Zero Tolerance Cons

In “Turning off the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” Henry Wilson notes that the zero-tolerance policy has become a significant contributor to the raised number of young individuals being marked as a failure and eventually lead up to belonging in the justice system.

Schools have become one of the biggest contributors to the raised number of young individuals being sent to prison in America. “Prisons spawn a new generation of future prisoners: there are more than two million children with at least one incarcerated parent, and these youth are five times more likely to end up in prison themselves” (49). Due to the 80’s and 90’s increased crime rate, people began to fear those in urban areas leading to the increased penalties for juvenile offenders.

“By definition, zero tolerance refers to strict, uncompromising, automatic punishment to eliminate undesirable behavior” (50). Zero-tolerance in schools are taking away educational opportunities from students, which goes against the U.S. special education law of zero suspension. As adapted by the justice system punishments, zero-tolerance punishments are predetermined by the act which does not allow a student’s individual needs to be considered. Zero-tolerance in schools have been permitted because of the rise in crime and alarming attention from school shootings, which created the Gun Free Schools Act in 1994. “Before long, schools escalated the range of reasons for suspending and expelling students to include violation policies about alcohol, tobacco, drugs, fighting, insubordination, dress code, and ‘disruptive behavior’” (50). The removal policy has proved the opposite and increased the number of failures and number of those being sent into the school-to-prison pipeline. Missing school because of this policy provides the students nothing and takes away the possibility of success. Those who do not comply to teachers that use the zero-tolerance policy with obedience are to receive exclusion or suspension dealt by the police and justice system. The zero-tolerance policy has gone off the lines of providing an even discipline to all students because

The zero-tolerance policy has become a major national concern and so this argument has been brought forward to state houses and school districts. The Supportive School Discipline Initiative was created in 2011 by Secretary Arne Duncan and Attorney General Eric Holder in order to prevent the continuation of the school-to-prison pipeline. “By bringing together government, law enforcement, academic, and community leaders, the goal was to ensure fair discipline policies which are not obstacles to future growth and achievement” (51). As pointed out by Attorney General Holder that has wishes schools are only educational doorway opportunities. A study was created and sampled a Texas middle school. “The Breaking Schools’ Rules study revealed that excluding students was an extreme yet common practice, with 54% of all students experiencing at least one in-school suspension and 31% of all students spending on average two days at home at least once in their school career” (51). This also discovered the increased five times and three times more likelihood of a dropout from students who received exclusion from school. From the Texas middle school study it was found out that 97% of student exclusion were done privately and targeted students of color. It has been understood that defiance has become the biggest contributor to