O’Donnell 1

Michael W. O’Donnell

Professor Gutaj

Political Science 1100

26 April 2018

Your headed to Prison vs. I am here to protect you

Imagine for a moment your child is being bullied on the playground at school. This is a

very common occurrence in schools, but how these incidents are being dealt with has changed

greatly from when the parents of these children were in school. In the state of Utah a fight

amongst students as young as kindergarten age could result in handcuffs followed by an

experience very similar to what an adult would experience after being arrested for assault.

In a report, students at the University Of Utah S.J. Quinney College Of Law used

recently released U.S. Department of Education data to examine school discipline rates in the

state Utah. Their findings indicate that Utah children are being disciplined in extraordinarily high

numbers starting as young as elementary age (White).

“The over-use of school discipline in our state is making it harder for schools to graduate our

students and prepare them to be contributing members of our community. If we want our

children to succeed, we are going to have to rethink how and how often we discipline them in

Our schools,” said Professor Emily Chiang (White).

In the report, Fingerpaint to Fingerprints written by Jonelle White, Some alarming facts

are presented.
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Findings in the report include the following:

● Children with disabilities in Utah are twice as likely to be disciplined as their non-

disabled peers.

● Children in elementary schools are being referred to law enforcement, arrested in their

schools, and expelled.

● Children of color, and American Indian children in particular, are one-and-half to three-

and-half times more likely to be disciplined than their white counterparts.

● Male children in Utah are disciplined twice as often as female children.

● School districts across the country—including some here in Utah—have maintained safe

learning environments while reducing the use of school discipline.

“Students who are suspended even once are more likely to drop out of school, and the

Department of Justice reports that nearly 70% of those in prison nationwide dropped out of high

school” (White). Chiang says, there is a better way to make sure our young people stay in school

and that is to join the pioneering districts that are reducing the use of discipline by emphasizing

personal responsibility and providing positive behavioral interventions and supports (White).

Through personal experience of working in a local school district in the state Utah for many

years this report aligned with my thought on there being a police presence in our schools as early

as elementary school, but with the resent catastrophic attacks on societies more precious

resource, our youth. Is this the price we must pay to keep them safe? A recent hot topic for

debate has been the term, School to Prison Pipeline. That debate is shifting to a larger police

presences in schools around the Utah valley in an attempt to secure school campuses.
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Would a larger police presence in schools improve safety? In a report for NPR news,

Cheryl Corley examines, that school based policing is one of the fastest growing areas of law

enforcement. After the event at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., many

people, including the President of the United Sates, Donald Trump said there should be school

resource officers inside every school (Corley).

This has fueled a debate over the role of these officers in schools and the affect they have

on students and school safety. Advocates believe that resource officers can best handle any

threats on campuses. Critics say their presence creates unintended consequences like

suspensions, expulsions and arrests, especially for students of color (Corley).

Corley says, the school in Parkland, Fla. had a school resource officer on duty during the

shooting. The Broward Sheriff said the officer remained outside in a defensive position at the

time of the shooting, a response that was roundly criticized and is part of the debate over whether

having resource officers on campus makes schools safer (Corley).

Marc Schindler, head of the Justice Policy Institute, says while there are conflicting studies

about the effectiveness of police in schools, research shows they bring plenty of unintended

consequences for students. He says that includes higher rate of suspensions, expulsions and

arrests that funnel kids into the criminal justice system. That's especially true, he says, in schools

attended predominantly by students of color (Corley).

In the book, Transforming the School to prison Pipeline, Lessons From the Classroom,

Authors, Debra M. Pane and Tonnette S. Rocco state that the School to Prison Pipeline

represents the widely accepted process of disciplining our students, removing that student from

the classroom as punishment, wondering at that student’s decreasing academic interest and skills
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and watching that student flounder and eventually enter the judicial system (Pane, Rocco). The

pipeline provides a mental image of an existing trajectory that increases in disproportionality

from the first time students of color get in trouble at school (Pane, Rocco). These students are

labeled as troublemakers and potentially dangerous after the first disciplinary incident. They

become prime targets for teachers to refer to the office and for principals to suspend from school.

Suspension gets students who disrupt classrooms out of the way (Pane, Rocco)

Mr. Jenkins, one of the teacher participants from the study presented in this book put it,

“Where do we suspend students to?” He answered the question this way, “Suspension—it’s just

anyplace but here.” Once suspended, the same students too often are expelled, get sent to

juvenile incarceration facilities, get involved in school failure, drop out of school and ultimately

end up in adult prison. (Pane, Rocco).

Those fighting to transform the Cultural Deficit thinking behind the School to Prison Pipeline

epidemic are calling for School Districts to use a portion the money designated for school

resource officers for more psychologists, social workers and other strategies that can combat the

epidemic facing our students (Corley).

One thing both sides of this debate can agree on is that we don’t want young people dying at

school in senseless acts of violence. Could the answer be as Corley says to provide more

resources such as social workers and maybe even stress free rooms where students can go after

an outburst of bad behavior? The answer may lie in a separation of duties, empower

administrators to take care of the tasks their position was intended for, and give teachers the

necessary tools to work with an ever more challenging student population. Allow resource

officers to do the job there position was intended for to provide a safe environment for students.
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With an overcrowded prison system and school shootings on the rise as well as our most

precious resource under attack, it is certain that this heated debate will continue.
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Works Cited

White, Jonelle. “From Fingerpaint to Fingerprints: The School-to-Prison Pipeline in Utah.” S.J.

Quinney College of Law, 22 May 2015, www.law.utah.edu/news/from-fingerpaint-to-

fingerprints-the-school-to-prison-pipeline-in-utah/.

“ACLU of Utah - School-to-Prison Pipeline.” ACLU of Utah - Home,

www.acluutah.org/issues/itemlist/category/72-school-to-prison-pipeline.

Corley, Cheryl. “Do Police Officers In Schools Really Make Them Safer?” NPR, NPR, 8 Mar.

2018, www.npr.org/2018/03/08/591753884/do-police-officers-in-schools-really-make-

them-safer.

Pane, Debra M. and Tonette S. Rocco. Transforming the School-To-Prison Pipeline : Lessons

from the Classroom. Sense Publishers, 2014. Educational Futures: Rethinking Theory

and Practice. EBSCOhost,

libprox1.slcc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nleb

k&AN=706864&site=eds-live.

“Analysis | More than 200,000 Students Have Experienced Gun Violence at School since

Columbine.” The Washington Post, WP Company,

www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/local/school-shootings-

database/?utm_term=.ab2602255d3c.