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Stopping the School to Jail Pipeline in California

Barry-A.-Krisberg.gif By Barry A. Krisberg
President
National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD)

Recent media accounts have reported on the rising rates of school suspensions in California. Clearly, the problem is statewide, but is worse in neighborhoods already stressed by high rates of violence and poverty. We seem to be staring directly down the “school to jail pipeline”—meaning that youth that have behavior issues walk a fine line between school and the corrections system. Before we fall back on the hackneyed and disproven solution of more police (especially officers untrained to handle teens) or more punitive responses, we owe it to our youth to think carefully.

We have a right to ask a great deal of our schools; they must be safe, respond to the current realities of the families they serve, and strive for high student achievement. However, they need the tools and resources to do all we ask of them. School budgets are in dire straits. We have cut everything from music, sports, and after-school programs, to counselors and mental health services. Teachers lack training in handling difficult student behavior. They have less freedom to respond to the varied learning styles of their students and more pressure to conform to standardized tests. We must not resign ourselves to an increasingly harsh school culture. There are other, better options. First, the whole concept of the suspension should be called into question. Instead of removing the student from the school for what may be an entirely unsupervised or unstructured 3 days in which the “new teachers” are neighborhood gangsters, we should build the school’s capacity to focus even more on that student’s behavior.

Keep the student in school and address behavior directly. While some of the prohibited behavior is quite dangerous, such as bringing guns to class, the vast majority of suspensions and expulsions occur due to acting-out behavior. Indeed, according to the San Francisco Chronicle’s analysis, 51% of all suspensions statewide were for “disruption of school activities or willful defiance.” By contrast, 4% were for use of force or violence, and 2% were for firearms, knives, or other weapons. When you look at these cases carefully, it is clear that teachers lack the training to deescalate routine conflict situations. For example, a teacher questions a student’s dress style and the student responds with defensiveness and hostility, which is not uncommon in teenagers. If a teacher lacks the skill needed to resolve the situation, he may rely on threats of unnecessary sanctions helping to escalate the interaction.

The process for detentions and suspensions should be examined for fairness and due process. Studies have consistently shown that children of color are more subject to suspensions and expulsions than white youth. Let’s work toward eliminating the racial and ethnic bias that shows up in school disciplinary practice and juvenile justice systems. Objectively screening and assessing youth issues is crucial if we want real solutions to a problem situation. Due to their still-developing brains, teens sometimes engage in dangerous behavior without calculating the future consequences of their actions. The student with a gun in his backpack, brought to school to impress friends, may have a college scholarship in that same backpack. Our adult responses should be nuanced and measured, looking at the whole child.

A very positive alternative to pushing youth out of classrooms and to the streets is school health clinics. These can offer a range of services, and if well designed and well run, can be uniquely situated to address the immediate and compelling needs that young people have every day. There also are proven models for early interventions such as the Seattle Social Development Model, designed to begin as early as first grade to stop destructive and dangerous behavior. This program works simultaneously with teachers, parents, and students. Research has demonstrated both the short- and longer-term positive effects on school conduct, academic success, and peer acceptance. California schools need to look into how to replicate this proven model from Washington State.

It takes creativity and political will to change the balance of school safety, and schools can’t do it without support from families, legislators, districts, and the larger communities that surround them. Our research reveals that youth who disrupt schools and break the rules are often victims or witnesses of violence in the home or on the street. These youth too often suffer from the adverse effects of poverty, and they have not received the quality medical and mental health care they need. Although youth crime rates have been declining in California since 1995, school safety should concern us. We need a comprehensive approach that views these troubled and troublesome children as young adults who need to be embraced by the entire community, not banished to the mean streets or jail.

Barry A. Krisberg has been the president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD) since 1983. He is known nationally for his research and expertise on juvenile and criminal justice issues and is called upon as a resource for professionals and the media. Dr. Krisberg received his master’s degree in criminology and a doctorate in sociology, both from the University of Pennsylvania. He has held several educational posts. He was a faculty member in the School of Criminology at the University of California at Berkeley. He was also an adjunct professor with the Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota and the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Hawaii. He is currently a lecturer in the Law School and Legal Studies Department of the University of California at Berkeley.

Dr. Krisberg was appointed by the legislature to serve on the California Blue Ribbon Commission on Inmate Population Management. Previously, he was asked by the Legislature to conduct a study on alternatives to prison commitments.

Posted on September 05, 2008

Comments

Barry: Excellent comments; I shared with you briefly last year in Austin that the Council on At-Risk Youth (CARY)goes into the public middle schools and works directly with the more abusive, aggressive and intimidating students who have been assigned to in school, or out of school suspension, or have been removed and reassigned to the Disciplinary Alternative Learning Center. CARY MA level staff persons receive referrals meeting our aggressive admissions criteria from principals, asst. principals and counselors and conduct programming with students during elective classes. We work with this group of aggressive kids for a full year using the Positive Adolescent Choices Training (PACT is endorsed by CDC&P, USDeptEd, USDeptJust and Hamilton Fische as a best practice youth violence program) in small group settings for about 12 weeks, and follow up with individual behavioral counseling, community service learning projects and support work with families, again for a full year. Tex. A&M Inst. Policy Research shows that one serious disciplinary report in public school is the most powerful predictor for future criminal involvement. Hence, the public school disciplinary setting is a very optimal environment to conduct meaningful delinquency and youth violence prevention programming, with high risk youth. Our results are significantly positive showing 50% reduction in serious incident reports with sustainable reductions for 18 months; we are now guaging impact to juvenile court referrals but our projection is that we will also duplicate the PACT program results with 50% reduction in juvenile court referrrals. Of course the challenge for the non profit is gaining fiscal support for difficult kids. With a scant annual budget from the City and County and annual fund raisers, we serve 400 kids at six school sites. The State makes little or no investment is school based delinquency or violence prevention. We are calling for "an ounce of prevention" and suggesting that the equivalent of at least one percent of the $600,000,000.00 Travis County and Austin spends annually at the city, county and state level for criminal justice including law enforcement, courts, prosecution, public defense, jails, probation, prisons and parole be appropriated for prevention, for kids we know have high liklihood of graduating not from high school but directly to juvenile/criminal justice. School personnel open their doors to us gladly and give the CARY program high ratings with high marks for the student participants, although 100% of the school budget goes to academics. We must discontinue growing our bloated juvenile and criminal justice system budgets and begin building capacity at the public school disciplinary system level to effectively reduce, crime, violence, drug abuse and delinquency. CARY's year long program costs $750.00 per student; compare to a year at state prison for $15,000.00, a year at County jail for $25,000.00 or a year at Texas Youth Commission for $100,000.00. Effective prevention programming beats the 60% to 75% recidivism rates in correction before the fact, and it operates for a dime on each correction dollar spent. Effective prevention with high risk kids presents a successful roadblock to the "school to prison pipeline". Can NCCD assist in building this campaign to shift public policy in support for prevention? Regards, Adrian Moore www.councilonatriskyouth.org

Posted by: Adrian Moore at September 6, 2008 12:50 PM

School districts have come up with the universal tool for placing all handicapped children in one setting: emotionally disturbed classes. Mixing learning disabled, autistic and delinquent children sustains education's role in this problem.

While I agree that delinquent children do indeed need specialized support, we are up against family issues that compete with the school's time and resources differently than other populations, and there is no way a delinquent child is going to undergo some miraculous change of character through the use of a services model that does not address behavior learning needs.

Also, when such children in the mix with truly disabled students, they force their peers into an emotional freeze that prevents them from being able to learn. That would be denial of FAPE under ordinary circumstances, and hazing a harassment would be directed at intimidation because their peers are disabled.

You are an enabler.

Posted by: Mahlon Smith at October 4, 2008 01:15 PM

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