According to a new report from The New York Times, placing police officers in schools is more likely to turn children into criminals than protect them from criminals. And, not surprisingly, the risk is even greater for minority students.
Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of students are arrested or given criminal citations at schools each year. A large share are sent to court for relatively minor offenses, with black and Hispanic students and those with disabilities disproportionately affected, according to recent reports from civil rights groups, including the Advancement Project, in Washington, and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, in New York.
Such criminal charges may be most prevalent in Texas, where police officers based in schools write more than 100,000 misdemeanor tickets each year, said Deborah Fowler, the deputy director of Texas Appleseed, a legal advocacy center in Austin. The students seldom get legal aid, she noted, and they may face hundreds of dollars in fines, community service and, in some cases, a lasting record that could affect applications for jobs or the military.
Many students who receive citations at school have little to no legal recourse because their families cannot afford proper representation. Others carry records with them into adulthood because they cannot afford to have charges expunged when they come of age.
As someone who rolls their eyes each time I read another column about young people being lazy, I wish authors of such columns would stop for a moment and consider that the full weight of the system is placed on the shoulders of today’s children from the time they learn to read. Because if it isn’t the misapplication of discipline, it’s administrators altering test scores to enrich themselves.
If they grow up to be apathetic or hopeless, we have only ourselves to blame.