When a Florida elementary school principal was caught on video spanking a 6-year-old girl with a wooden paddle last month, it sparked national outrage and a criminal investigation. But for those who believed the principal should face arrest, a state prosecutor’s memo stung like a slap to the face.

Florida is one of 19 states in the country that allows corporal punishment in schools, but it’s prohibited in Hendry County, where the little girl was beaten, and state law requires educators to follow local rules. That was not enough, however, for state prosecutors to hold Principal Melissa Carter responsible for any wrongdoing. In a three-page memo outlining their decision not to pursue charges, they instead questioned the credibility of the girl’s mother, an undocumented immigrant who filmed the campus incident and shared it with local television station WINK. Officials concluded the mother consented to the beating and at no point spoke up to “raise any objection.”

That the prohibition in her own school district did not protect the Florida first-grader from being hit is just one example of how corporal punishment persists even in places where the practice is explicitly outlawed. About a dozen school districts in states where corporal punishment is banned reported using it on students more than 300 times during the 2017-18 school year, according to an analysis by The 74 of the most recent civil rights data from the U.S. Department of Education. And in Louisiana, a state where paddling is permitted except on students with disabilities, data show that special education students were hit nearly 100 times in 2017-18. Years of data have shown that students of color and those with disabilities are disproportionately subjected to corporal punishment, a practice that goes on despite a substantial body of research showing its harmful effects on youth development.

Read the full article about corporal punishment in schools by Mark Keierleber at The 74.