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News :: Miscellaneous |
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School Crime at Same Level as 1970s, But Use of Suspension Doubles |
Current rating: 0 |
by Justice Policy Institute
(No verified email address)
Phone: Contact: Laura Jones, 202-737-72 |
04 Sep 2001
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This new report reinforces the arguments of those oppossed to an increased presence of police in the schools in Urbana. While zero-tolerance policies have been touted as panaceas for school discipline problems, it appears that there is little reason to implement such policies and even less proof that such policies will actually help children, particularly given the racially skewed results that such "get tough" policies repeatedly demonstrate. ML |
Washington, DC, August 29: As youth begin their school year, a new policy brief by the Justice Policy Institute shows that while students are as well behaved and are reporting the same rates of crime seen in the 1970s, the number of youth suspended on an annual basis has nearly doubled over the same period.
"Today's high school seniors are no more likely than their parents were to be assaulted, injured, threatened or robbed in high school," says Vincent Schiraldi, JPI Director. "Ironically, today's students are much more likely to be suspended than their parents were. We need to question why a well-behaved generation is being so severely punished by being denied access to education."
The policy brief, drawing upon data from the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research and the Justice Department, showed that 95% of students consistently reported that they have never been threatened with a weapon, and that the proportion of students reporting no serious violence has remained stable throughout the last two decades. About 85% of high school seniors in 1976 and 1998 reported they were free from injury, threats of injury with a weapon, theft and assault. These comforting findings contrast with the disturbing trends seen in data supplied by the US Department of Education: the number of youth suspensions has nearly doubled since the 1970s (from 3.7% of students, or 1.7 million youth in 1974, to 6.8% of students, or 3.2 million students in 1998). African American youth are 2.6 times more likely to be suspended than white youth.
"The increase in suspensions seems to have little to do with serious school crime, which has not risen," says Jason Ziedenberg, JPI Senior Policy Analyst. "When youth are kicked out of school, they are more likely to get into fights, carry a weapon and engage in reckless behavior. Aggressive suspension policies may actually put youth at risk."
The policy brief from JPI is the third in a series of surveys of school crime and juvenile arrest trends issued since the national media identified "school shootings" as a trend, and heightened concerns about school safety. Previous JPI studies have shown that school crime, including serious violent crime, is on the decline, and that opinion surveys show the public thinks much more serious crime is actually occurring in schools than is reported in surveys by law enforcement and arrest reports.
A full copy of the JPI policy brief "Safe Schools and Suspension" can be found on the Institutes website, at http://www.cjcj.org. The Justice Policy Institute is a criminal justice policy and research organization based in Washington, D.C. |
See also:
http://www.cjcj.org/sss/sss.html
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