By Nadia Ramlagan
West Virginia schools’ reliance on zero-tolerance policies are driving more kids into the juvenile justice system – with lifelong consequences, experts say.
New data from the Brookings Institution show Black and Hispanic female students are disproportionately referred to the juvenile justice system for minor offenses.
Elizabeth Shahan, executive director of the nonprofit West Virginia Prevention Solutions, said behavior like vaping in a classroom can land a child in a magistrate’s court.
She said research supports using a peer or youth court model that emphasizes positive action, and added it’s a huge investment for communities to offer alternatives.
“But when done well, you are judged by a court of your peers, much like a regular courtroom,” said Shahan. “That court’s job is to come up with a way for you to restore faith in and/or to remedy the situation.”
According to the Brookings report, juvenile complaints lead to more school absences and lower test scores.
Black students are more than twice as likely to receive a referral to law enforcement or be arrested at school than white students.
Shahan said research has shown young brains aren’t developed enough to fully understand the consequences of their actions.
So, the current punitive model only ensures they have no path forward to recognize their behavior as wrong, or be provided examples of good behavior.
“We now have a situation where we have a serious black mark on that youth’s record,” said Shahan. “We’ve basically doomed them to failure.”
Shahan added that overuse of the juvenile justice system for minor or nonviolent offenses comes with a hefty price tag for the state.
“A lot of economic research has gone into if we spend a dollar on preventative services, preventative intervention before kids engage in risky behaviors,” said Shahan, “then we save $24 in treatment costs, court costs, consequences costs.”
She noted that criminal punishment also doesn’t address mental health issues that often led to problematic behavior.
According to data from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the number of school-aged kids struggling with anxiety or depression nationwide rose by 1.5 million between 2016 and 2020.