BALTIMORE—Bernadine Dohrn, a nationally renown professor, advocate, and author, will speak about the negative impact of “zero tolerance” school discipline policies at an Open Society Institute-Baltimore forum this Wednesday from 10 am-12 noon.
New discipline policies created after the Columbine High School shooting in the mid-1990s are causing young people who commit relatively minor infractions—talking back to the teacher, writing graffiti on school property, etc.—to be suspended, expelled or even prosecuted in court instead of receiving in-school punishments, according to Dohrn. The already overburdened justice system is not able to handle the new caseload and kids are falling through the cracks. Many are discouraged from coming back to school after their suspensions are over, leaving them without a degree or options for the future.
“All across the country cities like Baltimore are facing a school discipline crisis,” says Dohrn, who is the first in series of speakers on the revolving door between school discipline and the juvenile justice system in Baltimore. “With guards, cameras, dogs, and lock-downs, our schools have come to resemble prisons. We have done very little to examine the costs, and whether it makes us safer.”
Dohrn is particularly concerned by studies that show minority children are impacted disproportionately by the new discipline policies. Data from the Maryland Department of Education show that while African-American students comprise less than 34 percent of the student body in Baltimore County, they account for 54 percent of the suspensions. White youths make up almost 60 percent of the students but account for only 42 percent of suspensions.
Representatives from both the school district and the juvenile justice system will be on hand for Dohn’s talk and will stay afterward for a lunch discussion about ways to address the unintended outcomes of zero tolerance policies.
“We can no longer afford to turn a blind eye to the destructive consequences of ‘zero tolerance’ discipline policies on Baltimore’s children,” says Aurie Hall, OSI-Baltimore criminal justice program officer. “This forum series is intended to help bridge the gap between the school system and the juvenile justice system and to brainstorm new ideas about how to keep our kids safe and in school.”
Dohrn, a former radical and member of the Weather Underground, is now a Clinical Associate Professor of Law and the Director and Founder of the Children and Family Justice Center in Chicago, IL. She is the co-editor of two books: A Century of Juvenile Justice and Resisting Zero Tolerance: A Handbook for Parents, Teachers, and Students, and the author of Look Out Kid/It’s Something You Did! Zero Tolerance for Children. Dohrn is the first lecturer in the 2003-4 School Discipline Policies and their Criminal Justice Consequences forum series.