In some instances, we’ve read that students were suspended for butter knives in their lunchboxes, nail files in their backpacks or aspirin in their pockets. Examples like these show exactly how zero-tolerance policies, which were intended to create an objective, fair and safe environment, can and have become subjective, tedious and unnecessarily punitive. So we’re at a point now where the tough-on-crime policies that grew out of the 90’s are still in place, despite the fact that our prisons are literally getting crowded, with youth and adults alike. Punishment is still the go-to method for dealing with unruly students, despite research from the 80s showing that youth develop and respond better to nurturing than punishment. Studies also show young folks have a great capacity to change their behavior through rehabilitation. Sending them to prison is potentially the worst solution, because most prisons lack any resources directed towards recovery, and youth have a greater tendency to commit crimes once they have visited Juvi [juvenile detention center]. Also, once a young person has gone to juvi [juvenile detention center], they are likely to commit more serious crimes upon leaving. Youth criminality has historically been blamed on poor communities or dysfunctional homes, factors that people see as ruinous to children. However, studies of developmental psychology actually show this to be an incomplete indicator of criminality, and that the mental development of a youth is affected by all mentors in her or his life, including teacher, peers, or even police. If one is labeled a trouble-maker early on by a figure as influential as a teacher, one will be disposed to believe that they are indeed trouble makers. Activist and scholar Angela Davis describes over-incarceration as “a way of disappearing people in the false hope of disappearing the underlying social problems they represent” and in many respects, the same principles apply to adults attempting to manage their classrooms. During our research we touched based with a youth-led non-profit called Seattle Young People’s Project. They are currently working on a campaign asking, amongst other things, for the Seattle Public School System to release more data on “informal” types of school punishment, such as in-school suspension and detention. When we asked the middle and high school experts about contributing factors to the school to prison pipeline, they told us that teachers who knew how to simply, “pull a student aside and tell them what they did wrong,” were few and far between. The much more common approach was to send a disruptive student out of the class. This included, to a certain degree, a feeling of public shame for the student’s misbehavior. As the Crime & Community report lies out, “instead of recognizing the distinct attributes of youth, including angst, impressionability, and general confusion, prosecutors [and teachers] will treat juveniles like they were grown-up hardened criminals.” Without over-simplifying a hugely complex social problem, we really believe a few simple things could help alleviate Washington’s opportunity gap. Students of color are pushed out of the classroom, suspended, and truant at rates far exceeding those of their white peers. It is then a logical conclusion that the very students who are kicked out and barred from learning perform would perform worse on tests through the K-12 school system. These gaps in reading scores and test scores are one direct consequence of schools over-dependence on zero-tolerance policies, and discipline. Research also tells us that environmental factors, like community and home life, are not as impactful as people often estimate. We know there are schools and teachers out there already turning the opportunity gap around. Later in our podcast series we’ll go into much further detail about the practices that are helping ease the disparities in sentencing and academic achievement. With honest and transparent work around humanizing the discipline process, learning communities all over have already made progress.