The phenomenon of students arrested for school offenses in Henrico County (addressed in a recent post, “Spotlighting the Wrong Victims“) is national in scope. Nationally, 260,000 students were reported to law enforcement by schools in 2012, according to an article in today’s Wall Street Journal.
As in Henrico County, there are concerns that African-American students are arrested at disproportionately higher rates than white students. But there are a myriad of other issues, such as the arrest of students under “zero tolerance” policies for trivial offenses, such as a chemistry experiment gone bad (“discharging a destructive device”) or unwittingly carrying a pen knife to school.
Noted but downplayed in the article is another startling fact. Since the implementation of zero-tolerance policies in the 1990s, the rate of victimization per 1,000 students aged 12-18 fell from 181 to 52 between 1994 and 2012. Supporters of zero-tolerance policies cite those numbers as evidence that the school-yard version of the “broken windows” approach to crime — cracking down on minor offenses before they give rise to more serious ones — has been effective.
Invariably, zero-tolerance policies lead to some absurd actions. We’ve all heard the horror stories of kids suspended from school for bringing toy guns to school, drawing pictures of guns or even making pretend guns with their fingers. Undoubtedly, some kids are punished unfairly. As we all know, the criminal justice system isn’t perfect. But cutting school crimes by more than two-thirds over twenty years is no mean achievement. For every child suspended or arrested for a ludicrous offense, literally hundreds fewer children are victimized by their peers.
While the students receiving the harsh sanctions of suspension or arrest are disproportionately African-American, there is evidence in the Henrico County numbers that the victims of their misdeeds are African-American as well. Last year, 84% of the African-American kids arrested for school offenses attended Henrico, Highland Springs or Varina High Schools, all of which have overwhelmingly black enrollment. There is no way to avoid the conclusion that the victims of disruptive behavior — whether assault, theft or the interruption of teaching in the classroom — were black as well.
That’s not to say that the existing system can’t be improved upon. I’m sure it can. But let’s not go overboard in correcting perceived excesses. The last thing we want is for schools to return to the “blackboard jungle” days of yore. Every kid deserves a chance to get an education from from the disruption and intimidation of their peers.
— JAB