The rise of crime, drug usage, and weapons in the 1970s attracted the attention of the federal government. This vice started penetrating different schools across the U.S resulting in school crimes, shootings, and murder. This sudden change of students’ behaviors compelled the federal government through the safe school act of 1994 to introduce zero-tolerance policies to curb the increase in school misbehaviors. To address this social issue, the school discipline took a criminalization perspective with the replacement of detention and suspension with routinely or automatic arrest and arraignment in juvenile courts. This has compelled schools to implement the use of sniffing dogs, metal detectors, surveillance cameras, and cooperation with police officers to foster the school criminalization narrative.
From this study, the following sociological constructs inspired the criminalization of school indiscipline. The fear of violence, hate, and crime in schools, which is even more rampant in a contemporary school setting in America, attracted the need for robust security and correctional process. The rise of criminal activities in the society and subsequent growth of the criminal justice system contributed to the incorporation of schools’ indiscipline acts to the criminal justice system. Criminalization of school discipline from the fear perspective took a labeling approach to even misdemeanor student behavior. This labeling has contributed to the casting of students as quasi-criminals, prompting a response to student problems with justice solutions. Social structures and political-economic changes is also another contributing factor to the criminalization perspective. This sociological perspective views public crime discourse as individualized with a blinding approach of assuring the public that protecting the public against crime and hate activities has always been a priority but yet they fail to address the root cause of the problem since police officers are ill-equipped to address the psychological triggers of students’ misconduct.
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This study fails to delve exhaustively into the details of the adverse effects of criminalization of school discipline as evident in the study. There is no apparent need for data or information on school discipline before the introduction of a criminal approach to determine the impacts of the criminalization approach to the development of the student and their future life, quality of education, and creation of a safe environment. The author is correct when he notes the rise of wrongful labeling of students especially the minority groups because of the association of crimes with such ethnic groups in the society. The attitudes of such students to the security procedures, teachers, and the security officers will be from a point of resistance as the system already associates them with crime and targets them as the probable agents of crime and misbehavior in school.
Criminalization of school discipline arrests the future of students with their names and fingerprints in the judicial systems, their futures are not guaranteed anymore. The study fails to address this consequence. Most of the behaviors which attract a criminal approach are so lame and it used to be solved amicably between the students, teachers, and administrators without blowing it out of proportion. The failure of the criminal justice system to address the cause of the behavior as it only approaches the issue from a correctional point of view makes it ineffective to curb school indiscipline and foster safety in schools whilst bolstering the quality of student education.
Based on the extra consequences described above including the increasing dropouts as a result of the arraignment of students in juvenile courts, abuse, and wrongful labeling is enough to render criminalization approach to school discipline toxic and ineffective in the U.S. It doesn’t only raise fear in school but disrupts student-teacher relationships and deprives schools the opportunity to internally correct the behaviors of their students with bringing external entities only under extreme situations. Police officers and extra security measures should be brought in when the lives of students and teachers are in danger. There is also a need to define the scope and the nature of behaviors that warrant the use of the criminal justice system to avoid labeling and wrongful arrests of students. This study’s leaning on the unavailability of data on school discipline before the introduction of criminalization to enable comparison is uncalled for because it is evident that criminalization of school discipline is more damaging than repairing the students’ discipline. There is a need to collaboratively use teachers and administrators approach with criminalization, this way school discipline will be tackle exhaustively and effectively with no room for labeling, abuse, or wrongful arrests.
