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The presence of police in schools is a bridge between a classroom and a prison cell. A process of criminalisation. Where young people of colour & those with SEN are placed under mind-torturing levels of surveillance. Leaving no room for empathy or understanding behaviour (1/7) https://twitter.com/ewa_jay/status/1390579486387806208
Instead, it buries the idea of young people being victims. Of poverty & trauma. Of systemic failures & denials of support. It leaves us questioning ten years later. After prison, exclusion & care: how different our lives would be? Had we been given support, not surveillance (2/7)
The presence of police in schools in schools is not ‘early intervention’. What we need is early intervention. Mental health support, extra help for young people who struggle with accessing education, a child first & trauma informed approach to behaviour (3/7)
Police cannot support us. When my school reported me to the police for stealing stationary, not only was I arrested & excluded. But I was also stopped and search every time those police officers saw me on the streets. (4/7)
My friends who still went to that school experienced stoped and searched after school. At times, right in front of the school gates. Police target specific young people that they recognise in school and make it their duty to stop and search them after school. (5/7)
My trauma is a weight I still carry to this. It’s a sign of psychological warfare. How privileged decision makers enforce policies that leaves young people of colour in cycles of trauma. Not only are we held back from progressing because of institutional racism. (6/7)
But we are also held back because of the psychological damage that we have to spend years healing from. Which impacts our growth and abilities. A lifelong pain. Created by decisions that the privilege make within a few days. (7/7)
