Since the Columbine incident, many schools now have policemen on duty every day. And in some of these schools the policeman has become the school disciplinarian; teachers or principals seem to have dropped out of the picture. In these schools the typical school incidents have been referred to the courts. Kids as young as 4 have been referred to the courts.
If you look at the rate of referrals to law enforcement agencies by the school policemen for one year, I think you'll be surprised. The national rate was six
students for every 1,000 pupils, with 19 states surpassing that rate.
Virginia led the list with 16 referrals for every 1,000 students, followed
by Delaware with almost 15; Florida with more than 12.
Massachusetts, Ohio, Nevada and Washington, D.C., reported the
lowest rates of referrals, at two or fewer students per 1,000. These incidents can be as trivial as kicking a trash can, clenching a fist at a school cop who intervened in a school fight, a four-year old throwing blocks and kicking at teachers.
Many of the kids who wound up in court were special-needs kids — kids with physical or learning disabilities.
In most states, black and Latino kids were referred in percentages that were disproportionate to their enrollment numbers.
1 comment:
My wife works at an inner city school in new haven and it's a mix of New Police and private security. The entail issue with school policing was lack of training for the police. Students were getting arrested for minor offenses verse the traditional in school suspension hence ruining the students future prospects.
As with community policing, school police are now specially trained to work within the school system verse the justice system.
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