How We Crack Down on Children with the School-to-Prison Pipeline

When a kid gets in trouble at school, we used to send him to the principal’s office. Now, we’re suspending, expelling, or even arresting kids for the smallest misbehaviors. This trend is called the school-to-prison pipeline.

There are pipelines all across the country. Nationwide, as many as 95% of out-of-school suspensions are for non-violent misbehaviors like these. In one town, the cops were called to break up a fight. A water balloon fight.

When you crack down harshly on kids for minor infractions, you’re telling them one thing: “You are a problem.” Suspending or expelling a kid increases his or her chance to drop out of high school, and we know high school dropouts are 3.5 times more likely than high school graduates to be arrested in their lifetime.

Sending a kid to juvenile detention center also makes crime more likely in their future. Kids who are incarcerated are 67% more likely to be back in jail by the age of 25 than similar kids who didn’t go to prison. This zero tolerance policy doesn’t apply to everyone equally. In Wake County, North Carolina, which has one of the largest school-to-prison pipelines, 40% of black kids caught with cell phones were suspended, while only 17% of white kids were suspended for the same thing.

Though [black people] and Latinxs make up only 29% of public school students, they make up 70% of students involved in in-school arrests, or who are referred to law enforcement. Schools even crack down on special needs students, arresting them for the very behaviors that stem from their special needs. 32% of youth in juvenile detention are special needs students.

That’s the school-to-prison pipeline. Another way that the United States incarcerates more people than any other country on earth.