Queer Students in the Carceral State

Despite the gains some components of the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) community achieved during the 2010s in the United States and across the globe, young queer students in K–12 educational environments are still vulnerable to criminalization. Dismantling the movement of young queer youth into the U.S. carceral state also requires challenging systems that may be perceived to be unconnected. School privatization and the deprofessionalization and removal of employment protections for school personnel shapes cultures in schools for LGBTQ young people. Punitive school discipline policies—which often purport to protect queer students—deepen criminalization and do not produce safer schools. While policy shifts may be necessary, they are never sufficient, and building support for all young people, including LGBTQ communities, requires ideological and paradigm shifts, not simply quick fixes. The tools of the carceral state—including increased punishment—will not produce the kind of safety that schools and communities need.

Support or Punishment Practices: What Works to Reduce School Violence

School culture and violence have garnered much public and scholarly attention in recent years. Research in the area has focused on the extent to which strict enforcement of school policies and the law results in safer schools. Other research focuses on providing more supportive, less enforcement-oriented environments for students. We advance this work by using a sample of 2092 respondents from public schools in the United States from the 2015–2016 school survey on crime and safety from the Department of Education. There were several statistically significant supportive practices that reduced violent incidents and disciplinary actions for violence, and the findings generally suggest that punitive policies were not effective in increasing campus safety while controlling for relevant security practices and school contextual variables.

How Restorative Justice Practices Create Safer More Caring School Communities

This paper looks at the traditionally retributive paradigm that is used in Western educational systems to control misbehaviour, issues of injustice, and violence in schools. The paper first talks about the ineffectiveness of this paradigm in creating communities of care and safer schools. The paper then offers that restorative justice (RJ) practices are more effective at creating communities of care and making schools safer. In fact, many schools in North America have been recognizing this and thus implementing RJ practices. The paper looks in depth as to what RJ is and how it is relevant to and works within the school context. This is done to show that RJ changes how individuals view harm. The traditional retributive paradigm views harm as an act of injustice against the state/law, whereas RJ views harm as harm against human beings. This means that RJ fosters understanding, accountability, empathy, connection, and learning positive reconciliation skills that can both be reactive and preventive ways to address harm in schools. Through all these things RJ looks to address the root causes of harm and attend to unmet needs that result from a specific harmful action. These findings are important in the paper as they provide an understanding as to why RJ is then relevant in schools. The paper goes on to argue that RJ is relevant in schools because schools are tasked with socializing children, provide behaviour management, and are currently places where violence frequently occurs. These three factors are extremely important in shaping how individuals and communities operate. Because of this, RJ is argued to be necessary and relevant in order to ensure positive and constructive measures. Next, the paper looks at what circles are and how using circles as an RJ practice in schools can create constructive dialogue that leads to understanding that can reduce incidents of harm and injustice and help to develop communities of care. A study by Ortega, Lyubansky, Nettles, & Espelage (2016) is presented to support these findings. Furthermore, the paper presents how circles could realistically and effectively be implemented in schools according to Braithwaite (2001). Circles need to be implemented on a school wide level, accessible to everyone, and with the hope that they become an everyday practice for individuals to use to resolve issues of harm and injustice. The paper concludes by reiterating that using circles as an RJ practice creates broader participation in schools and fosters a collective value and stake in what happens within a school. This is done through the intentional dialogue of circles, which is proven to foster community, understanding, and needs being met. Ultimately, this makes schools operate in a more responsible way where individuals look out for how their actions are affecting those around them, ultimately making them more conscious citizens and the school a safer place.

Letter from the Editor

For this volume of Allons-y we asked young authors to write about how armed conflict impacts children in the countries on International Crisis Group’s ten conflicts to watch in 2018 list. Much has changed in these conflicts since then, but all continue to do grave harm to children, which we struggle to address in the aftermath. The militarization and abuse of children are often used by autocratic regimes and armed groups to further their aims, and the trauma can have a lasting impact on the children and their societies. The four papers and their accompanying commentary in this volume illustrate these challenges and collectively highlight the importance of prevention.The authors, all young scholars who are in or have recently completed graduate school, wrote about the ways in which children are ripped from their communities in order to be used for military and political ends in armed conflict, and the difficulties of repairing these harms afterwards, whether in countries affected by armed conflict like the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) or when people flee as refugees to new lands. The first two papers explore how children are weaponized: Peter Steele writes about the North Korean Songbun system that militarizes children from birth, and Airianna Murdoch-Fyke writes about the systematic use of rape as a weapon of war targeted at girls in the DRC. Both methods are designed to disrupt a child’s connection to their family and community. The last two papers explore the difficulties of addressing the resulting trauma: Arpita Mitra writes about the failures of the demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration process in the DRC, and Emily Pelley writes about the difficulties of aiding young refugees exposed to wartime violence when they come to Northern countries such as Canada. Collectively, these papers highlight the need to invest more in prevention of wartime abuses, rather than scrambling to catch-up and repair the damage already done.While it may be cliché to say that young people are the future, it is also the truth, and it is important for them to have platforms to discuss and present their ideas and contribute to the most pressing challenges facing our world. Whether it is young politicians challenging our complacency on climate change, students fighting for safer schools, young activists towards peace in their countries and around the world, or young scholars such as the authors of this volume, we must turn to and support the younger generations who are invested in making a better world for themselves and all of humanity. In this spirit, Allons-y seeks to pair the academic and practical work of young people with the commentary of those who are more experienced in their field to demonstrate how young people can contribute to and create a brighter tomorrow.

Understanding school-based policing: recommendations for improving School Resource Officer programs and promoting safer schools

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to leverage the perspectives of School Resource Officers (SROs) to develop improvement strategies aimed toward effective and efficient school-based policing. This study offers recommendations to improve SRO programs, with the goal of streamlining the path toward safer schools. Design/methodology/approach The present study was guided by two overarching research questions that aim to leverage the perspectives of SROs. The first question aimed to identify SROs’ perceived barriers to successful school-based policing, while the second question explores their perspectives in hopes of developing solutions for improved school safety. This study used secondary qualitative data to explore the perspectives of SROs (n=456) via an opened-ended section of a statewide survey of SROs conducted by the North Carolina Center for Safer Schools. Conventional content analysis was the approach used to explore the data. Findings SROs identified the need for improved quality of and access to training, additional resources allocations and improved program implementation on the part of both policing agencies and school districts. Practical implications The authors recommend standardizing the manner in which SRO programs are implemented. In addition, partnerships should be developed between school districts and policing agencies to use school-based behavioral specialists to support SRO programs. Finally, the authors recommend further study of school-based policing as a concept in the academic community. Originality/value Little is known about the experiences and needs of SROs themselves. The present studies address this gap in the literature, leveraging their perspectives to streamline a path toward safer schools.

Examining the Victim-Offender Overlap

Because of the negative consequences associated with adolescent behavioral problems, such as violence, more research is needed that focuses on the interconnectedness between unsafe schools, bully victimization, and subsequent violence. Additional research may also help identify the processes through which victimized individuals become offenders. Drawing from Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory and Coleman's social capital theory, this researcher argues that the bonds between youths and their families and youths and their schools are important for understanding violent offending. Additionally, this chapter merges insights from sociological and criminological research to explore how unsafe schools and victimization occurring in multiple contexts contributes to youths becoming violent offenders. This chapter also provides policy implications, stressing the importance of an approach that considers how we can best invest in youth's future by bridging families and schools to promote safer schools for all students.