I am not a lawyer nor do I play one on TV.  I have a lot of lawyer friends but I do not purport to understand the intricacies of jurisprudence.  I do however understand this:

Ever since New Jersey v. T.L.O., the dominant narrative, particularly in inner-city schools, has been that school children are dangerous and violent, drug dealing, gang affiliated, and out of control. Teachers and fellow students need protection from these menacing ambassadors of street thuggery. Therefore, under the rubric of school safety, we strip students of the full protection afforded by the 4th Amendment while simultaneously subjecting them to a model of school discipline that utilizes law enforcement officers to enforce school rules.

Yesterday, I read this in an interesting abstract for a paper written by Sarah Jane Forman of Washington University School of Law in St. Louis.  The title of the paper is “Countering Criminalization: Toward a Youth Development Approach of School Searches.”  I have not been able as of yet to read the full paper though I intend to do just that in the next couple of weeks.  I can’t imagine, however, that the constant harassment by School Security officers in many inner-city schools can be defused through a youth development approach.  The NYCLU has resorted to filing suit against the NYPD for their school “safety” policies and practice:

The lawsuit challenges the NYPD School Safety Division’s policy and practice of unlawful seizing and arresting schoolchildren, in violation of the Fourth Amendment and state law. NYPD personnel manifest this conduct in three ways:

• arresting students for minor violations of school rules that are not criminal activity.
• handcuffing students and locking them in seclusion rooms in school buildings, without parental or teacher consent, absent probable cause of criminal activity.
• removing schoolchildren who misbehave in school, without parental or teacher consent, and transporting them to hospitals for emergency psychiatric evaluations.

The lawsuit also challenges the NYPD School Safety Division’s policy and practice of using excessive force against students. SSOs push, shove and grab students. In many cases, this misconduct is not pursuant to making a lawful arrest. It is to compel a student to comply with an SSO’s orders or it occurs for no legitimate purpose whatsoever. These physical altercations often escalate and result in the child’s physical injury and, in some cases, hospitalization.

I really don’t know how we have come to this in so many urban schools.  Youth are treated like criminals and their education is lacking. Ms. Forman makes the case in her abstract that because they are treated as criminals, youth begin to live down to these expectations :

The sacrifice of students’ rights in the name of public safety comes at a cost. Such policies “construct a narrow range of meaning through which young people define themselves.” Forcing students to submit to pats, frisks, sniffs, and searches that would be illegal if performed on the average adult citizen transforms them into suspects. The constant suspicion with which they are regarded pushes students into a defensive posture that hinders their ability to become active and engaged citizens of their community and nation. This alienates them from mainstream society, increasing the lure of counter-culture ideas, decreasing the legitimacy of the rule of law, and, in some instances, feeding the school-to prison pipeline.

This conditioning is particularly detrimental to high school age youth because adolescents undergo significant psychological, intellectual and emotional development. During this time, youth are being “hardwired,” shaped, and programmed into patterns of thought and behavior that impact the way they interact with the world around them and determine what kind of adults they will become. As a result, they have very fragile identities which make them particularly vulnerable to outside pressures and influences. During the teenage years, children learn as much from interactions with peers and authority figures as they do from textbooks. Therefore, the draconian disciplinary policies of America’s public schools, where children are viewed with suspicion and treated like threats, create a self-fulfilling prophecy – when students are treated as threats to society, they become threats to society. [EMPHASIS MINE].

A number of school districts are recognizing the futility of these methods as a way to ensure “safety.”  They are beginning to focus on restorative justice practices as an alternative to their failed models of discipline.  I would recommend a terrific guide that has been published by Community Organizing for Family Issues educating Chicago parents about their rights and their students’ rights as they relate to school disciplinary policies.