Juvenile Court Referrals and the Public Schools: Nature and Extent of the Practice in Five States

• Author: Mark S. Zablocki,Michael P. Krezmien,Craig S. Wells,Peter E. Leone
• DOI: 10.1177/1043986210368642
• Date: 01 August 2010
• Published date: 01 August 2010
• Subject Matter: Articles

Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice

26(3) 273 –293

© 2010 SAGE Publications

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DOI: 10.1177/1043986210368642

http://ccj.sagepub.com

Juvenile Court Referrals

and the Public Schools:

Nature and Extent of the

Practice in Five States

Michael P. Krezmien1, Peter E. Leone2,

Mark S. Zablocki2, and Craig S. Wells1

Abstract

Federal legislation and concern about high-profile school shootings have placed

attention on safe schools and school discipline. Anecdotal evidence and several

reports indicate that in response to calls to promote safety, schools are increasingly

referring students to the juvenile courts for acts of misbehavior. Using data from

the National Juvenile Court Data Archive, the study reported here examined school

referrals (SR) to the juvenile courts in five states from 1995 to 2004. We studied SR

over time as well as the proportion of total referrals originating in schools. There was

variability in the number of referrals to the juvenile courts originating in the schools

and in the trends of SR across states as well as the odds that referrals originated

in schools. We found evidence that in four of five states, referrals from schools

represented a greater proportion of total referrals to juvenile courts in 2004 than in

1995. We also found differences in the odds of SR to out-of-school referrals (OSR)

by race and by gender in some states but not in others. The findings suggest that

states may differ in the way in which their schools respond to misbehavior and in the

way their schools directly refer students to the juvenile courts. We conclude with a

discussion of the implications of the findings.

Keywords

school referrals, school crime, delinquency, race, gender

1University of Massachusetts, Amherst

2University of Maryland, College Park

Corresponding Author:

Michael P. Krezmien, University of Massachusetts, School of Education, Amherst, MA 01003

Email: krezmien@educ.umass.edu

274 Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 26(3)

In recent years, schools have increasingly relied on school suspensions and expulsions

as a response to school disciplinary infractions. In 1994, following media attention to

high-profile school shootings, Congress passed the Gun Free Schools Act of 1994. To

receive funding under this legislation, schools were required to adopt a zero-tolerance

policy for weapons that mandated a minimum of a 1-year suspension for any student

who brought a weapon to school. Under the legislation, schools were also required to

report weapons violations to the criminal justice or juvenile delinquency system. By

1998, 94% of all public schools had enacted zero-tolerance policies and these policies

are found in all 50 states (Heaviside, Rowand, Williams, & Farris, 1998).

Unfortunately, zero-tolerance policies have not functioned as anticipated. Instead

of addressing serious weapons violations, zero-tolerance polices led to an increased

reliance on suspensions and expulsions for minor disciplinary infraction (Krezmien,

Leone, & Achilles, 2006; Skiba & Rausch, 2006). In fact, there is little evidence that

zero-tolerance policies resulted in improved school safety. Instead, researchers found

that schools dedicated greater time and resources to school discipline (Scott & Barrett,

as cited in Skiba et al., 2008). Concern about school safety led many school districts

to adopt additional security measures such as installing metal detectors and/or hiring

school resource officers (SROs; Snell, Bailey, & Carona, 2002) in spite of the fact

there was little to no evidence that these measures or zero-tolerance policies served as

a deterrent. For example, Schreck, Miller, and Gibson (2003) found these approaches

to be ineffective, whereas Mayer and Leone (2007) found that they may actually be

associated with an increase in school disorder. In New York City, schools that employed

police officers and metal detectors had higher suspension rates than schools in similar

neighborhoods without these devices (Mukherjee, 2007).

Although the Gun Free Schools Act of 1994 placed pressure on schools and school

districts to ensure school safety, pressure from another quarter had a similar indirect

effect on disciplinary proceedings. The reauthorization of Title 1 of the Elementary

and Secondary Education Act (ESEA; No Child Left Behind Act of 2001) pressed

school administrators to raise levels of student achievement and held them account-

able if they did not. The high-stakes assessments associated with the No Child Left

Behind Act left little room in schools for student misbehavior. Concurrent with the

implementation of this legislation, many administrators interpreted the zero-tolerance

polices more broadly than originally intended, suspending students for a wide range of

behaviors such as bullying, threatening, the use of profanity, and the use of alcohol

and tobacco (Hirschfield, 2008; Kupchik, 2009). Many schools have extended the

consequences for violating zero-tolerance rules to include longer suspensions and, in

some cases, expulsion (Anderson, 2004). Furthermore, some states have mandated

suspensions for school disruptions, truancy, and refusal to obey (Krezmien et al.,

2006). Subsequently, high rates of suspension were found to be associated with an

increase in disruptive behavior, decreased academic performance, and higher rates of

school dropout (Bowditch, 1993; Raffaele-Mendez, as cited in Wald & Losen, 2003;

Skiba & Rausch, 2006).