When you drop your child off at school, technically, the custody of the minor child is transferred from the parent to the custody of the school. The school can even refuse to transfer custody back to a parent in some situations, such as during field trips or in a tornado warning. When a child commits a crime while in the custody of the school, that should raise questions of whether the school properly supervised that child.
Schools have a job to supervise kids, and prevent them from getting into trouble.
Police have a different job. Their job is to look for and arrest persons who have already commited a crime.
So, every incident of police arresting a child, is also evidence of a school failing to supervise a child who is in the school's custody. Why are schools getting a free ride when a child in their custody is inadequately supervised, and consequently commits a crime? Why don't we come down on that school, the way that the law comes down on any parent whose child commits a crime?
This is something that has been bothering me about the "school to prison pipeline" for some time, but reading the diaries of dsnodgrass about the experiences of their child during a drug sting in their school has helped me to drill down to what's really bothering me about this whole thing.
More after the squiggle...
The expectation, when a child is transferred into the custody of the school, when he is "dropped off" in the morning, is that the school must provide all of the supervision, protection and nurturing that the child requires during that time. The school not only provides education, but also must know where the child is at all times, must respond to medical emergencies, provide reasonable supervision, ensure the child is provided with adequate food and shelter, and generally act in loco parentis.
When a child breaks a law when in the custody of the school, then that is, or should be, a sign of negligence by the school. If the school is doing its job of supervising the child and monitoring the child’s behavior, then the child should not have an opportunity to break the law.
Let’s consider what happens when a child breaks the law when in the custody of his parents. Not only does the child face consequences, but so does the parent. The parent may be investigated by CPS, or may have to attend family court and commit to changes which would be designed to provide greater supervision of the child.
So, when a child commits a crime at school, and is arrested, the parents are also brought onto the carpet. But, where is the process by which the school is brought onto the carpet? Don’t we need to ask the first, and most important question, if a child placed in the custody of the school was unsupervised to the point that the child was engaging in crime while in the school’s custody, then is the school a fit institution to be entrusted with the custody of a child?
It is not sufficient for the school to bring in police to detect crime, because at the point, the school is admitting that they are intending to allow the child to commit crime, before taking action. The school is, at that point, intending to abrogate one of their primary roles of supervising children and preventing the child from engaging in crime.
Why aren’t we asking this question? Why don’t we thoroughly investigate the practices of every school at which a child in their custody is arrested, while the child is in their custody? Why are schools not held accountable for their duties and responsibilities to the children whom they take into their custody, when the school is shown by an arrest of the child in their custody, to have failed in their duties to that child?
Every incidence of law-breaking on school property should raise questions of whether the school failed in its duty to supervise those children. There should be an investigation of the school itself to determine if it s properly supervising children in its care. If this process was working properly, if the school's fitness to take children into its custody was thoroughly questioned when a child was found to break a law while in the custody of the school, then schools would not be so eager to have children found guilty of law-breaking.