LGBTQ+ Students and the School-to-Prison Pipeline

A Thread for PSCI 3301 @real_prof_baird

Why are LGBTQ+ students overrepresented in the juvenile justice system?

LGBTQ+ students face disproportionate punishment when compared to their non-LGBTQ+ peers for similar actions. They are pushed out of school due to outdated policies and into juvenile detention, a phenomenon known as the school-to-prison pipeline.

Zero-tolerance policies which originated in the 1990s due to fears of school shootings punish students severely regardless of the circumstances. They came into place after the Gun-Free Schools Act which required punishment of a year expulsion for bringing a weapon to school.

As the name suggests, zero-tolerance policies mean that students do not get a second chance and are punished for misbehaving immediately. However, the definition of “misbehaving” varies vastly between different schools.

These punishments push students into juvenile detention centers. Zero-tolerance policies led to Student Resource Officers being brought into schools which have made school environments less safe for students, LGBTQ+ or not.

SROs often make schools less safe for students. On top of this, GLSEN found that LGB youth are up to 3x more likely to face disciplinary treatment than their non-LGB peers. They represent 15% of the juvenile justice system population but only 5-7% of the total youth population.

LGBTQ+ students are more likely to skip school than their peers due to a variety of reasons such as bullying, feeling unsafe at school, or problems that could be happening at home that prevent them from attending school. However, truancy can be punished harshly in many places.

While some may argue that SROs make schools safer and can act as mentors for students, they cause more harm than good. An example of this is when an officer arrested a 6-year-old for throwing a tantrum which did not make the school more safe or mentor the student.

Because of this, we suggest that Student Resource Officers be replaced with Social Workers in schools. Social Workers are better equipped to work with struggling students who often have an outside reason as to why they misbehave.

We also suggest that federal zero-tolerance policies are repealed and replaced with policies that protect LGBTQ+ and other minority students from the disproportional punishments that they face.

Please dm me if you would like me to send citations as there are way too many to put here. Thank you for reading. To my moots I hope this was educational even though it is different from my normal posts.

Also I am sorry that this thread because a bit of a mess, I had some trouble putting it in order and lost some tweets so I may have missed some information.

@real_prof_baird Please let me know if I need to add additional information to this thread. Thanks :) I will link my brief when we have completed it which should be in the next few days.

hello don’t mind me i’m adding my completed policy brief to this thread