The Risks of Threat Assessment to Students Are Dire

• In Event: Structural Racism and School Discipline: Replicating the Racialized Hierarchy Through Coercion and Control

Abstract

In the wake of highly publicized and tragic mass shootings at schools, the expansion of threat assessment as a routine school safety tool has been swift, with little thought given to the ramifications for youth rights. At least 10 states have passed threat assessment laws, five in 2019 alone. The U.S. Secret Service recently launched an initiative to promote the widespread use of threat assessment in schools. Threat assessment is used in many schools even where state law does not make it mandatory.

Often these reactive policies do little to promote actual safety, while undermining students’ basic civil rights and civil liberties, particularly students of color and students with disabilities. Black students and students with disabilities are substantially more likely to be referred for threat assessment than other students. A recent investigative report found that out of 834 threat assessments conducted by the Albuquerque, N.M. during the 2018-19 school year, special education students, representing 18% of students, were the subject of 56% of all threat assessments. Black students, who comprised only 2.6% of students, accounted for 9.6% of the students referred for threat assessment.

Available research makes it clear that threat assessment, to be effective and fair, must be restricted to situations in which a clear threat is communicated; be transparently assessed for patterns of inequity (by race, disability, gender, etc.); and limit police involvement to situations in which there is an imminent threat and school staff determine that a referral to law enforcement is necessary.

Explicit links to the general focus of the session and 2023 theme: In contrast to other disciplinary procedures highlighted in this session, there has been less direct investigation of the impact of threat assessment on students of color. Yet the available data are consistent in raising serious concerns about the use of threat assessment for Black and Brown students. Raising awareness is often the first step in naming and calling out practices that maintain racial injustice.

Author

• Harold Jordan, American Civil Liberties Union
  Presenting Author