The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund (LDF) applauds the vote Monday of the New York City Council to require the New York City police and public school departments to issue periodic reports on the arrests, summonses and suspensions of public school students.
Under the guidelines, unanimously approved by the Council, the police department will produce quarterly reports for the Council on arrests and summonses issued to students, and the city’s education department will issue reports twice a year on suspensions and annually on all other forms of student discipline. The reports will be available to the public online.
LDF, along with the New York Civil Liberties Union and other educational advocacy groups have long charged that schools’ over-zealous disciplinary policies and the disproportionate response of police and school safety officers were endangering the ability of many students to pursue an education. According to a recent LDF booklet, “Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” these two factors “collectively referred to as School-to-Prison Pipeline, push children out of school and hasten their entry into the juvenile, and eventually the criminal, justice system, where prison is the end of the road.”