Zero Tolerance Policy

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“Get tough” policies developed in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s in response to increased juvenile crime. These policies focused on mandatory sentencing, incarceration, and zero tolerance policies. Delinquent juveniles were faced with adult sentencing and punishment rather than rehabilitation. The motives behind implementing these policies, the effectiveness, and whether these policies are unconstitutional question the validity of the “get tough” movement for juveniles, it is because of these questions and new research that the juvenile system today is shifting back towards parens patriae.
Motives
There are motives behind every policy. Some motives are well examined, other motives are based on moral panic. When the “get tough” policies …show more content…
Zero tolerance policies refers to the concept that certain types of disciplinary offenses will not be tolerated and automatically result in expulsion or suspension. In a 2012 John Hopkins University analysis, researchers followed more than 180,000 Florida students from ninth grade through high school and beyond. They discovered that after just one suspension in ninth grade, a student’s chances of graduation plummeted from 75 to 50 percent (Fault Lines,2014). Zero tolerance policies leave no consideration for circumstances or age. What is suspension teaching the juvenile? Considering school is education focused, eliminating the juvenile from school may isolate the problem, but at the same time it can create new problems and denies the opportunity for the juvenile to learn from their mistakes. It can also lead the juvenile to believe the best way to solve a problem is to get rid of the problem. These policies also give schools the excuse to eliminate the misbehaved and hard to teach juveniles. A study done in Indiana cited 95 percent of suspensions were minor offenses such as disruptive behavior, the other 5 percent were drug and weapon related. In some cases, standardization provides for an effective method to solving issues, when human behavior is introduced to these methods, because behavior has so many variables, these methods
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