Centenial Celebration

Transaction Search Form: please type in any of the fields below.

Date: November 22, 2024 Fri

Time: 12:25 pm

Results for school discipline (rhode island)

1 results found

Author: American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island

Title: The School-to-Prison Pipeline in Black and White

Summary: American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island today issued a report calling on state and municipal leaders to examine policies, practices and procedures that lead to discriminatory treatment of black Rhode Islanders, from elementary school through adulthood. The ACLU report, titled "The School-to-Prison Pipeline in Black and White," offers a brief but systematic examination of racial disparities in Rhode Island, and how those interconnected disparities can lead to a lifetime of unequal treatment. The report, presented in a series of twelve charts, comes as the nation celebrates Black History Month, and grapples with recent events that have pushed racial disparity issues back into the forefront. Data has long shown that black Rhode Islanders are disproportionally suspended from school, stopped and searched by police, arrested, and incarcerated. When this data is compiled, as it is in today's report, it becomes clear that the disproportionate singling out, scrutinizing, and punishing of black Rhode Islanders is a persistent and far-reaching problem and one that contributes to the school-to-prison pipeline, a systematic pattern of pushing students, especially minorities, out of the classroom and into the criminal justice system. The series of charts in today's report show how the disparate punishments doled out as early as elementary school lead to more black youth being swept up in the juvenile justice system where they face harsher punishment than their white counterparts. As adults, black Rhode Islanders are disproportionately stopped and searched by police, exacerbating disparities in arrest rates even when black and white individuals commit infractions at roughly the same rate. The end result of these racial disparities is a prison population that is disproportionately black. This racial disparity leaves the black community to bear the brunt of the socioeconomic consequences that follow incarceration, including lack of employment and denial of housing, perpetuating the cycle of unequal treatment. "Despite this growing body of evidence and consistent work by many to address these disparities, Rhode Island has lacked a comprehensive, strong response to resolve these issues. Worse, even as these disparities persist in the background, too many people still refuse to acknowledge their presence and the damaging effects that flow from them," the report stated. The ACLU urged the state and local leaders, particularly law enforcement agencies and school districts, to help stop the school-to-prison pipeline by regularly examining racial impact of their policies and procedures and developing plans to reduce any racial disparities. The ACLU also continues to support strong, comprehensive racial profiling legislation and legislation limiting the use of out-of-school suspensions.

Details: Providence, RI: ACLU of Rhode Island, 2015. 20p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 4, 2015 at: http://riaclu.org/images/uploads/School_to_Prison_Pipeline_in_Black_and_White_2015.pdf

Year: 2015

Country: United States

URL: http://riaclu.org/images/uploads/School_to_Prison_Pipeline_in_Black_and_White_2015.pdf

Shelf Number: 134748

Keywords:
Racial Discrimination
Racial Profiling
School Discipline (Rhode Island)
School Suspension
Zero Tolerance