The phrase “school-to-prison pipeline” has long been used to describe how schools respond to disciplinary problems with excessively stringent policies that create prison-like environments and funnel children who don’t fall in line into the criminal justice system. Now, schools are investing in surveillance systems that will likely exacerbate existing disparities.

The costs of overly harsh measures fall mostly on students from marginalized backgrounds. For example, Black girls are six times more likely to receive an out-of-school suspension compared to their white counterparts. Students with disabilities also experience disproportionate punishment.

Overall, our nation’s most at-risk children are incurring repeated and severe disciplinary actions in school, leaving them nearly three times more likely to be in contact with the juvenile justice system. As a result, many students experience school as a place of continuous scrutiny. One went so far to say that he “felt constantly in a state of alert, afraid to make even the smallest mistake.” This is a serious and pervasive problem that schools need to fix, and installing high-tech surveillance equipment will do just the opposite.

When schools introduce these technologies, they open the door to labeling students’ normal thoughts, words and movements as dangerous—and potentially involving law enforcement. As a former teacher in a 99 percent Black, low-income neighborhood, I am terrified for my former students whose natural speech patterns or movements were often wrongfully perceived as problematic by those unfamiliar with the community.

Advocates of increased school surveillance often say that even if a few inaccuracies arise, ultimately the benefits of increased safety outweigh the costs. But whose safety are we actually talking about? For students of color, who are already disproportionately seen as threats, over-disciplined, and put out of school, more mechanisms built to police and turn them over to the juvenile justice system will only worsen racial disparities in educational attainment.

Facial recognition systems set a dangerous precedent of constant surveillance and risk misuse of sensitive data
With these technologies, Rekor can place vehicles or people on “watch lists,” and depending on local laws, it can automatically send sensitive information such as license plate numbers or footage of vehicles and people to school administrators and even law enforcement. The video software also claims to be able to detect and notify school authorities about “suspicious movement patterns,” though there is little information on how suspicious movements would be classified or determined.

While none of these methods have been proven to be effective in deterring violence, similar systems have resulted in diverting resources away from enrichment opportunities, policing school communities to a point where students feel afraid to express themselves, and placing especially dangerous targets on students of color who are already disproportionately mislabeled and punished.

Read the full article about high-tech surveillance in schools by Priyam Madhukar at EdSurge.