Report: In-School Police Officers Arresting Kids at Alarming Rates in Mass. is No Exception

Kids are being arrested in schools for everything from playground skirmishes to talking back to teachers, according to a report released Tuesday by the Justice Policy Institute, a national think tank.

In a press release issued to Sudbury Patch by Quicksilver Communications, JPI links the high number of school arrests to the increasing presence of police officers in public schools since the 1990s and the increasingly common practice of schools’ turning over responsibility of even routine school discipline matters to police. 

“Massachusetts mirrors the national picture, unfortunately,” said Lael Chester, executive director of the Boston-based Citizens for Juvenile Justice. “Our research backs up what JPI found: If you put more cops in schools, more kids get arrested. We shouldn’t expect police to enforce school discipline any more than we’d expect a teacher to investigate crimes and arrest suspects. We should be asking public servants to do what their training and expertise best qualifies them to do.”

Lt. Scott Nix of the disagreed with the report, stating schools in Sudbury work together with the department.

"They enforce their own policies and procedures," Nix said. "The only time we get involved is if there is something potentially criminal happening. We work in a collaborative effort for the safety of all."

Fiji and the American Civil Liberties Union plan to release a report on school-based arrests in Massachusetts in early 2012.

"We have a (memorandum of understanding) based on the community justice law," Nix said. "What that does is it allows and promotes communication between police and schools for a safer environment for kids. We take every case seriously."

Jape’s national study points out that arrests have risen even as violence in schools has dipped to its lowest level since 1992, when the federal government first began tracking it. Other disturbing findings include the disproportionate number of minority children and special education students that are affected by punitive policies, including the presence of police officers in schools. It further finds that school-based arrests are linked to academic failure, dropping out, and repeat involvement with the juvenile and criminal justice systems.

"We keep in mind these are young adults that can make poor decisions which will affect their future," Nix said. "We keep that in mind, but we still do our job and are diligent."

But JPI also highlights communities around the country that have decreased school arrests — and problem behavior generally — through measures like graduated responses to misbehavior, evidence-based programs that encourage good conduct, and improved training for teachers in classroom management. It highlights schools where these measures not only decreased arrests; they also led to a drop in problem behaviors.

“In Massachusetts we have an added incentive to avoid school-based arrests,” said Chester. “As one of the few states that still prosecute 17-year-olds as adults, even for the most minor offenses, we run the risk of saddling a kid with an adult record simply because he broke a school rule. Certainly, students need to behave responsibly at school. But we should not forever limit a person’s ability to get a job, be accepted into a college or serve in the military because of a school discipline issue.”

For a complete copy of the report, please visit www.justicepolicy.org/EducationUnderArrest.