News shows recently showed video of 14 police officers charging a crowded high-school corridor with guns drawn in a drug sweep. Students at Stratford Creek High School in Goose Creek, S.C., were forced onto their knees or against walls, while dogs sniffed their backpacks for drugs.
None were found. Although the incident was extreme, it was not an aberration but the logical consequences of "zero tolerance" policies, defended by both the school and the police. Zero tolerance must be abandoned, especially in connection with children.
Zero-tolerance policies have resulted in some children being placed in the criminal justice system. Two examples currently in the news: A Missouri judge ruled that a 6-year-old boy suspected of killing his grandfather could be charged as an adult; a New Jersey prosecutor's office has charged a 7-year-old boy with molesting a 5- year-old girl in an incident that the defense attorney describes as "playing doctor."
For most children, zero tolerance is experienced in schools with administrative rules that purportedly enforce safety and discipline. Arguably, the administrative rules are actually a reaction to federal threats to cut funds. For example, in 1994 Congress passed the Gun-Free School Act by which states had to implement zero tolerance on weapons or lose federal money. Many schools rigorously interpreted zero tolerance to include the prohibition of anything even looking like a weapon. They adopted broad definitions of dangerous behavior, which allowed for no exceptions.
Soon the media spilled over with stories of young children being suspended or treated like felons for playing with water pistols, paper guns or even for pointing their fingers at each other and saying "bang."
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And so, an 11-year-old is taken away in handcuffs for drawing a picture of a gun; an 8-year-old faces expulsion for a keychain that contained a cheap nail clipper; a fifth-grader is suspended for drawing the World Trade Center being hit by an airplane ... The stories go on and on.
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A backlash is developing among students who are reportedly saying the same thing nationwide. Many schools now resemble prisons with hidden security cameras, metal detectors, guards, random searches, drug-sniffing dogs, and searches without warrants.
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There is little evidence that zero tolerance produces safety. Instead, it strips away the safeguards of a peaceful society: compassion, due process, good will, presumption of innocence, tolerance, discretion, humor ... It victimizes the most vulnerable citizens: children.
