This report examines how the involvement of the criminal justice system in school discipline policies and practices causes deprivations of human rights for children in four key areas: the right to be free from discrimination, the right to education, the right to proportionality in punishment, and the right to freedom of expression.
Analyzing school policies and practices as well as the criminal justice system, this report identifies specific areas where state, federal, and international law obligates the state to take affirmative measures to protect children’s human rights in the context of school discipline.
Drawing on a case study of the New Haven, Connecticut, public school system, this report describes the effects of the school-to-prison pipeline—the process whereby discipline policies channel students out of school and into the criminal justice system—and provides recommendations for improving policies and practices in order to ensure that students enjoy a safe and high-quality education without sacrificing their human rights.
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Saturday, November 1, 2008 - 12:00am
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One Step Toward Closing the School-to-Prison Pipeline
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Police arrests of students at Hartford-area schools are on the rise, according to a new American Civil Liberties Union report released today, a trend that disproportionately impacts children of color.
The ACLU report, entitled “Hard Lessons: School Resource Officer Programs and School-Based Arrests in Three Connecticut Towns,” also shows how the use by school districts of school resource officers who are not adequately trained and whose objectives are not clearly defined leads to the criminalization of students rather than their being educated.
“Our goal is to ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity to receive a quality education,” said Jamie Dycus, staff attorney with the ACLU Racial Justice Program and the primary author of the report. “Relying too heavily on arrests as a disciplinary measure impedes that goal and only serves to ensure that some of our most vulnerable populations are criminalized at very young ages before alternatives are exhausted that could lead to academic success.”
According to the report, students in West Hartford and East Hartford are arrested at school at a rate far out of proportion to their numbers. During the 2006-07 school year, for example, African American and Hispanic students together accounted for 69 percent of East Hartford’s student population, but experienced 85 percent of its school-based arrests. In West Hartford during the same year, African American and Hispanic students accounted for 24 percent of the population, but experienced 63 percent of the arrests.
The report also found that during the 2005-06 and 2006-07 school years in both East and West Hartford, students of color committing minor disciplinary infractions were more likely to get arrested than white students committing the very same offenses. African American students involved in physical altercations in West Hartford were twice as likely to be arrested as white students involved in similar altercations. During the same time period in East Hartford, African American and Hispanic students involved in disciplinary incidents involving drugs, alcohol or tobacco were ten times more likely to be arrested than white students involved in similar incidents.
Additionally, students in Hartford, East Hartford and West Hartford are being arrested at school at very young ages. During the 2005-06 and 2006-07 school years, 86 primary grade students were arrested at school in Hartford. A majority of those arrested were seventh or eighth graders, but 25 were in grades four through six and 13 were in grade three or below.
“Research shows that the earlier children are exposed to the criminal justice system, the more likely they are to commit crimes later in life,” Dycus said. “Relying primarily on arrests rather than other forms of behavioral intervention cements an unfortunate cycle of criminalization which, in the end, doesn’t benefit our kids and doesn’t benefit our communities.”
The report also highlights the lack of a clearly defined role and minimum training requirements for school resource officers on the campus of Hartford-area schools. The report found that officers in Hartford and West Hartford, for example, are not subject to formal written policies or agreements clearly describing their duties. Neither Hartford nor West Hartford requires special training for its school resource officers, and in all three districts data collection and reporting on the subject of school-based arrests – a critical element of any effort to monitor and evaluate school resource officer program performance – is inadequate.
The ACLU today also released a second report entitled “Dignity Denied: The Effect of ‘Zero Tolerance’ Policies on Students’ Human Rights” which analyzes the impact on the human rights of students in the New Haven Unified School District of involving the criminal justice system in school discipline policies.
A joint project of the ACLU, the ACLU of Connecticut and the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School, the report argues that subjecting students to the criminal justice system as a means of school discipline deprives them the right to be free from discrimination, the right to education, the right to proportionality in punishment, and the right to freedom of expression.
Date
Monday, November 17, 2008 - 12:00am
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Police departments in Connecticut routinely impose barriers to accepting complaints from civilians, disregarding best practices that are widely accepted by law enforcement experts, according to a report from the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut.
A survey conducted by the ACLU of Connecticut found that police departments fell short of professional standards by failing to make complaint forms available, refusing to accept anonymous complaints, imposing time limits on receiving complaints, requiring sworn statements or threatening criminal prosecution or a civil lawsuit for false statements. Many police employees could not answer questions about their departments' complaint procedures, refused to answer questions, provided inaccurate information or contradicted information from other employees. The findings reveal a need for statewide standards to ensure that civilians with complaints about police misconduct will not be turned away, intimidated or silenced.
"We've been hearing from too many people who have had difficulty filing complaints with their local police departments," said David McGuire, staff attorney for the ACLU of Connecticut, who supervised the study. "We rely on the police for our safety, and we're grateful for their service. But we also entrust police officers with extraordinary authority, including the power to use deadly force, and this must be balanced by accountability, with a clear and reliable method for civilians to register their concerns about police conduct."
Several high-profile investigations and reports about Connecticut police agencies, including most recently the East Haven Police Department, have shown serious deficiencies in procedures for handling complaints of police misconduct. In a consent decree signed last month with the U.S. Department of Justice, East Haven's mayor and police commission agreed to a series of reforms governing how complaints from civilians are handled, many of them closely aligned with the recommendations in the ACLU of Connecticut report. The report's recommendations are drawn from the best practices advocated by the Department of Justice, the International Associations of Chiefs of Police, the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies and other law-enforcement policy experts.
The report is based on a telephone survey of 104 Connecticut law enforcement agencies in Connecticut -- the 92 municipal police departments required to report under the Alvin W. Penn Racial Profiling Prohibition Act and the 12 individual state police barracks. Trained volunteers telephoned the police agencies' routine, non-emergency numbers during January and February 2012 during normal business hours and asked 10 specific multi-part questions about the civilian complaint process. The results highlight how difficult it can be for Connecticut residents to file a complaint with their local police departments and how challenging it can be to obtain even basic information about how to file a complaint. We found that:
- Twenty-three percent of municipal police departments (excluding state police) reported having no complaint form for civilians to fill out.
- Sixty-one percent of the municipal police agencies in Connecticut told our callers they would not accept anonymous complaints, although law-enforcement policy experts strongly agree that police should accept complaints made anonymously. Another 10 percent could not or would not answer the question.
- Threatening criminal prosecution for false complaints is widely considered a deterrent to those with legitimate complaints. But nearly two-thirds of the complaint forms posted online by municipal police departments in Connecticut contain such warnings.
- Law enforcement policy experts recommend strongly against demanding a sworn statement from a civilian filing a complaint, but nearly half the complaint forms posted online by municipal police departments in Connecticut mention that requirement. Employees at several departments without online forms also mentioned the requirement to our callers.
- Only a third of departments in our survey clearly stated that immigration authorities would not be called against a civilian complainant. More than half did not answer or expressed some degree of uncertainty and 15 percent said they would definitely report a complainant to immigration authorities.
These widespread deficiencies in accepting complaints from civilians must be addressed, and the report recommends a set of minimum standards for all police departments in the state. These include establishing written policies on accepting complaints, providing complaint forms to the public, accepting anonymous complaints and refraining from requiring sworn statements from those filing complaints.
"We found problems and we found solutions," said Andrew Schneider, executive director of the ACLU of Connecticut. "We'll work toward a law to set standards for accepting police complaints - the same standards supported by law enforcement policy experts. But police chiefs and police commissions don't have to wait. They can start now to look at their policies and procedures to make sure they are listening to the public they serve."
Date
Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - 12:00am
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