School To Prison Pipeline Essay

1026 Words5 Pages

It’s time to give a new light to an old subject. The school discipline system is as old as education itself, and luckily many old fashioned systems have been eliminated with time. When it comes to school discipline, Bertram Cates from Inherit the Wind puts it best “It isn’t as simple as that. Good or bad, black or white, night or day” (Lawrence & Lee 9). Despite rapid changes in justice and progress in society school discipline has largely been stagnant. The data on school suspensions isn’t hidden and is easily accessible to anyone looking for the numbers on school discipline; it paints a stark picture. In 1976 1.8 million students were suspended to provide context that is 4% and look at 2006 over 7% of students had been suspended (Khadaroo). …show more content…

We as people strive to put aside our differences and bias when judging, however, when these statistics show the clear racial and minority discrimination what effort has been made to resolve these issues? If the school to prison pipeline continues many bright minds will be put into a limbo in between prison and juvenile detention, and this would absolutely ruin their future and there social mobility due to the lack of educational opportunities and a criminal history. In fact, of these biases are not addressed it will simply perpetuate racism and discrimination by marginalizing groups and preventing them from receiving a way out of poverty or other crisis. This system has also taken away the voice of many innocents. If a person with a criminal record or supposedly bad background proposes changes they are less likely to be heard especially when they are constrained to working bad paying jobs and have little standing in their community or district. Not only that but many people have raised concerns on whether these actions violate student rights. ACLU has looked into the issue and they have even gone as far as to state that this is a disturbing issue.Students go to for more oppurtunities, but when they are striped of their rights and instead handed criminal sentences school has done more harm than it could ever have done them