Everyone.
Everyone in a school is impacted when police have a regular presence in schools. When schools become places where students are arrested, ticketed, tased, pepper sprayed, and surveilled, every single person is impacted by the negative school climate.
BUT, Black students, Latino students, Native American students, LGBTQ students, and students with disabilities are more likely to be directly affected by exclusionary discipline and are arrested, accused of crimes, sent to court, and referred to juvenile probation at disproportionately high rates. Students of color are much more likely to have their behavior addressed by school police officer than their White peers even though they are not more likely to misbehave. These increased interactions are not because of actual student behavior, but can be attributed to the assumptions that educators and police officers may make about students because of their race or the way they look. Discrimination is systemic, but it can also be the result of each individual's implicit biases (the stereotypes and assumptions that people make about each other, even without realizing it).
For example, from 2011-2015, Black students were involved in 40% of the use of force incidents in Texas schools even though they make up only 13% of the total student population in Texas. Black students were also given more tickets and arrested at a greater rate than their White peers.
Student with disabilities are also affected more than their non-disabled peers. For example, from 2011-2015 students with disabilities made up 24% of arrests but were only 9% of total student enrollment. As you can see from the graph below, the proportion of tickets/complaints, arrests, and use of force incidents against disabled students is much greater than the proportion of the student body with disabilities. It is important to note that the number of students with disabilities who are reported as having interacted with police in their schools may increase as the number of students who are identified as needing special education services increases.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) and gender non-conforming students are also over-represented in the school discipline systems and are more likely to experience school sanctions and criminalization than their heterosexual peers. Additionally, a number of Texas advocates have reported that LGBTQ students have been sent to court for school-based behavior that was simply a response to bullying they had endured.
Disproportionate Number of Black and Latino Students Sent to Probation
Referrals to probation increase the likelihood that youth will be involved in the criminal justice system later in life. Data show that Black and Latino students are referred to probation at a much higher rate than their White peers. Black students were referred to juvenile probation at a rate of 2.86 times higher than White students and Latino students were referred to juvenile probation at a rate of 1.87 times higher than White students.
In Texas in 2015, 25% of the students that were referred to probation were Black while Black students only made up 14% of the student population and 12-year-old Black youth were referred to juvenile probation for school-based offenses at the same rate as 15- and 16-year-old White youth.
More information about probation referral rates can be found in the report, Dangerous Discipline, published by Texans Care for Children and Texas Appleseed in 2016.
