Editorial: Racial Battle Fatigue: The Toll of Policing Black Students

Abstract

The current pediatric mental health crisis, recently named by AACAP and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP),¹ is inextricably linked to school-based policies and practices. Fueled by public fears of crime and violence, "tough on crime" approaches took root in the United States during the 1980s, when school systems became an extension of a national-scale punitive apparatus. Punitive policies (eg, zero-tolerance policies) became a reflex response to disruptive behaviors at school, and police presence within schools increased. Envisioned to deter crime and violence, these policies instead too often criminalized routine, nonviolent misbehaviors, producing an intimate connection between school discipline and incarceration systems,² often referred to as the "school-to-prison pipeline" disproportionately affecting Black students. In the contemporary context of calls for racial justice, local and state officials are re-examining the impacts of school-based police and strict discipline policies to better understand the potential academic and psychological consequences.