Alyona joins Ana on TYT by TYT Network

School-to-Prison Pipeline: Alyona joins Ana on TYT by TYT Network. (2011, August 23).

Many reports on the school-to-prison pipeline drop back to the 1980s where we heard a lot of the tough-on-crime rhetoric during the Reagan era and that continued into the early 1990s as an emotional reaction to violence in schools such as the school shootings. By 1997, 79% of public schools had a zero-tolerance policy. The severity of punishments are not fitting the crime, in some cases, students were jailed for doodling on desks or bringing plastic lego toy guns to school. It is upsetting that true criminals, like those in Wall Street get away with crimes yet grade school children being criminalized for being children. Motives are questioned, especially when judges are jailed for accepting bribes from private jails to increase inmate numbers. Private prisons can be considered the biggest problem to our justice system since they are run for profit. There is a correlation between the spike of success of these private prisons in the 1980’s and the implementation of zero-tolerance policies in school districts around that time. If students are ticketed due to infractions to their school’s zero-tolerance policy, they are often times fined and have to appear in court- children are being treated as criminals. The racial aspect of this cannot be ignored, in Dallas, Texas, 30% of the student population is black yet 62% of students given these tickets are black. Our educational system is suppose to prepare youth for the future-not criminalize them.