Poor schools, more student incarcerations

I

 have been in the Florida school system all my life. 

Although my public education worked to my advantage, that is not always the case for minority students like myself. A major problem in the American education system today is the school-to-prison pipeline.  

The school-to-prison pipeline involves deep, integrated cooperation between state government agencies, law enforcement and the private prison industry. 

The state helps funnel many children into the path of the prison system by adopting harsh zero tolerance policies.

That allows police to arrest students on school campuses for minor infractions such as fist fights and dress code violations. 

To make a profit, private prison companies set quotas on the amount of prisoners needed to fill prison cells.

That creates an incentive to incarcerate as many offenders as possible. 

As a result, law enforcement target poorer minority communities at a higher rate than usual. 

This practice is irresponsible and morally wrong. 

To put the school-to-prison pipeline into perspective, about 12,000 Florida students were arrested a nearly 14,000 times in 2013. Arresting young people of color at this rate has potentially irreversible effects and is a display of blatant discrimination. 

Being arrested at a young age can shatter a child’s trust of authority. 

And he or she may come to see school as a hostile, unwelcoming place. 

Repeated infractions can lead to serious felony offenses, which set these children up for failure. 

Our country’s current method of correcting behavior prefers trimming weeds, rather than pulling them out by the roots. 

A more productive method would be to shift away from the punitive approach by mentoring students, maximizing the use of guidance counselors and including parents in the correction process. This tactic actually worked in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties. 

In 2013, school districts and the NAACP partnered together and succeeded in cutting in-school arrests in half. 

Despite these improvements, the state of Florida still leads the country in school-based arrests. 

Although new methods have been more effective in reducing the number of student arrests and incarcerations, they still do not address the true root of the issue: poverty. 

Poor communities need the resources that affluent communities take for granted, such as full funding for public schools. 

Millions of dollars of desperately needed education funding have been gutted by the Florida Legislature under Gov. Rick Scott’s authority. Creating and enabling the privatization of prisons is not a viable solution. 

It will not curb the spread of poverty or the expansion of the school-to-prison pipeline.

Every American child, regardless of race or socio-economic status, deserves access to a quality public education. 

The prison-industrial complex emphasizes profits more than empowering our underprivileged youth. 

Making money off of the imprisonment of black and brown boys is disgraceful and irresponsible. Dealing with mass incarcerations remain unfinished business in our state and our country. Divest from private prisons. Invest in our future.

Harold Joseph is a political science junior. His columns usually appear on Tuesdays.