Running Head: PROBLEM ANALYSIS: DISABILITIES SCHOOL-TO-PRISON 1
Problem Analysis: Mental Disabilities and
School-to-Prison Pipeline
Jacqueline M. Clifford
New Mexico Highlands University
Author Note
Jacqueline Clifford is a Bachelor of Social Work Student at New Mexico Highlands University, Albuquerque Campus. This research paper is written for the Social Policy and Service class. Any questions regarding this paper or its contents should be addressed to
[email protected]
Summary
In 2011-2012 academic year 46,555 Kindergarten through Twelfth grade students received services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. In New Mexico over 17,000 students received out-of-school suspensions or arrests. Approximately 25% of those suspended or arrested were students with disabilities. This school-to-prison pipeline for students with identified disorders that impact their behavior is a result of school staff's failure to follow established policies, guidelines, and federal law. And, it has a high economic and societal cost. Laws to protect students with disabilities from wrongful restraint, arrest, and adjudication must be enacted by the New Mexico State Senate.
Policy Descriptions:
In the 2011-2012 academic year, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics, Digest of Educational Statistics, in New Mexico 46,555 students – age 3 through 21 – with disabilities received services under the Individuals with Disabilities Improvement Education Act (IDEA) (National Center for Education Statistics, 2013). The accommodations for these students include an Individualized Educational Plan (IEP) and Behavioral Intervention Plan (BIP) based on the results of a functional behavioral assessment (FBA). While the IEP is intended to ensure the student receives services the BIP is intended to build and develop positive behavioral supports. At a minimum a BIP includes a description of the problem behavior, global and specific hypotheses as to why the problem behavior occurs and intervention strategies. A primary purpose of the BIP is to assist in intervention and de-escalation while protecting students with behavioral disabilities from undue harm when a behavioral problem manifests. APS also has a zero-tolerance policy which affects all students in the Albuquerque School District. In part the APS zero-tolerance policy states it is to "[Provide] an orderly, safe, secure, and drug-free environment with a zero-tolerance policy and enforced code of conduct within each school" and to "[Provide] ongoing training to APS SROs around school safety issues, de-escalation and mediation" (Albuquerque Public Schools, 2015a).
Policy Analysis:
Albuquerque Public Schools (APS) has developed and implemented its administrative and procedural directives for students with disabilities. These policies along with the APS zero-tolerance policy may be found on the APS website (Albuquerque Public Schools, 2015b, 2015c). While both the APS IDEA compliant policy and the APS zero-tolerance policies are in place they often conflict with each other. As a result of the disjunction between the two policies persons with disabilities are disproportionately affected by the zero-tolerance policy. The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights reports in 2014 students with disabilities – which only makes up 12% of the overall student population – were more than twice as likely to receive an out-of-school suspension than students without disabilities, and they represented one-quarter of students who were arrested and referred to law enforcement (U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2014, p. 1).
The disparate treatment of students with disabilities and students without disabilities is caused by the staff's failure to properly use the students BIP. The staffs' failure to follow the BIP often results in school police being called in to handle disability manifested behavior. School police are not properly trained in de-escalation of persons with mental health disabilities. The de-escalation technique training they receive is from a law enforcement perspective (Albuquerque Public Schools, 2015a). Failing to follow IDEA, the failure to follow the school districts written policies, and the circumvention of the disability manifestation determination hearing by school staff and police usually result in suits for wrongful arrests. As by Jacqueline Clifford in "Mental Disabilities and School-to-Prison Pipeline" these failures have a high cost:
In these instances mental and emotional damage are common. These lawsuits can reach as high as half-million dollars. Payouts on such lawsuits are often shouldered by the local communities and remove critical financial resources from the public school system. Policies of this nature also burden the judicial system and, in many cases, cost more in social welfare (Clifford, 2015, pp. 3-4).
The mental health school-to-prison pipeline isn't limited to APS. It is also a State problem and needs to be addressed as such through the New Mexico Senate and Department of education.
Conclusion and Policy Recommendations:
Despite having written policies concerning Section 504 and plans in place for students with disabilities IEP's and BIP's, there are excessive arrests and adjudications for behavioral disability manifestations. The cause of inappropriate restraining and arrests is not the policies in place but failure to follow the IDEA policies of the school district in favor of the zero-tolerance policies. It is a result of the lack of training in mental health de-escalation techniques for teachers, staff, and school police. The result is a high cost to the schools, community, society, unnecessary trauma to the disabled student, and the abridgement of the student's rights under federal law.
In the New Mexico Senate Judiciary Committee Substitute for Bill 283 limiting the Use of Restraint and Seclusion was introduced; the Act failed in Committee (Senate Judiciary Committee, 2015). This Act would have limited restraint of students; especially students with behavioral disabilities. But, the Act is only part of a solution and should be reintroduce to include requirements for initial and recurring mental health de-escalation training for teachers, staff, and school police. The training must include proven techniques specific to behavioral disorders as well as IDEA and the proper use of BIP's in the school environment. BIP's should also contain provisions for parental intervention. When a behavioral disability manifests the school police must only be used as a last resort and only when the BIP behavioral interventions, and de-escalation, and parental interventions have failed. Judiciary involvement should be limited, in these cases to clinical referral for stabilization of the disabled student.
References
Autistic 8-Year-Old Child Arrested by cops put in Jail & Put In Straight Jacket Over School
Outburst [Video file]. (2011, January 14, Updated). Retrieved
from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpDw_mkrCNI (cited in Clifford, 2015)
Albuquerque Public Schools. (2015a, October 01). APS Police - Divisions. Retrieved October
16, 2015, from Albuquerque Public Schools: http://www.aps.edu/police/about-us/divisions
Albuquerque Public Schools. (2015b, October 01). Closing the Achievement Gap and Educating
all Children to High Standards - Providing an Educational Environment Where Children Focus on Learning. Retrieved October 17, 2015, from Albuquerque Public Schools: http://www.aps.edu/academics/academic-plan/academic-plan-blueprint/closing-the-achievement-gap-and-educating-all-children-to-high-standards-providing-an-educational-environment-where-children-focus-on-learning
Albuquerque Public Schools. (2015c, October 01). II - Special Education. Retrieved October 20,
2015, from Albuquerque Public Schools: http://www.aps.edu/about-us/policies-and-procedural-directives/policies/i.-instruction/ii-special-education
Autistic 8-Year-Old Child Arrested by cops put in Jail & Put In Straight Jacket Over School
Outburst [Video file]. (2011, January 14, Updated). Retrieved
from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpDw_mkrCNI (cited in Clifford, 2015)
Clifford, J. (2015, September 24). Mental Disabilities and the School to Prison Pipeline.
Albuquerque: New Mexico Highlands University.
Congress, 1. (2004). Public Law 108-446 (d)(1)(A) Purposes. Individuals with Disabilities
Education Improvement Act of 2004.
National Center for Education Statistics. (2013, May 1). Digest of Education Statistics. Retrieved
October 15, 2015, from Institute of Educational Sciences:
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_204.70.asp
Senate Judiciary Committee. SUBSTITUTE FOR BILL 283. (2015, March 12).
Retrieved October 17, 2025, from New Mexico Legislature: Retrieved October 17, 2015, from http://www.nmlegis.gov/Sessions/15%20Regular/bills/senate/SB0283JUS.pdf
U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights. (2014, March 01). CIVIL RIGHTS
DATA COLLECTION Data Snapshot: School Discipline. Retrieved October 19, 2015, from CIVIL RIGHTS DATA COLLECTION: http://ocrdata.ed.gov/Downloads/CRDC-School-Discipline-Snapshot.pdf
PROBLEM ANALYSIS: DISABILITIES SCHOOL-TO-PRISON 6
