Police in Schools Continue to Target Black, Brown, and Indigenous Students with Disabilities. The Trump Administration Has Data That’s Likely to Prove It.
Across the country, communities are pushing their schools to divest funding from police and reinvest those funds in student mental health care and other supportive services. But in making their case to their respective school boards, these parents, students, and advocates have run into one significant barrier — outdated data on policing in schools.
Every other year, the Department of Education collects and eventually releases to the public data that shows the number of student referrals and arrests made by police (including school resource officers (SROs)) in public schools, and which students are most impacted. The data includes students’ ages, gender, race, and whether they have a disability. Time and time again, this data has shown students of color and students with disabilities are disproportionately referred to and arrested by police in schools.
The data also includes staffing data detailing how many counselors, social workers, school psychologists, and nurses are in schools compared to law enforcement officers or SRO presence. This data is crucial for understanding how police in schools have fueled the school-to-prison pipeline, and the dire discrepancies in funding for mental health personnel in schools compared to funding for policing our students.
The Department of Education has been collecting arrest and referral data for the last 10 years through the (CRDC) — a collection they have administered since 1968. The data from the 2015-2016 school year, released in April 2018, is the last data set that was released to the public.
Now, the Department of Education is sitting on the most recent data from 2017-2018 and has neglected to release it publicly.
This is why we’ve filed a Freedom of Information Act request to address the Department of Education’s inaction and call on them to release this data set. This data is needed across states and localities to inform policy reform amidst a growing movement to divest police from our schools. We know that the number of police officers in schools is steadily rising, but we don’t know if the numbers of school-based mental health staff have been keeping pace. Holding this data hostage prevents us from making the most informed decisions we can for our schools and how we can allocate funds.
The Impact of Policing on Our Disabled Students, Students of Color, and Disabled Students of Color
If historical trends in the data hold true, law enforcement in schools will continue to disproportionately target students of color, students with disabilities, and students of color with disabilities.
Black and Indigenous students, students of color (BIPOC), and students with disabilities often have to attend schools with fewer resources and support and school staff that are often not adequately trained and staffed to accommodate children with disabilities. When there are no other support staff to address behavioral problems, some teachers request help from law enforcement. This is where things often go awry. Police in schools do what they are trained to do — detain, handcuff, and arrest. Past data analyzed by the ACLU shows that schools with police reported 3.5 times as many arrests as schools without police.
Just as with the concentration of policing in low income communities of color, policing in schools is also racialized. Our report, “Cops and No Counselors” analyzed CDRC data from 2015 to 2016 and found students of color are more likely to go to a school with a police officer, more likely to be referred to law enforcement, and more likely to be arrested at school. Nationally, Black students are more than twice as likely as their white classmates to be referred to law enforcement. Black students are three times as likely to be arrested as their white classmates, and in some states, Black girls are over eight times as likely to be arrested as white girls. During the 2015-16 school year, 1.6 million students attended a school with a sworn law enforcement officer and no counselor.
What makes a child most likely to be targeted by a police officer while in school? Simply having a disability. Overall, students with disabilities were nearly three times more likely to be arrested and referred than students without disabilities (and this disparity increases up to tenfold in some states), and the risk is multiplied in schools with police.
If a child has a disability, and they are also a student of color, the odds are even worse. For instance, in Rhode Island, Native American students are referred to law enforcement at a rate five times the national average. But Native American boys with disabilities are arrested at a rate almost 7.5 times the national average. Black and Latino boys with disabilities represent only 3 percent of students nationally, but account for 12 percent of school arrests. Black boys are also often labeled as “emotionally disturbed” or simply “bad” when non-compliant behavior occurs — whether or not they have an emotional or behavioral disability — and those behaviors disproportionately lead to a law enforcement response rather than a supportive response through appropriate accommodations.
Schools have consistently chosen policing over implementation and expansion of mental health resources that support our students. During the 2015-16 school year, 1.6 million students attended a school with a sworn law enforcement officer and no counselor. We know from the 2013-14 school year data that Black students were to attend a school with more security personnel than mental health personnel. What will the story of the 2017-18 school year data tell us?
Next Steps: Demanding More Transparency
The Department of Education is not solely to blame for us not seeing this data now — many states and large school districts also lack transparency in publishing this data, in violation of both the CRDC and the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). As my colleague Harold Jordan has , states and local education agencies are required under ESSA to publish annual “report cards” on measures of school quality, climate, and safety, including information on school-related arrests and referrals to law enforcement. An internal review shows that the vast majority of states do not have current policing data available on their websites — often only the 2015-16 data their districts reported to the CRDC — and that’s if they reported the data at all.
“Every district should have already posted that data in their school and district report cards for the 2017-18 school year,” Daniel Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA’s Civil Rights Project cautions. “Very few did so. We are concerned we will see with the release of the ’17-‘18 data that a lot of districts have once again failed to report their data, which means they violated civil rights law. And one reason is that there is no accountability when districts fail to report the required data. We anticipate that about half of the largest districts will report zero arrests.”
This is a funhouse mirror of reality where some districts and states feel that the Civil Rights Data Collection and the ESSA reporting requirements do not apply to them. Districts and states must do better to comply with federal law and maintain transparency for their communities.
In the meantime, the Department of Education has not yet released this data while communities and policymakers are making crucial decisions about the role of law enforcement in our schools. Having this data is more pertinent than ever. We need to be able to document what our Black, Brown, Indigenous, and disabled communities already know: that policing in schools is harmful for our students.
The Department of Education is officially on notice. States and school districts are too. Communities need this data immediately to help inform important policy decisions that will best serve our students. We need the data to be accurate and provided now to show our policymakers why we must divest from police, and invest in helping our students succeed.
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Press ReleaseDec 2024
Prisoners' Rights
Criminal Law Reform
ACLU Sues Bureau of Prisons for Keeping People in Prison Longer Than the Law AllowsACLU Sues Bureau of Prisons for Keeping People in Prison Longer Than the Law Allows
WASHINGTON – A federal lawsuit brought today by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of D.C., and Jenner & Block LLP challenges the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) for unlawfully incarcerating people longer than the law allows under the First Step Act. The lawsuit contends that the BOP’s failure to implement the First Step Act according to its plain language violates the rights of thousands of people who should be returning to their communities and rebuilding their lives but instead remain incarcerated. Signed into law in 2018 by then-President Donald Trump, the bipartisan First Step Act was designed to reduce the population in federal prisons, reform extreme sentencing laws, and provide programming and reentry transition services to people in prison. Central to the First Step Act is a system of earned time credits, which allows people in prison to earn time off their sentences and time out of prison by participating in rehabilitation programs. Through the First Step Act, Congress unambiguously ordered BOP to move people out of prison when they meet certain requirements to use their earned time credits. Instead of faithfully following the mandatory law, BOP adopted a regulation treating the law as optional. As a result, thousands of people, who should already be back in their communities and with their families, remain in prison. “Every extra unlawful day our clients spend in prison is a serious injustice,” said Emma Andersson, deputy director of the Criminal Law Reform Project at the ACLU. “It is egregious that the Bureau of Prisons is imprisoning people for months longer than the law allows. The government must follow through on its legal obligation to get people out of prison on time and back into their communities, where they belong.” Additional comments below from: Vanessa Crowe, plaintiff: “Time is what I owed for my wrongdoing, and I have paid my time. But I should not have to spend more time in prison than the law allows. I often reflect on what I will miss during the months after when I should be out of prison. I will miss work and lose out on wages that would help me get back on my feet. I could be a tax paying citizen instead of a burden on society. But most of all, I will miss more precious time with my family. My family and I are ready to tum the page on this period in our lives — we are all ready to start a new life, a life with purpose, hope, and healing together. I want to start that life when I am legally entitled to start it-not five months later.” Arthur Spitzer, senior counsel at ACLU of D.C.: “There’s no excuse for the Bureau of Prisons to pretend not to understand Congress’s clear command that people who have earned the right to early release must be released. This law has been on the books for six years. The Bureau of Prisons has had plenty of time to understand it. Law enforcers should obey the law.” Betsy Henthorne, partner at Jenner & Block: “It has been six years since the First Step Act was signed, but despite Congress’s clear directives, the Bureau of Prisons continues to hold thousands of people in prison longer than the law allows. We should and do expect better—it’s past time for the BOP to ensure that those who have earned their release are able to return home to their families and communities according to the law Congress passed.” -
Maryland Supreme CourtDec 2024
Criminal Law Reform
Roland Branch v. State of MarylandRoland Branch v. State of Maryland
This petition to the Supreme Court of Maryland asked the court to reconsider its adherence to Whren v. U.S., 517 U.S. 806 (1996), which declared that a traffic stop undertaken for pretextual reasons does not violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution so long as the police have probable cause to believe that a traffic violation occurred. The ACLU, alongside the ACLU of Maryland, filed an amicus brief in support of the defendant’s petition, in which the ACLU argued that the court should take up the question of whether pretextual stops violate the Maryland Constitution. In September 2024, the Court denied the petition. -
North Carolina Supreme CourtDec 2024
Criminal Law Reform
State v. WrightState v. Wright
This case in the North Carolina Supreme Court involves the question of whether the police violated the U.S. Constitution when they searched the defendant, Mr. Wright’s, backpack even after he repeatedly said no to the search requests. The ACLU alongside the ACLU of North Carolina filed an amicus brief arguing that the search was unconstitutional because Mr. Wright’s eventual “consent” was the result of police coercion. Our brief urges the court to consider the totality of the circumstances that make one more susceptible to coercion, including race and poverty. -
News & CommentaryDec 2024
Criminal Law Reform
Disability Rights
Incarceration Should Not be a Death Sentence for Individuals Who Use OpioidsIncarceration Should Not be a Death Sentence for Individuals Who Use Opioids
New litigation centered on increasing access to substance-use disorder treatment in jails and prisons is helping to reduce mortality rates among incarcerated individuals.