New Light Shed on the “School to Prison Pipeline”

The “school-to-prison pipeline” is a favorite phrase of sentencing reform advocates.  It’s meant to imply that the real problem with thieves, drug pushers and con artists, etc., is not the choices they make, but the callous and woeful treatment society gives them  as school kids.  Because society is to blame, it’s unjust to punish the individual  — indeed, it’s no longer that the criminal owes a debt to society; it’s that society owes a debt to him!  We see this theme in dozens if not hundreds of academic proposals to water down (or, better, eliminate) punishment in favor of social programs to cater to those who, in that wonderfully opaque phrase, “interact with the criminal justice system.”

In a sense, there may indeed be a “school-to-prison pipeline,” but the way it operates is not exactly what we’ve been led to believe.  It might have more to do with what sort of “education” is going on in the classroom.  The Los Angeles teachers’ union seems to want to help us understand.

This is the Washington Examiner headline: “LA teachers union demands defunding the police and charter ‘moratorium’ before reopening schools.”  The story tells us:

The Los Angeles Teachers Union issued a research paper arguing schools in the district can’t reopen without certain policy provisions in place ranging from mandatory face masks [to help contain the spread of the COVID virus] to a “moratorium” on charter schools and the defunding of police….

“The COVID-19 pandemic in the United States underscores the deep equity and justice challenges arising from our profoundly racist, intensely unequal society,” the paper read. “Unlike other countries that recognize protecting lives is the key to protecting livelihoods, the United States has chosen to prioritize profits over people. The Trump administration’s attempt to force people to return to work on a large scale depends on restarting physical schools so parents have childcare. In Los Angeles, this means increasing risk especially in Black and Brown working communities, where people are more likely to have ‘essential’ jobs, insufficient health care, higher levels of preexisting health conditions, and to live in crowded housing.”

“Meanwhile,” it continued, “the rewards of economic recovery accrue largely to white and well-off communities that have largely been shielded from the worst of the pandemic’s effects.”

The union also made several political demands that are aligned with calls being made by Democrats across the country, including defunding the police and charter schools.

“Police violence is a leading cause of death and trauma for Black people, and is a serious public health and moral issue,” the union said. “We must shift the astronomical amount of money devoted to policing, to education and other essential needs such as housing and public health.”

If our children are exposed to unadulterated leftist tripe like this, posing as “education,” the surprise is not that we have a “school-to-prison pipeline,” but that it isn’t bigger.