When a fight broke out among middle school students in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in early March, a security guard intervened. The guard, an off-duty police officer, was filmed pushing the head of a 12-year-old girl of color into the ground, placing his knee on her neck for about half a minute before handcuffing her, and walking her out of the cafeteria.
In Long Beach, California, a school resource officer shot and killed an 18-year-old student, a young mother named Mona Rodriguez, as she was driving away from the school after a fight.
These incidents of police violence remind us that the presence of police officers in schools does not keep students safe. Instead, officers often use excessive force and sometimes even violence, especially against students of color.
In fact, as I document in my book “Willful Defiance,” school police play an important role in what is called the school-to-prison pipeline. The term refers to discipline and punishment practices that push students, most often Black and Latinx students and those with disabilities, into the juvenile and criminal justice systems.
On top of this, students are already in a state of crisis, traumatized by isolation and the suffering of their families during the coronavirus pandemic. As the nation enters its third year of pandemic schooling, few school systems have increased support structures for these students and, when fights break out, they often respond by calling police.
The evidence is clear: police have no place in schools and should be removed.
The presence of police in schools shifts the focus away from learning and support to punishment and arrest. Police often get involved in routine discipline issues, and students can be interrogated or even assaulted for things like going to the bathroom without a pass, as happened to an 11th-grader at Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin High School in 2016.
Students are five times more likely to be arrested and charged in schools where police are present. Meanwhile, the criminalization of students is racialized: Black students are twice as likely to be arrested in school than white students.
In the 2017-18 school year, there were nearly 230,000 school-based referrals to law enforcement and roughly 25% of them led to an arrest. Many students have their first contact with police in school settings.
It should be a national scandal that 1.7 million students attend schools that have police but no counselors; 3 million students attend schools with police but no nurses; and 10 million students attend schools with police but no social workers.
Young people and advocates have responded to police violence with calls to remove police from schools, including a petition in the Kenosha case.
Organizers for police-free schools have developed alternatives to criminalization such as restorative justice. These approaches emphasize community-building and respectful relationships over discipline and control. When conflict occurs, restorative practices seek to uncover the roots of the problem, address the harm it causes, and rebuild relationships.
Organizations like Community Organizing and Family Issues in Chicago have been developing parent-led restorative justice programs called peace centers in a range of schools for more than 15 years.
Rather than investing in punitive discipline and school police, public school leaders can learn from community-based alternatives and begin to use restorative justice. This should not just be a separate program to address misbehavior, but a holistic process to refashion school climate, culture, and safety through healthy and respectful relationships that support the education and full development of all children.
Mark R. Warren is a professor of public policy and public affairs at the University of Massachusetts Boston and the author of “Willful Defiance: The Movement to Dismantle the School-to-Prison Pipeline” (Oxford University Press, 2021).
