Since, the criminalization of child discipline spiked the rate of juvenile detention to an all-time high in 2000, reforms in several states have facilitated a 39-percent percent drop in the rate of locking up kids, according to a new report. The drop reflects a recognition that widespread detention of children was not only costing the states money in detention centers; it also leads to lower rates of educational attainment and employment, and higher rates of later criminal activity.

The report by the National Juvenile Justice Network and Texas Public Policy Foundation highlights nine states that have seen dramatic turnarounds in detention rates, several of which were the most notorious for soaring prison populations, tough-on-crime policies, and the criminalization of minor school discipline violations.

Mississippi, for example, saw one the most dramatic decreases in juvenile lock-ups between 2001 and late 2010 — 48 percent — likely thanks in part to prominent reports on abuse of the system. But recent reports and a lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice show that particular counties are still plagued by harsh punishment for minor disciplinary violations like not wearing a belt to school. Texas also saw a drop, but one of the largest school districts in the country continues to use an electronic computer system to charge students with crimes, according to a recent lawsuit.

This continuing skew toward criminalizing student discipline is reflected in other statistics in the report. Nationwide as of 2010, “almost 60 percent of confined youth in the U.S. (41,877) were still detained and imprisoned for offenses that do not pose substantial threats to public safety. These include misdemeanors, drug use, non-criminal or status offenses (e.g., curfew violations, truancy, running away), failure to show up for parole meetings, and breaking school rules. Arguably, those 42,000 or so low-risk youth, who pose minimal public safety risks, face a fairly high risk of recidivating and losing their futures as productive citizens due to their incarceration experiences.”

A new quantitative analysis confirms that detaining more youths makes the crime rate worse. What’s more, the impact of criminalizing student discipline is not limited to detention. Students may be arrested, charged and even convicted for school disciplinary violations without spending time in jail, while discriminatory suspensions provide a frequent entrée into the criminal justice system.

Mass incarceration of American youth is actually making the country’s crime problem worse, according to a new study of Chicago youth incarceration.

The study, conducted by Anna Aizer of Brown University and Joseph Doyle, Jr. of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, examined roughly 35,000 former Chicago public school students who had now grown up. Aizer and Doyle picked Chicago because its random judge assignment system for juvenile cases allowed them to develop a way of studying truly random (and hence representative) samples of juvenile offenders by identifying judges more likely to hand down harsher sentences.

This method of identifying incarcerated youth allows them to compare groups of kids who committed crimes and went to jail with youth who committed similar offenses but didn’t do time. This helps eliminate the “if they went to jail, it’s because they were always criminals” explanation for why kids who go to jail might return as adults.

After developing this random sampling technique, and controlling for confounding factors like race and sex, Aizer and Doyle compared the imprisoned and non-imprisoned kids along two lines: high school graduation rates and adult incarceration. Unsurprisingly, going to jail as a kid has “strong negative effects” on a child’s chance to get an education: youth that went to prison were 39 percentage points less likely to finish high school than other kids who from the same neighborhood. Even young offenders who weren’t imprisoned were better off; they were thirteen points more likely to finish high school than their incarcerated peers.

More surprisingly, given that prison is supposed to deter crime, going to jail also made kids more likely to offend again. Young offenders who were incarcerated were a staggering 67 percent more likely to be in jail (again) by the age of 25 than similar young offenders who didn’t go to prison. Moreover, a similar pattern held true for serious crimes. Aizer and Doyle found that incarcerated youth were more likely to commit “homicide, violent crime, property crime and drug crimes” than those that didn’t serve time.

These findings are particularly troubling given that kids are often sent to the criminal justice system for relatively minor offenses. This phenomenon, dubbed the “school-to-prison pipeline,” involves the use of harsh, often criminal, punishment for bad school behavior and truancy, particularly in low-income and minority schools. Even the indiscriminate use of less significant punishments, like suspension, are associated with higher rates of criminality among students.

Some jurisdictions are starting to pull back the pedal on youth incarceration. Georgia recently passed a law that would dramatically reduce the number of kids sent to prison. An odd national coalition made up of progressives, racial justice advocates, anti-drug war campaigners, right-wing evangelicals, and libertarians are pushing prison reform laws around the country.

In Dallas County, Texas, students as young as 12 face criminal charges and arrest for “truancy” via an electronic system that automatically “pushes” cases to courts based on a student’s attendance record, according to a complaint filed with the Department of Justice. These students are required to represent themselves in these proceedings, and are not permitted the assistance of an attorney, advocate, or even their own parents, meaning they are “almost guaranteed a conviction and all the attendant consequences that file,” the complaint says.

Statewide, Texas changed its policy in 2001 to penalize disciplinary violations like truancy through the adult criminal court system, causing a “host of harms to children,” who are then funneled away from school and into the criminal justice system. But in Dallas County, the harms are particularly acute, as students are regularly charged with “truancy” for mere tardiness, absence due to medical problems, a critically ill parent, and school-imposed suspension. The complaint by several public interest organizations paints a picture of a “byzantine legal process resulting in increasingly punitive measures including arrest, handcuffing, and threats of jail time and detention.” Some of these conditions include:

• Youth are coerced and cajoled into pleading “guilty,” even when they have valid excuses for school absences.
• Families already facing economic hardship are assessed high fines and court costs, with additional fees added each month that they are unable to pay in full.
• Children who miss a truancy court hearing are arrested at school, put into a police car, brought into the courtroom in handcuffs, and then charged an additional $50 to cover the arrest warrant fee.
• Youth who fail to fully comply with truancy court orders are arrested in court, handcuffed, and transferred without due process to the “Truancy Enforcement Center,” an arm of the county’s juvenile system, where they may face detention.
• Youth may be jailed once they turn 17 if they have not paid their fines and costs in full.
• Students are routinely threatened with jail time even before they are old enough under Texas law to be subjected to this punishment.

Parents and students interviewed by investigative outlet ProPublica said “enforcement of the program has turned school grounds into something like a police state, with guards rounding up students during ‘tardy sweeps,’ suspending them, then marking their absences as unexcused and reporting them to truancy court.”

Student discipline has been subject to increasing criminalization nationwide, in what is know as the “school-to-prison pipeline,” which is applied disproportionately to minority students, and gives them an early introduction to the criminal justice system. As the complaint describes it, “Students as young as twelve years old are subjected to an adult criminal court process despite being charged with a status offense, a ‘crime’ only by virtue of the fact that it was committed by a child.” In Dallas County, the harm is exacerbated by the utter lack of required due process accompanying these allegations, according to the complaint. Not only are these students deprived of any representation; the county relies upon a computer to file charges without any determination by a human being that there is probable cause to believe these students violated the law.

Last year, 75 percent of the students arrested in Chicago’s public schools were black, according to new research conducted by Loyola University and Project NIA.

The study provides a total racial breakdown on arrests in 2012: That year, 3,240 black students were arrested, along with 889 Latinos, and 136 white students. What’s more, the numbers of arrests varied hugely from district to district, with one district, the eighth, accounting for a total of 461 arrests.

These statistics add to the growing evidence that the so-called “school-to-prison pipeline” — a phenomenon in which students are funneled into the criminal justice system for mere disciplinary violations — can have disproportionate racial impacts. Similar complaints have arisen in other schools across the country. In Mississippi, children were sometimes arrested and locked up for for infractions as minor as violating the dress code, with black and disabled students experiencing a disproportionate share of the draconian punishment.

But in this study, the information is particularly troubling, as the situation can only get worse for Chicago’s youth. Last month, the city’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel, announced the closure of 49 city schools, primarily in poverty-stricken districts where crime rates are higher to begin with.

A Florida honor student who was expelled and faced possible felony charges for a science experiment gone awry has not only been cleared of charges, she’s heading to space camp thanks to a former NASA employee.

Sixteen-year-old Kiera Wilmot combined household cleaner and aluminum foil in an eight-ounce water bottle on school grounds on April 22, curious to see what would happen. The chemical reaction “created a pop that sounds like a firecracker and smoke,” but no students were injured nor does there appear to have been property damage. At the suggestion of Florida Assistant State Attorney Tammy Glotfelty and after her science teacher said she had not sanctioned the experiment, the responding officer arrested Wilmot and charged her with possessing or discharging weapons or firearms at a school sponsored event or on school property and possessing any destructive devices — both felonies she would have been tried for as an adult. Pursuant to her school’s zero tolerance policy, Wilmot was also expelled at the time of the incident.

But last week the criminal charges against Wilmot were dropped following significant media coverage and an online petition that attracted nearly 200,000 signatures, upset that the arrest was the equivalent of criminalizing curiosity. She remains banned from her school, but her family is in discussions with the administration about a possible reinstatement.

Wilmot’s story caught the eye of Homer Hickam, an 18-year NASA veteran and author of the memoir “Rocket Boys,” later adapted into the film “October Sky.”  Hickman had his own brush with law enforcement during his teens. Hickman and several friends were led away from his high school in handcuffs for allegedly starting a forest fire, but his physics teacher and principal cleared him of wrongdoing.

Hickam said he “couldn’t let this go without doing something,” and while he’s not a lawyer, he could at least “give her something that would encourage her” and settled on purchasing her a scholarship to the United States Space Academy, a five-day college accredited course offered through the University of Alabama-Huntsville. After learning Wilmot has a twin sister, he raised additional funds so they could attend together in July.

While Hickam attended school long before the advent of zero tolerance policies, since then kids who make mistakes have increasingly faced criminal charges for what amount to disciplinary violations, particularly minority students like Wilmot.

Under a new law signed Thursday, Georgia will stop locking up most young offenders. Instead, they will be directed into community-based rehabilitative programs meant to address underlying problems.

After January 1, young people arrested for minor offenses will enter social service programs, skipping the criminal justice system entirely. Those arrested for low-level crimes like drug possession will be diverted into community-based rehab programs. Teenagers who have committed felonies in which no one is hurt will face a maximum of 18 months in prison plus intensive probation for a year and a half. If someone is harmed, the juveniles could be sent to prison for up to 5 years.

The youth law is expected to save $85 million over five years and reduce the juvenile prison population by 640 teenagers, at a rate of $91,000 a year per bed. Currently, there are 1,820 minors in juvenile facilities in Georgia. The youth recidivism rate, now at 65 percent, is also supposed to drop.

Georgia’s school to prison pipeline is among the worst in the nation, with schools frequently using the criminal justice system to discipline kids for minor infractions. A juvenile court judge from Georgia testified last year that one-third of the cases before him were school-related minor offenders who had been arrested by campus police. He also noted an “appalling” racial disparity in the arrests, which were 80 percent African American. As arrests increase, high school graduation rates have plummeted.

The youth law follows another prison reform last year that diverted adults arrested for minor offenses from prison. The adult law establishes alternative program options for people arrested for non-violent crimes. As of July 1, judges will be given more discretion over drug-related cases, which often have mandatory minimum prison sentences. Instead, expensive prison beds will be reserved for the most violent criminals, while less serious offenses like drug possession, burglary, forgery, or shoplifting will have less severe penalties depending on the scale of the crime.

Gov. Nathan Deal (R) has made a more humane and effective prison system a top priority. At the bill signing, Deal choked up as he described how families have “been cast aside by the system that was in place.” Now that he has signed these two cornerstone bills into law, the governor is already working with community groups on legislation to smooth the transition of inmates back into society and reduce recidivism rates. He has also pledged $10 million in funding for “accountability courts” to make sure defendants work, seek treatment and stay sober.

Sentencing reform has attracted rare bipartisan support all over the country, as conservatives look for ways to cut costs while liberals oppose excessively harsh and ineffective sentencing. In the past two years, 35 prisons have shuttered in 15 states. However, other states have embraced the private prison industry, which has an abysmal record for security and inmate abuse, and may actually increase incarceration rates.

An eighth grade student in West Virginia was arrested and taken to jail after an argument with a teacher over a National Rifle Association T-shirt that displayed a hunting rifle. The Associated Press reports:

[Jared] Marcum’s stepfather, Allen Lardieri, said the youth was waiting in line in the school cafeteria Thursday when a teacher ordered the eighth-grader to remove the T-shirt or to turn it inside out.

Marcum said was sent to the office where he again refused the order.

“When the police came, I was still talking and telling them that this was wrong, that they cannot do this, it’s not against any school policy. The officer, he told me to sit down and be quiet. I said, `No, I’m exercising my right to free speech.’ I said it calmly,” he said.

Police charged him with disrupting an educational process and obstructing an officer, he said.

“The only disturbance was caused by the teacher. He raised his voice,” he said. […]

Logan County Schools’ dress code, which is posted on the school system’s website, prohibits clothing and accessories that display profanity, violence, discriminatory messages or sexually suggestive phrases. Clothing displaying advertisements for any alcohol, tobacco, or drug product also is prohibited.

Their lawyer, Ben White, said that the T-shirt did not appear to violate any school policy.

The U.S. Supreme Court has long protected student political speech, holding that students do not “shed their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse door.” School officials may censor speech, however, if it disrupts the educational process. More recently, school censorship of a banner promoting drug use was upheld by the Supreme Court. On these particular facts, the only disruption appears to have ensued once the teacher asked Marcum to remove the T-shirt, but there may be weak arguments that wearing images of a weapon would fall under the school’s policy against clothing that displays “violence,” and that the policy is tailored to avoid disruptions.

Because the police would not talk to reporters, it is difficult to make a full First Amendment assessment. But regardless of whether the school’s conduct was protected speech, there is no clear justification for police intervention, let alone arrest and jailing of a 14-year-old. According to accounts of the incident, Marcum did not engage in violence or other dangerous behavior. In fact, he appears to have done nothing other than argue for his right to wear the T-shirt. Teenagers are bound to challenge authority; sometimes rightly so. Criminalizing what is at most a school disciplinary violation perpetuates what is known as the school-to-prison pipeline, in which youth are diverted away from school and into the criminal justice system.

The National Rifle Association (NRA)’s main response in the wake of the deadly shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, other than staunch opposition to even the most minor gun law reforms, has been a proposal to increase the number of armed guards in schools. However, a deeply reported piece in today’s New York Times suggests that more guns in schools would do little to improve school safety while simultaneously increasing police harassment of students along racial lines.

The article, by Erik Eckholm, surveyed the rise of “school resource officers” (policemen or non-police armed guards) in American school districts since the late 1990s. Eckholm found little to suggest that officers had made schools safer; he quotes University of Maryland school crime expert Denise C. Gottfredson as saying “There is no evidence that placing officers in the schools improves safety.” She concludes, moreover, that “it increases the number of minor behavior problems that are referred to the police, pushing kids into the criminal system.”

Eckholm assembles ample evidence to support this conclusion:

Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of students are arrested or given criminal citations at schools each year. A large share are sent to court for relatively minor offenses, with black and Hispanic students and those with disabilities disproportionately affected, according to recent reports from civil rights groups, including the Advancement Project, in Washington, and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, in New York.

Such criminal charges may be most prevalent in Texas, where police officers based in schools write more than 100,000 misdemeanor tickets each yearaid Deborah Fowler, the deputy director of Texas Appleseed, a legal advocacy center in Austin. The students seldom get legal aid, she noted, and they may face hundreds of dollars in fines, community service and, in some cases, a lasting record that could affect applications for jobs or the military….Black students in the school district in Bryan, [Texas,] [activists] noted, receive criminal misdemeanor citations at four times the rate of white students.

Strict policies surrounding juvenile crime and delinquency have created what some call a “school-to-prison pipeline,” wherein punishment of students, particularly those of black and Hispanic origin, pushes them out of schools via suspension/expulsion or legal action, making a life of crime more attractive. Criminal sanction is a particularly brutal funnel, as the “collateral consequences” of a youth criminal record can render young people unemployable for years, severely limiting their opportunities to make money legally.

Studies of school resource officers find that their presence increases the rate of students arrested for “disorderly conduct” by five times, even after controlling for relative poverty levels.

In January, a school resource officer left his firearm in a bathroom.

One out of every ten secondary school students was suspended during the 2009 to 2010 school year, and they were disproportionately black, disabled, or English as a Second Language students, according to a new academic study. In fact, the disproportionate suspension of African Americans has spiked since the 1970s, with black suspensions increasing 12.5 percent while suspension of whites increased just one percent, as illustrated by the below chart:

According to a nationwide analysis of more than 26,000 middle and high schools by researchers at UCLA’s The Civil Rights Project, more than one-third of black male students are suspended, and black students overall are four times as likely to be suspended as white students without disabilities. One fifth of ESL and disabled students were suspended. This study measures the number of students suspended at least once, not the number of suspensions, and thus doesn’t even address the related issue of repeated suspensions. The report notes:

As other studies demonstrate, the vast majority of suspensions are for minor infractions of school rules, such as disrupting class, tardiness, and dress code violations, rather than for serious violent or criminal behavior. Serious incidents are rare and result in expulsions, which are not covered by this report.

The report, focused only on middle and high school students, builds on other recent data analyses finding that suspensions fall disproportionately on minorities and the disabled. And it is one of 16 new research studies to analyze harsh punishment of school discipline violations that has been associated with what is known as the “school-to-prison pipeline,” in which students are funneled away from school and into the criminal justice system. One suspension doubles the risk of dropping out of school from 16 percent to 32 percent, and suspensions also increase the likelihood of arrests and juvenile detention. The new body of research finds that “harsh discipline policies increase the number of young people who are disengaged from school, which has damaging academic consequences and long-term economic and societal costs.” It cites an American Pediatrics Association policy that “schools with higher rates of out-of-school suspension and expulsion are not safer for students or faculty.”

In Texas juvenile detention facilities, the rate of mental illness now exceeds the rates of those affiliated with a gang, according to an Associated Press analysis. Substance abuse and dependency are particularly rampant, affecting almost 1,100 of the current 1,411 inmates. The Texas Juvenile Justice Department’s director said last month that the percentage of mentally ill incarcerated youths spiked from 39 percent in 2007 to 56 percent in 2013, demonstrating that the problem of criminalizing mental health problems is not isolated to adult jails and prisons.

There are now 18 proposals before the Texas legislature that would play a role in rolling back the criminalization of school disciplinary infractions as minor as gum-chewing and truancy – a national phenomenon known as the school-to-prison pipeline. Reforms would also include funneling students with substance abuse and other undiagnosed mental health problems into counseling rather than the criminal justice system.