Increased Police Presence in Schools Will Only Help Strengthen the School-to-Prison Pipeline

“Though society is scared and grieving, we cannot allow the knee jerk reaction to the devastating mass shooting in Uvalde to ignore the systemic, policy, and evidence-based realities and root causes of gun violence.”

In response to the horrific and tragic mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, school districts in “progressive” and “liberal” New York suburbs, including my own son’s school district, recently sent out communication verbalizing appreciation for the local police department and “assuring” community members that police would have an increased presence during the school day and at school events to “increase safety and security.” As a mental health clinician and mother of Black children, I ask, increase the “safety and security” for whom?

There is no conclusive evidence that police presence in schools helps to reduce behavioral incidents or mass shootings, nor that it improves general safety or the mental health and educational outcomes of attending students.

Instead, research demonstrates that police presence in schools significantly disrupts and causes harm to the learning environment. The presence of law enforcement within schools can lead to increased rates of arrest for students over minor offenses, and higher rates of exclusionary school discipline.

The criminalization of youth is particularly troublesome for youth of color and those with disabilities, especially as it further establishes a school-to-prison pipeline. Research also shows that Black boys are three times as likely to be arrested at school as their white male peers. Similarly, Black and Brown girls are six times more likely to be suspended than their white female peers. According to federal data in the 2015-16 school year, Black students as a whole made up only 15 percent of the school population nationally but accounted for 31 percent of arrests.

While the teaching of critical race theory (CRT) has been under attack in recent years, that is not the only racial disparity that schools are challenged with facing. The Civil Rights Data Collection found that during the 2015-2016 academic year, more than 96,000 public schools reported that Black, Hispanic male and American Indian students faced harsher discipline than their white student counterparts.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights has also found that more than 70 percent of students arrested or handed over to law enforcement officials from their educators are youth of color. Similar disparities exist for students with disabilities, who comprise 12 percent of the student population but are arrested at a rate of 2.9 to 10 times that of students without disabilities, depending on the state where they attend school.

In 2018, in response to the Parkland Shooting, police officers were placed at every elementary, middle, and high school in Florida. This response did not make students safer. Rather, according to research conducted by the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, the Florida Social Justice in Schools Project, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the League of Women Voters of Florida and Equality Florida, it led to the following: