Barely two weeks since the shooting in Connecticut, and without surprise, we’re no longer any closer to resolving our differences on assault weapons and why the NRA exists in its current incarnation. But according to the Justice Policy Institute, any strategy to avoid future tragedies of this magnitude, going the route of putting cops or armed guards in schools may cause other problems:

The increase in the presence of law enforcement in schools, especially in the form of school resource officers (SROs) has coincided with increases in referrals to the justice system, especially for minor offenses like disorderly conduct. This is causing lasting harm to youth, as arrests and referrals to the juvenile justice system disrupt the educational process and can lead to suspension, expulsion, or other alienation from school. All of these negative effects set youth on a track to drop out of school and put them at greater risk of becoming involved in the justice system later on, all at tremendous costs for taxpayers as well the youth themselves and their communities.

Yep, they have a report.

educationunderarrest_fullreport.pdf

This article appears in Dec 20-26, 2012.

9 replies on “More Police in Schools Often Means More Students in the Juvenile Justice System”

  1. If more Police lead to more people in the Justice system, let’s just ban Police Everywhere. Boy, I feel safer now…

  2. YAHOO then that means those kids were behaving badly WITHOUT the police there and if NOT at the school fewer problems in the end — peeps this starts at HOME Parents your kids are NOT perfect they need discipline

  3. Yep. That personal accountability BS sure gets in the way. Did this study consider that if the students didn’t disrupt the lives of others that their lives would be less likely to be disrupted? The results of this study exemplifyverything that is wrong with our society.

  4. Prisons for Profit ala Jan Brewer & Joe Arpaio & others, would be booming from the GOP’s insanity if more students were in the juvenile justice system. Wouldn’t they? Of course they would. Good gods and goddesses, save us all from the bigoted class-warfare RepubliKKKan politicians! Now, before some of you GOP-devotees reading this go all partisan whacky with claims of name-calling or whatever, look into how Prescott Bush profited with Prescott Oil when he wheeled and dealed with the Nazis early last century. The crops of GOP politicians have become increasingly worse since Reagan with NoOtherQuest started what has pooled into the Trickle Down Economics cesspool. Obstructionist RepubliKKKans lately are perpetuating that treasonous b.s. worse than ever since the last Democratic primary. Enough is enough. Fire the Republicans.

    With the upcoming 2014 Elections, we must get out and vote even more BLUE so that we Democrats can eliminate the GWB-and-Cheney-endorsed tax-evasion for the wealthiest among us, investing in our public teachers and their ability of really teaching our youth again by providing them with the quality tools they need instead of having them be underpaid babysitters, investing in our infrastructure by repairing and/or replacing quality roads and bridges and factories and other structures, implementing incentives for bringing back many of the Republican-endorsed loopholes for outsourcing businesses that were taken overseas to avoid payroll and other USA-taxes and for exploiting cheap labor with little if any oversight for workers’ rights, safety concerns and consumers’ rights, and bring back the assault weapons ban since hunting for deer to keep down the deer population and other sportsmanship with hunting rifles or self-protection with a pistol absolutely positively does NOT call for military-grade weaponry of any kind.

    Take care and hang in there, everyone.

    Your friend,

    Warren

    Warren G. Richards
    Kayenta, Mesa, and Tucson AZ

  5. Sure let’s ruin some kid’s life because some cop lacks patience, or is having a bad day. Once your in the system, you never get out. Ever. I knew a kid once. A week after his 18th birthday, he got into an argument with his football coach. Nothing physical. No pushing, no shoving, nothing. He was arrested and charged with a felony. Once convicted, he was done. For him, it’s over before it even begins.

    For the private sector, it’s an obviously lucrative business. For the state, I suspect it’s kind of a tag and release program – a way of tracking undesirables (the definition of which can be arbitrary). They get your fingerprints, DNA, and that pesky right to vote, which they hold for ransom until you can afford to buy it back.

    It’s only the land of the free, if you can afford it.

  6. It would be interesting to learn what the charter schools in the Old Pueblo and elsewhere in USA think of arming their principals, teachers, aides, whatevers. Hiring armed guards like some of the convenience stores? It all being the “free-market” and all.

    hmmm…

  7. The raison d’etre to bear arms via the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution was incorporated as a part of the Constitution by the Founding Fathers of this Country because they well understood that Citizens NOT governments are the protectors and guarantors of our Democracy.

    “This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.” (Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address (4 March 1861))

    We are using this Constitutional Right NOT to preserve our Democracy but to justify the ownership of guns to “protect” ourselves from each other, and, to settle personal scores. ..simply to kill each other.

    In his first Annual Address to Congress on January 8, 1790, President Washington said that Education was “the security of a free Constitution”…that, through Education a free people would know and value “their own rights”…..and would be able “to discriminate the spirit of liberty from that of licentiousness”.
    We are, as a Society, in the mists of an Internal Societal Rot. The products of our Public Educational System, generally, have not the slightest idea of the Rights and Responsibilities of a Citizen in a Democracy. This must change.

  9. Let me tell you that the majority of you are dismissing the fact that some of these kids have mental health issues and emotional disturbances that school administrators and the police DO NOT know how to deal with. Instead of prevention, they send them to juvenile justice, where more problems occur. Schools have the ability to identify any issues if they put forth the effort. Not once does a school administrator or teacher make an attempt to see what the child’s home environment is like, whether or not the child is a victim of sexual and physical abuse in his or her home, whether or not he or she has food to eat, etc. I am a clinician, who does intensive in-home therapy, and I see these things happening everyday. WAKE UP!!! Help children be successful instead of being another number or statistic within the auspices of the juvenile justice system!!!

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