Dive Brief:
- Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo told Time Warner Cable News last week that he believes the placement of police in schools has resulted in higher drop out rates, consequently feeding the school-to-prison pipeline.
- Since the 1990s, when the Department of Justice began giving out COPS grants, there has been an increase of school resource officers (SROs) on campuses. While they were initially meant to ensure safety, many schools have seen them take on disciplinary roles for minor offenses that would traditionally be handled by a teacher or principal.
- Education advocates are concerned that this trend, which is punitive rather than restorative and reportedly sees many minor infractions treated as Class C misdemeanors, pushes students out of schools and into the criminal justice system. Data already points to the fact that students who are suspended repetitively are less likely to graduate from high school.
Dive Insight:
Acevedo's argument is that adolescent behavior shouldn't be criminalized. In the 2013-14 school year, SROs in the city were barred from handing out disciplinary tickets and the number of students written up for truancy went down by almost a quarter. Acevedo also told the Huffington Post that the district had a "banner year in terms of the graduation."
Probably the most notable example of what happens when a district-relationship with SROs goes awry is in the Birmingham City Schools District in Alabama, where the Southern Poverty Law Center is currently suing six SROs and the city police chief for consistent use of pepper spray on students. The complaint documents instances that often escalated because of the presence of an SRO. A big issue with SROs is that they are often placed in schools without specific school-curated training and clear goals. A 2005 assessment by the Department of Justice found that "when programs fail to do this, problems are often rampant at the beginning of the program—and often persist for months and even years."