A police chief in Texas said he believes his colleagues contribute to increased high school dropout rates and reinforce the school-to-prison pipeline when they, rather than school administrators, discipline students for misbehaving.
“There was a correlation between an increase and proliferation of police forces in these school districts and the dropout rate,” Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo told Time Warner Cable News last week.
The school-to-prison pipeline refers to a system in which students who could benefit from more care and education are frequently heavily disciplined and dismissed from school, which often leads to them spending time in juvenile detention centers or jail.
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“Police should be there as mentors, as teachers, and to maintain the safety of the faculty and the staff — not to take the place of what should be handled administratively as discipline and not criminal conduct,” Acevedo said.
(h/t ThinkProgress)
