MESSAGE FROM OUR DIRECTOR
ANDREA VÁSQUEZ JIMÉNEZ

September, 2023

A Human Right & Evidence-Based

 

Equitable access to education is a human right and structures of policing and carcerality impede this access. There is no substantial evidence that police make educational spaces safer. There is ample evidence of the negative impacts police have on students, especially Black, Indigenous, racialized, 2SLGBTQQIA+, disabled, neurodivergent students and students with precarious immigration status and intersecting identities. Research has also shown punitive approaches cause adverse effects, and are not conducive to students’ wellbeing and academic achievement. There is more than enough data, reports and research telling us what we already know about the detrimental impacts of policing in educational spaces. #PolicingFreeSchools is a human right. What we need is political will.

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Students’ learning conditions are workers’ working conditions. Research shows that better resourced schools with smaller class sizes, more well-trained teachers, education workers, educational assistants, support staff, mental health and wrap-around services, before- and after-school programming, a culturally responsive and reflective curriculum, community partnerships, nutritious school food programs, clean water and clean air are what create healthy educational spaces. By providing a properly funded and resourced public educational system and by addressing the root causes of inequity including the social and structural determinants of health and equity we can collectively create conditions for all those in educational spaces to thrive. Healthy educational spaces–which in and of themselves are safe is what supports students’ wellbeing and academic excellence.
 

The Carceral—Policing Logic in Education
 

Within the educational system policing is not limited to police presence, just as carcerality is not limited to the replication of a prisons architectural structure in educational spaces. This is because of what is at the core of carceral logics—“the normalized and seemingly commonsense ideas, practices, behaviors, and ways of being and thinking that have been shaped–often unconsciously or invisibly by a commitment to punishment, imprisonment, exclusion and disposability” –Professor Carla Shalaby. 

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These normalized ideas, behaviours, ways of being and thinking that are grounded in policing, punishment, control, and subjugation show up in institutional infrastructures, practices, policies, operational procedures, and cultures, which perpetuate harm. This carceral-policing logic is an anchor of the Canadian schooling system. Schools and educational spaces are at the core of the school-prison nexus. This is a systemic issue and no educational space is exempt from systemic issues.
 

Police-Free Schools Complex &

Why the Shift from Police-Free Schools to Policing-Free Schools?
 

Over the years as a police-free schools organizer, being in solidarity, connecting and knowledge-exchanging with other organizers, I had delved into an analysis of what had been happening within and across our terrains and landscape and I noticed what I call the Police-Free Schools Complex which also led me to create Policing-Free Schools.

 

The Police-Free Schools Complex is based in the reality and recurring pattern that many educational spaces attempt to legitimize themselves for solely enacting the initial removal of their original police-in-school program meanwhile leaving root issues intact and as a result perpetuating harm. 

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Many educational spaces have co-opted the original call for "Police-Free Schools''. They have solely equated this call with the act of removing police(ing)-in-school programs, when this is simply not enough. Educational spaces are not doing the ongoing critical work that communities have been asking for. Simultaneously, there are educational spaces that have never had a police(ing)-in-school program and claim that they are “Police-Free Schools” and feel as if that is sufficient. The removal of police(ing)-in-school programs across all educational levels including post-secondary institutions has always been a first and necessary step on a larger journey of liberatory education, but it alone is not enough. 

 

This is because policing and carcerality shows up within educational spaces in numerous harmful ways beyond the presence of police and police(ing)-in-school programs. Corporal punishment, seclusion and restraint, punitive and exclusionary disciplinary practices, isolation, time-outs, technological surveillance, academic streaming, standardized testing, discriminatory dress and hair codes, policing of gender expression and sexual orientation, limitations imposed on and challenges to bodily autonomy, are all examples of how policing and carcerality show up in educational spaces. Even without explicit intent, educational spaces are linked with the school-prison nexus through their infrastructures, practices, policies, procedures, and cultures which are anchored in a carceral–policing logic.

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This is why the shift towards policing-free schools is essential as it recognizes and orients us towards action around this reality that policing and carcerality operate in a myriad of ways in educational spaces. It is because of this that it is significantly important for us to take up “Policing-Free Schools” as a rallying call and affirmation. ​

 

Moving towards policing-free schools means that the removal of police and policing-in-school - and on-campus programs must be maintained. It means that there should be no future iterations of these programs regardless of their name, and no replacement of these programs with carceral "care work" or any other policies that would expand, increase and entrench police, policing and carceral measures in educational spaces. Ensuring that there is no replication of harm by way of reformist reforms is essential. This is how we move towards the uprooting of all policing and carceral systems and co-create transformative, healthy, equitable, liberatory, life-affirming, healing-centred, policing-free schools .

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These are not isolated or local issues alone but rather are interconnected systemic issues and we need a systems-response.

Join us in organizing for #PolicingFreeSchools!

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Andrea Vásquez Jiménez (she/her/ella), M.Ed

Founder, Director and Principal Consultant

Policing-Free Schools