Students with disabilities are arrested or referred to court by police officers stationed in their schools at higher rates than most other students, a report from the American Civil Liberties Union finds.
The trend corresponds with an uptick in overall arrests and court referrals of students as more and more public schools have full-time police officers patrolling campuses. Too often such police officers lack guidelines regarding their role on campus and how to provide discipline, the advocacy group charges. That can lead to police intervention in cases where traditional school discipline would be more appropriate.
In South Carolina, for example, the charge of “disturbing schools” was the most common reason for a juvenile court referral during the 2007-2008 school year. Meanwhile, 15 percent of delinquency referrals in Florida were for school-related incidents.
Students with disabilities and those of color are disproportionately more likely to be involved with law enforcement at school, increasing a trend whereby children are pushed from public schools into the justice system, the authors say.
“There are serious problems with relying too heavily on police to maintain order and to provide discipline without ensuring that police understand exactly how they fit within the overarching educational framework of schools,” said I. India Geronimo, a co-author of the report. “When arresting kids for misbehaving becomes the primary mode of discipline, some of our most vulnerable populations end up being unnecessarily criminalized at very young ages before alternatives that could lead to academic success are exhausted.”
The report recommends that schools institute a series of policy guidelines and minimum training requirements for police officers based in schools.
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When my son, who has autism, was in school, I advocated for him and also volunteered in the community in this area. There was a school district, whose parents I was working with, who had a similar problem. Their children were being arrested and put into the Juvenile Justice system. What we found out that what was happening was that students who had behavioral problems and had hit another student while at school, the school contacted the victim’s parents to report the incident but also suggested to them that they contact the police and file a complaint. When a Special Education student has a behavioral problem and hits someone they can be suspended from school for 10 day ( I forgot the actual length of suspension ). After the suspension the student is back in school. He/She remains a problem of the school. If they are arrested the student is no longer the school’s problem. The student is now the problem of the Juvenile Justice school system.
If you child have behavioral problem request/demand that the school conduct a Functional Analysis of his/her behavior. ( Google Applied Behavioral Analysis or Functional Analysis if you are not familiar with these evals) Then request an IEP, parents can request as many as they need, an develop a goal for the behaviors and also ways, according to the evaluations, to respond to the behaviors. If, in the future, your child has a behavior and ends up in the Juvenile Justice system due to the behavior, and you recognize that the IEP wasn’t followed, file a complaint. I am not an attorney, nor have I had any legal training with the exception of what I have read or learned on my own. I have filed many complaints against the state that I was living in with very good results. Understand the Laws