she was the racist one. the school promptly fired her. i think that’s a perfect representation of white “liberalism”. actively participating in systemic racism but robbing an old widow of her livelihood to maintain the superficial image of being politically correct.

[asaconservative]

As a conservative, I demand an end to schools indoctrinating children. And by that I mean:

I demand an end to corporal punishment in schools.

I demand an end to forcing children to stand for or recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

I demand an end to teaching children to respect authority.

I demand an end to the School To Prison Pipeline.

[metalheadsforblacklivesmatter]

For context. The guy in the first clip got pretty popular on tiktok for teaching himself how to read. He doesn't give enough context of what systems in place caused him to be unable to read (if it's no cold left behind or underfunding of schools in predominantly black neighborhoods).

But I do think that his story is a good example of how the modern school system leaves children behind.

-fae

[reverseracism]

[odinsblog]

How Schools Punish Black Kids

When it comes to who gets punished and removed from American classrooms, the US doesn’t treat all students equally. Black students get suspended and expelled far more frequently than their white classmates, and often for the same or similar offenses. And the weeks of school that Black kids miss each year can kick off a chain reaction that changes a child’s future. (full video here)

[sunnshineyelllo]

Pulling up my big mama stockings and preparing to go to war this week 🪖🧦

[invincible-selfxmade-punk]

Today was our last STAAR test.

The air conditioner has been broken my room since Friday and it's pretty clear they are not going to fix it since it is only a week until school is out.

It has been about 96 degrees and is about 87 in my room.

It is only Tuesday but I am so exhausted it feels like Friday. I don't want to go in tomorrow, or the next day, or the next. I just want to sleep.

Next week on top of not having air conditioning, Tuesday is field day which means we will be outside for about 4 hours.

At the end of that day I finally have my doctor's appointment to hopefully get my anxiety meds adjusted to where they might actually work.

However I will probably be an absolute wreck from the stress of field day (AGORAPHOBIA!!) and returning to an overly hot room.

The longer I work at the school, the more I am convinced that some for-profit prison has already broken ground and is paying off our Administration not to discipline our kids in any way, shape or form, so that in a few years' time they will have more than enough to fill all those prison beds.

Just a thought in an attempt to make sense of why no one seems to give a s*** that these kids have no respect for us and run over us on a daily basis.

You can also say it the right wing conspiracy to kill our spirit and make us quit teaching so that the people that finally take our place are much more stupider and docile than us and can be controlled easier, churning out ignorant sheep as fodder for the prison and military.

Do I sound bitter?

[o-the-mts]

This is so Orwellian:

Among the news stories that have shadowed these bright, late-summer days is a recent report from Houston, where the state of Texas has announced its plan to close public school libraries in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. The former library spaces will now be used as so-called “multipurpose” rooms, which actually seem to have one single purpose: punishing “disruptive” students by making them watch, on computer screens, what’s happening back in their classrooms.

[phoenixyfriend]

On your thread about anakin facing actual consequences are you implying the genocide of an entire tribe of indigenous people is a minor crime??? what counts as a major crime?

You are definitely taking words out of context.

The "minor crime to government slave" thing is a shorthand for how the United States justice system functions. There is a focus on punishment over rehabilitation, which leads to such events as "faces six months in prison for transporting alcohol across state lines without a license (taking a case of beer to visit grandpa)."

From a capitalist perspective, this is for cheap slave labor of black and brown individuals from poor backgrounds, who cannot afford to legally pursue their freedom.

However, from a public perspective, this is achieved by pushing a focus on prison as a consequence to crime. If you steal something, you do jail time. If you get in a bar fight, you do jail time. If you jaywalk, you do jail time.

And if you do jail time, you are more likely to be a repeat offender, whether because of 'bad influences' (e.g. teenager who went in for shoplifting meets gang members and starts dealing) or because a prison record makes it harder to get a job, and thus make ends meet, resulting in more people turning to crime just to make rent.

"Consequence" is "punishment," even if the crime was victimless and, very often, would have been unpunished for a white person.

Many corporations benefit from this mindset. Plenty of studies (I'm not in the mood to go find links, they should be easy to look up) show that rehabilitation and community service are more effective at lowering recidivism and crime rates in general than prison time.

But because society has pushed a narrative of punishing people who commit a crime, no matter how small, people still prefer jail time, which really works out for corporations.

The relevance it has to the Anakin post is that the general attitude of fans who 'ship' Anakin/Consequences is one that shows that same focus on punishment instead of reparations and rehabilitation.

[metalheadsforblacklivesmatter]

If you struggle with reading, follow this guy on tiktok. So many people relate to his story and he's been so helpful in motivating his followers to join the learning to read journey with him.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRbXDrby/

But I mostly share this video because he talks about systemic racism and how it leads to Black and Brown adults to be undereducated.

Because there's this racist idea that Black people especially are less intelligent, and this failure to provide an adequate education is making it a thousand times worse.

-fae

[quotesfromall]

Another explanation for the racial discipline gap is that students from certain racial and ethnic groups misbehave or contribute to a lack of safety in schools more than students from other racial and ethnic groups. Studies using both measures of student self- report and extant school disciplinary records have examined this premise and have generally failed to find evidence of racial differences in student behavior

Anne Gregory, The Achievement Gap and the Discipline Gap