Zero Tolerance Policy Essay

Unfortunately, the notion of schools being a safe place is no longer a trend across American schools. Disturbing mass shootings in the U.S continue to shock the media. A school shooting is when someone attacks a school using a gun. The Secret Service says these shootings are "deliberately selected as the location for the attack". The reasons massacres occur in schools is because of poor security, violence in video games/media, and bullying. Shockingly the U.S. has the most school shootings than any other country in the world. According to the FBI, mass shootings occur, on average, every 2 weeks in the U.S. While the cause of school shootings are sometimes unpredictable, it is a growing issue and they need to be prevented. Most shooters don’t have mental issues, they have a plan to kill, so there is no singular cause that creates violent people. On April 16th, 2007, the most deadly school massacre occurred. Seung-Hui Cho killed thirty-two students at Virginia-Tech. As Americans, we no longer should turn on the news and witness these gruesome murders. We try to make sense of these murders, but it’s ineffectual. There are measures we can take as a society to help. The number one question in a school massacre is, "why would a person that has a capable sense of mind even do that?” It is our moral responsibility to fix these issues. In order to stop this problem, we need to find its roots.

Crime rates and particularly the rates of violent and gun related crimes are rising in most rich countries. Targets for blame include higher drug use, higher inequality and greater availability of weapons. While Liberal politics tends to favor rehabilitation and structural improvement to combat crime the right wing has always seen criminality as a rational choice that can be combated by deterrence. Zero Tolerance policing aims to stop serious crime by clamping down on the minor crimes like graffiti that the practitioners believe lead to further crimes and using custodial sentences for first offences. It includes set responses to particular crimes by the police although the courts maintain some discretion. Zero Tolerance is not necessarily

Zero-tolerance policies developed to prevent drug abuse and violence in school in 1990 in the U.S. Even if those behaviors or small things minor offenses were done by accident or unconsciously, students get prosecuted and sent into the juvenile justice system as a punishment. Schools create disciplines for suspending and expelling students when they break certain rules. For example, if a student brings a weapon to school, including items that may not hurt anyone like nail clippers and toy guns, if a student has drugs, including medications or alcohol on campus, if a student says anything that someone could get as a threat, if a student does not obey teacher’s instruction, if a student fights with other students, the student would be given punishment with no choice. After adopting this policy, the number of school suspensions and dismissals increased, and the number of students who send into the prison also increased as well. Therefore, the school to prison pipeline became an issue in the education system.

The intention of this paper is to look at and present some issues and strategies that members of a school community think about when trying to create safer schools. Particularly when addressing an active shooter in a school setting. A major issue to consider when trying to keep all schools safe, is the simple fact that no two schools are the same. Understanding this can lead us to the conclusion that it is impossible to have one global plan or program that can be 100% effective in all schools. “Violence prevention programs work best when they incorporate multiple strategies and address the full range of possible acts of violence in schools. For any set of policies to work, it must be established and

Zero tolerance started as a way to keep guns out of schools until the staff at school started to use it as a way to report and punish non serious offences (Heitzeg, 2009).

Zero tolerance policies arose during the late 1980’s in response to a rising tide of juvenile arrests for violent offenses and the expanding view of youth as dangerous. During this time discipline in educational settings became much more formal and rigid. Discretion was removed from teachers and administrative staff in favor of broadly instituted policies, which often involved law enforcement and arrest. In 1994 Congress passed the Gun-Free Schools Act, which forced states to pass laws mandating expulsion for a minimum of one year for bringing a weapon to school in order to receive federal education funds. By the mid 90’s roughly 80% of schools had adopted zero tolerance policies beyond the federal requirements and in response the federal government began to increase funding for security guards and other school based law enforcement officers and equipment. These changes occurred primarily between 1996 and 2008 and mirrored changes in the juvenile justice system to more closely emulate the adult system.

Zero tolerance policies are the catalyst for the School-to-Prison pipeline. The problem with zero tolerance policies rely on several different factors. Even though, the vision for zero tolerance policies is clear in the sense that safety is a main priority, A ten year study of zero tolerance policies conducted by the American Psychological Association concluded that the use of these overly harsh policies "did not improve school safety." Since these policies are not increasing school safety it is a clear indicator that change in disciplinary methods is necessary. Additionally, these overly harsh policies create racial disparities mainly focused on minorities. The reason for these racial disparities particularly arise from implicit bias. Unfortunately, student of color and minorities are disportionately represented in suspensions, expulsions, and arrests. Exclusionary discipline principles disproportionately lead the youth, particularly minorities, from classrooms to court and prisons. Racial disparities within school’s disciplinary actions is clear when looking at discipline rates. The Civil Rights Data Collection, gathered by the US Department of Education, graphed suspension rates and disparities in a national test sample during 2012. Figure 1 portrays the ratio of white students that constitute for a little more than half of students enrolled in school while black and hispanic students constitute for less than

A social reformer, a civil philanthropist, and a judge by the name of James(Jim) Gray, strongly believes that no matter how loose or strict prosecutors are on drug offenders the war on drugs is going to continue until the United States can realize that the only way to solve the drug addiction problem in America is to realize that we must rehabilitate and treat drug offenders and addicts in order to prevent and eliminate drug related violence and crime(Gray, J. P. 2011. pp. 19-20). Judge Gray continues on to state that we must see and treat drug users as human beings, which according to judge Gray most Americans do not do this. Judge Gray stated that the zero tolerance policy that we have here in the United States allows little to no room

"Zero tolerance" policies are the new theme in fighting weapons and drugs in schools. These policies behind the pressure of President Clinton have been enacted in 47 states. The idea is to encourage states to get tough on youth that threaten their own safety and the safety of others. Some of the more popular measures with these policies include installing metal detectors at school entrances, the use of armed security guards to patrol and monitor students, and the automatic removal of students who break rules regarding weapons and drugs. According to the Department of Education, school districts that have enacted these policies are showing improvements in these areas. For example, Dade county public school officials seized only 110 guns in the past year from 193 the previous year after enacting a zero tolerance policy.

“Zero-Tolerance Policy” is the leading cause of most disobedient students, the reason why most students drop out of school and the cause of insubordination among students. The Zero-Tolerance Policy is a policy that, like the name states, has zero-tolerance for anything. Anything seen as a threat or anything that sends an inappropriate message towards the community is considered bad and the student could get arrested, suspended and/or expelled. The Zero-Tolerance policy applies to any student, regardless if a student has any health problems and falls to any student between the ages of 4-18. It could also apply to a student who could have the lowest amount of infractions possible. They say that removing students is necessary for learning, but, in doing that, they hurt the student as well. Some places don’t provide alternative places for students to learn at, really taking away their education. If it really ensures a safe and orderly environment for children, then there should be proof. There is no actual proof that it makes students feel safer (Wahl, "School Zero Tolerance Policies Do Harm" par. 1). It alienates the student and makes the student feel as if they are the “odd-one out”. Due to the injustices that this creates, the Zero-Tolerance Policy is ineffective, because it teaches students injustice, lowers students academic rates and minor offences are punished.

The zero tolerance policy has become a national controversy in regards to the solid proven facts that it criminalizes children and seems to catch kids who have no intention of doing harm. Although, there has been substantial evidence to prove that the policies enforced in many schools have gone far beyond the extreme to convict children of their wrongdoing. The punishments for the act of misconduct have reached a devastating high, and have pointed students in the wrong direction. Despite the opinions of administrators and parents, as well as evidence that zero tolerance policies have deterred violence in many public and private schools, the rules of conviction and punishment are unreasonable and should be modified.

In my personal experience, I have discovered that the Zero Tolerance policy exhibits discrimination. According to Curran (2016), the zero policy is an approach that comes in the about in obligatory removal of any students who aims one or more indicates offenses. The plan addresses a substantial systemic issue and the actuality that schools abandon the obligation to teach the most stimulating understudies. One of the essential reactions of zero tolerance is that such arrangements do not generate impartial results for all learners and the late research has displayed significant gaps in disciplinary rates by race (Curran, 2016). There is an advancing quantity of youth denied instructive, opportunity within this policy. As stated by Curran (2016),

I personally think a zero-tolerance policy for drugs, violence, and weapons in a school district that utilize school safety officers as security is extremely important as this policy ensures the safety of not only the student body, but also the administrators. The implementation of strict discipline polices guarantees a safeguarded community. School zones enacting such policies tend to be highly exposed to the undesirable elements of gang affliction and substance abuse. Therefore, these polices are enacted to deter against threatening elements residing in these school zones. For instance, a student knowingly aware he/she has a greater chance of getting suspended or expelled for displaying unwarranted actions in a school zone, the student will

School violence has become of the most pressing educational problems in the United States. Gang violence and high profile shootings across the nation cause concern within schools. Communities struggle to understand why these events take place and how they can be prevented. The overwhelming response to solve the issue of violence in schools is the increasing societal pressure to execute zero tolerance. Zero tolerance is driven by the educational philosophy, policies, and practices of school communities. Stakeholders expect schools to be a safe place for staff and for students. Stakeholders assume that a positive classroom environment, safe students, and school enjoyment are conditions necessary to create a positive climate where learning takes place. This assumption can be backed with research. A calm classroom environment, teachers’ management of disruptive behavior, and students’ view of school safety are factors that have been found to directly correlate with student achievement in the classroom (Ma & Willms, 2004). Safety and a feeling of not being threatened during school hours have been found to be important to students’ achievement. Failure to remove a disruptive or an unruly student from school has been found to have a negative impact on achievement and creates a great risk to school staff and students (Garbarino et al., 1992). Teachers cannot teach and students cannot learn in an

Once clearly defined, enforcing the zero tolerance policies can be relatively easy for the offenses related to illegal drugs and alcohol. These are serious threats to school safety and using common sense when applying the policies against such offenses should help. Violence on the other hand is more difficult to define at schools because it can take many forms. Under the Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994, in order for school