Introduction
The school-to prison pipeline is an epidemic slowly crippling minority youth all over the country. This unspoken system teaches these children that the only path for them is jail. Jail has become the narrative of the black life in America:
Like Jim Crow (and slavery), mass incarceration operates as a tightly networked system of laws, policies, customs, and institutions that operate collectively to ensure the subordinate status of a group defined largely by race.
Unfortunately this process starts for these children as young as kindergarten age due to the school-to-prison pipeline. Over the past twenty years or so we have seen an increase in the number of minority children that are jailed because of school-based offenses. In fact there is a large racial disparity between white and minority children in the criminal justice system. This is due to the policies put in place at their schools to create a more focused and safe environment. A policy such as Zero Tolerance are placed at these schools and essentially destroys the child’s future before they have the opportunity to plan one of their own. Zero Tolerance policy is a tool in the school-to-prison pipeline and is very dangerous to the developmental process of minority youths and still fails to make schools a safer place , which is the reason it was put in place. There is no point in implementing zero tolerance policy as it is not helpful to the education system and solely profits the school-to-prison pipeline.
The school-to prison pipeline is an epidemic slowly crippling minority youth all over the country. This unspoken system teaches these children that the only path for them is jail. Jail has become the narrative of the black life in America:
Like Jim Crow (and slavery), mass incarceration operates as a tightly networked system of laws, policies, customs, and institutions that operate collectively to ensure the subordinate status of a group defined largely by race.
Unfortunately this process starts for these children as young as kindergarten age due to the school-to-prison pipeline. Over the past twenty years or so we have seen an increase in the number of minority children that are jailed because of school-based offenses. In fact there is a large racial disparity between white and minority children in the criminal justice system. This is due to the policies put in place at their schools to create a more focused and safe environment. A policy such as Zero Tolerance are placed at these schools and essentially destroys the child’s future before they have the opportunity to plan one of their own. Zero Tolerance policy is a tool in the school-to-prison pipeline and is very dangerous to the developmental process of minority youths and still fails to make schools a safer place , which is the reason it was put in place. There is no point in implementing zero tolerance policy as it is not helpful to the education system and solely profits the school-to-prison pipeline.