The school-to-prison pipeline, explained — Transcript

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1. 0:00There’s this phrase you hear in the news sometimes: the school-to-prison pipeline.
2. 0:05It’s shorthand for how schools are funneling students — especially black students — into
3. 0:09the criminal justice system.
4. 0:11It started in the 90s, when schools responded to fears about crime with zero tolerance policies,
5. 0:17which mandated suspensions and expulsions for certain violations.
6. 0:20They also cracked down on little things like talking back or uniform violations.
7. 0:28But as a result, out-of-school suspensions have doubled since the 1970s, and keep increasing
8. 0:34even though juvenile crime rates have now been dropping for years.
9. 0:38Around the same time, the number of police officers stationed full-time inside schools
10. 0:42has increased — by a third between 1997 and 2007.
11. 0:47Ostensibly, they were there to prevent mass school shootings like the one at Columbine.
12. 0:52But they end up being a way for schools to basically outsource discipline to the police.
13. 0:57Schools with officers have five times as many arrests for "disorderly conduct" as schools
14. 1:01without them.
15. 1:03Sometimes the results are shocking.
16. 1:05But the less visible effect is that schools are feeding the racial disparities in the
17. 1:10criminal justice system.
18. 1:12Consider the fact that schools are more likely to have an officer on their campus if their
19. 1:17student population is more than 50% black.
20. 1:20You might assume that’s because there’s more crime at these schools.
21. 1:23But although students at policed schools are more likely to be arrested,
22. 1:26they’re not actually more likely to be charged in court for weapons, drugs, alcohol, or assault,
23. 1:32at least according to one study.
24. 1:34During the 2010-2011 school year, one in six public school students in the U.S. were black,
25. 1:40but they accounted for one in three arrests at school.
26. 1:44Same goes for other forms of school discipline.
27. 1:46Black students are suspended or expelled three times more frequently than white students.
28. 1:50It actually begins in preschool. 18% of preschoolers are black, but of all preschoolers suspended
29. 1:57more than once, 48% are black.
30. 2:00Studies show that differences in behavior can’t fully account for these disparities.
31. 2:04Black students and white students are sent to the principal's office at similar rates,
32. 2:08but black students are more likely to end up with a serious punishment.
33. 2:12One study found that white students are more likely to be suspended for provable offenses
34. 2:17like smoking or vandalism,
35. 2:18while black students are more likely to be suspended for subjective reasons like talking
36. 2:23back or insubordination.
37. 2:25Students who are suspended in school are more likely to later drop out or get arrested,
38. 2:29so the federal government is asking schools to make suspension and expulsion the absolute
39. 2:33last resort.
40. 2:34In Oakland, California, public schools are trying something called restorative justice,
41. 2:39where both parties to a conflict talk it out with a counselor, instead of relying on punishment.
42. 2:44The results are pretty encouraging— in the past ten years, chronic absenteeism is down
43. 2:50and graduation rate are up in the schools that have tried it.
44. 2:53Other cities and districts are also trying new policies — so that if their students
45. 2:58end up in the criminal justice system, it won’t be because the schools pushed them
46. 3:02there.