I write to applaud Nicole Hudson’s Voices of Maine column that cautions about existing zero-tolerance drug and alcohol policies in high schools. Quite simply, Ms. Hudson is both clinically and epidemiologically correct, and her message could not be more salient and timely.
Nearly three decades of research findings across education, psychology, sociology, and criminal justice suggest that zero tolerance discipline policies do not make schools more orderly or safe and neither schools nor young people have benefited.
Multidisciplinary research has further examined whether specific zero tolerance discipline policies make schools safer, if out-of-school suspension or expulsion leads to greater involvement in the juvenile justice and criminal justice systems, if zero tolerance creates a school-to-prison pipeline, whether there are more effective alternatives to zero tolerance policies, and what effect these policies can have on a young person’s future.
The “take home message” from all this is that zero tolerance policies negatively affect the relationship of education with public health and juvenile justice and appear to conflict to a significant degree with current best knowledge concerning adolescent health and development, and community health.
Reflexive punishment and alienation do not lead to safe schools; what is needed is understanding, and opportunities for healing and redemption.
Peter Pressman, MD, MS, FACN
Yarmouth
Send questions/comments to the editors.
