Report On Youth Violence
...to peel back the veneer of hot-tempered discourse that often surrounds the issue.... While it is important to carefully review the circumstances surrounding these horrifying incidents so that we may learn from them, we must also be cautious about inappropriately creating a cloud of fear over every student in every classroom across the country. In the case of youth violence, it is important to note that, statistically speaking, schools are among the safest places for children to be.
Final Report, Bi Partisan Working Group on Youth Violence
106th Congress, February 2000
Public policy towards children has moved towards treating them more like adults and in ways that increasingly mimic the adult criminal justice system. The most recent version of this movement is so-called "zero tolerance" in schools, where theories of punishment that were once directed to adult criminals are now applied to first graders.1
"Zero tolerance" is the phrase that describes America's response to student misbehavior. Zero tolerance means that a school will automatically and severely punish a student for a variety of infractions. While zero tolerance began as a Congressional response to students with guns, gun cases are the smallest category of school discipline cases. Indeed, zero tolerance covers the gamut of student misbehavior, from including "threats" in student fiction to giving aspirin to a classmate. Zero tolerance has become a one-size-fits-all solution to all the problems that schools confront. It has redefined students as criminals, with unfortunate consequences.
While zero tolerance policies target the serious risk of students bringing guns to school, they also go after other weapons or anything, like a Swiss Army knife, that can be used as a weapon. Zero tolerance responds to student violence (covering a wide range of activities) or threats of violence. Zero...
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