Advocates argue that strict disciplinary practices, including police presence, metal detectors and “zero tolerance” policies, disproportionately target students of color, especially black and Latino youth. Although only a third of students in New York City are black, they received over half (53 percent) of the suspensions over the past decade, according to the Dignity in Schools Campaign. Of the students suspended for “profanity,” 51 percent were black, and 57 percent of those suspended for “insubordination” were black. Students with disabilities are also four times as likely to be suspended than their non-disabled peers. (A representative for New York’s Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment.) The creeping criminalization of school spaces targeting already marginalized populations is not limited to the city of New York – as The New York Times reported earlier this year, hundreds of thousands of students around the country face criminal charges, as opposed to school-based disciplinary measures, each year. A civil suit filed earlier this year in Texas alleges that misdemeanor ticketing disproportionately targeted African American students.
“These arrests are resulting from the same Stop and Frisk approach we see in the streets,” says Steven Banks, Attorney in Chief of the Legal Aid Society. “The continued criminalization of normal adolescent behavior in schools is literally feeding the school-to-prison pipeline.” There were 2,500 arrests and 69,000 suspensions in New York City schools last year, and Banks says that the overwhelming majority were for behavior that, in another era, would have been handled by educators rather than police. The presence of school safety officers (SSOs) – agents within the School Safety division of the NYPD – means that a child’s minor misbehavior or perceived disrespect can quickly escalate to lead to an arrest, criminal summons or suspension. “We’ve watched SSOs be disrespectful to students and treat students like they’re criminals,” says Cheyanne Smith, a 16-year-old senior at the Bushwick School for Social Justice in Brooklyn and youth leader at coalition group Make the Road. “School is an environment where people come to learn. Instead of learning, it feels like a prison.”