At the end of January, a seven-year-old Latino boy in Miami, Florida, was arrested and led away from his school in handcuffs. School officials alleged that he had been playing with his food, was scolded, reacted badly, and ended up attacking his teacher. That's not great behavior, but he's a small child and posed no real risk. Rather than asking why the incident escalated and how they could change the environment to avoid such incidents, school police simply took him to prison. Later, police told his father that the boy was a "danger to society" and used the Baker Actto involuntarily commit him.
These incidents are sadly typical. We only know about this story because his mother took a video of him being led away in handcuffs. It got media attention for a day or two, then vanished from public attention.
We're not making much progress on slowing the school-to-prison pipeline. Videos of these incidents go viral and receive coverage, and then go away, even as more and more people are aware of the "pipeline" in general and the ways in which it adversely entraps vulnerable children: those of color, those with disabilities, those living in poverty. Children who are multiply marginalized—disabled children of color in general, and especially those kids whose communication strategies are deemed atypical or threatening—experience the highest risks. We know this. Teachers, administrators, politicians, and advocates know this and have for years. The rates of suspensions, arrests, and the shunting of vulnerable children into the criminal and legal system have not been significantly declining. Even when the cases of individual children receive national attention, those children often remain entangled in the system long after the media spotlight shifts away. Meanwhile, in the wake of school shootings, politicians are pushing policies that would only intensify the carceral nature of American schools.
[For more on this story by DAVID M. PERRY, go to https://psmag.com/education/la...-vulnerable-children]
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