From 1997 to 2007, Police Presence in Schools Increased 55%

For countless students at public schools all over
the country, expulsions, arrests, and felony charges have gradually
become the norm for slight or even accidental rules infractions.

The Wall Street Journal ran an excellent story
detailing why and how this became the case.

The problem is a familiar one for Reason readers:
Paranoia over school shootings prompted authorities to crack down
on perceived criminal activity—consequently, students are dealt
unbelievably harsh punishments for things that shouldn’t even count
as crimes, like
writing stories about guns or keeping pocketknives for
protection.

A sobering statistic sheds light on the problem: Between 1997
and 2007, the number of police officers patrolling schools
increased by 55 percent, according to The Journal.
Criminologist James Alan Fox notes that schools dove head-first
down a slippery slope:

In recent decades, a new philosophy in law enforcement had been
applied to schools. It was “deal with the small stuff so they won’t
go to the big stuff, and also it sent a strong message of
deterrence,” said James Alan Fox, the Lipman Professor of
criminology at Boston’s 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.”

It’s worth mentioning that violence in schools did decline
dramatically over the last two decades. I’m not certain how much of
that should actually be attributed to police omnipresence, given
that violence declined nationwide, not just in schools. But it
would be reasonable to think some amount of policing had a positive
impact on the extreme end.

That does not justify what’s happening now. Today, schools are
relatively safe environments for kids; there’s no excuse for
treating students like prisoners of war. Students are being
educated in an environment of absolute non-freedom and petty
authoritarianism. Administrators have all the power to ruin their
lives over arbitrary enforcement of stupid rules. And the police
are always on scene to turn an infraction into a criminal
matter:

In Wake County, N.C., Mr. Perry was trying to avoid a
water-balloon fight at school when he was taken into custody,
according to a complaint filed with the Justice and Education
Departments by Legal Aid of North Carolina charging that minority
students are disproportionately disciplined. The Education
Department is investigating discipline in the school system, a
spokesman said.

The teen, his mother and the complaint all agree that
authorities didn’t identify any criminal activity until Mr. Perry
volunteered he had a small pocketknife he had used to carve a tree.
“I didn’t even know I had a knife. I just threw on my pants that
day,” he said.

The knife led to a weapons charge and a suspension. The charge
was dropped, according to his mother, Lynn Perry. The suspension
and time spent at court hearings left him short of the classes he
needed to graduate, Ms. Perry said. Now she worries whether he can
get into college. “It’s been a complete nightmare, and we can’t
afford to get this stuff expunged,” she said.

Not so long ago, it would have been considered perfectly normal,
even appropriate, for a teenage boy to carry his pocketknife with
him. Now
it’s a criminal offense that can completely derail a young
person’s future.

If there is a silverlining to any of this, it’s that absurd zero
tolerance stories are increasingly turning people against
overcriminalization, and a growing coalition of parents, experts,
and lawmakers want to roll back the policies.

I recently discussed zero tolerance policies with Cam and Co on
NRA News. Watch that interview
here.