Racial Reckoning and the Police-Free Schools Movement

Abstract

Across the country, students of color face daily threats of arrest, exclusion, and violence at the hands of school police officers. Whether deemed threatening, defiant, or hypersexualized, Black students, in particular, pay a heavy price to access their right to free public education. Despite victories in dismantling educational carcerality since the mid-2000s, efforts to formally remove police from public schools has been limited. However, during the 2020 racial reckonings, political opportunity catalyzed social movement campaigns, resulting in the passage of sixty-nine police-free policies. This represented an inflection point for civil rights, education justice, and police abolition scholars and activists. This Essay is the first to introduce a national accounting of the implementation of these policies, providing an essential contribution to scholarship and serving as a touchstone for future sociolegal analysis of the relationship between contestation and structural reforms.

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About the Author

Professor of Law and Harry & Lillian Hastings Research Chair; Co-Director of the Center for Racial and Economic Justice at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco; Senior Scholar, Center for Gender Justice & Opportunity, Georgetown University Law Center. Executive Director, Center for Gender Justice & Opportunity, Georgetown University Law Center.

By LRIRE