Why Public Schools should switch to Probable Cause?

Ashutosh Maheshwari
Why should Public Charter schools use Probable Cause as their student search mechanism instead of Reasonable Suspicion, the current search mechanism for students? Probable Cause is the mechanism that requires anyone to have pieces of evidence that leads them to conclude that one is committing a crime. Cops are legally bound to only search someone with probable cause. However, Public Schools use Reasonable suspicion as the law to search a student. Reasonable suspicion has a much lesser evidence requirement needed to search the student, in fact the only requirement needed is a feeling in your gut. Reasonable suspicion is the ability to search someone because of a “hunch” or “suspicion”. Oftentimes these feelings required to search someone does not require a single piece of evidence. Reasonable suspicion in today’s school system, leads to racism in two ways. First, vagueness in the evidence standard. According to Fox of Indiana University, any circumstance can be viewed as reasonable suspicion due to how vague the standard of evidence is. Forman of St. Louis Legal Studies furthers that the vague standards of reasonable suspicion lead school officials to apply stereotypes against minority students. But Forman concludes that by implementing probable cause and a higher burden of proof, will make searches more accurate, lowering the possibility for biases to affect searches. Rosenthal of Texas Law confirms, probable cause searches recover evidence 80 percent of the time while reasonable suspicion searches recover evidence only 12 percent of the time.The second way to racism is living in high-crime Areas. According to the Supreme Court, just being in a high-crime area is enough to be searched under reasonable suspicion. This is extremely racist because ACLU reveals, schools with large minority populations tend to be categorized into these high-crime areas. Moreover, because Georgetown University furthers that there’s no definition for what high crime areas are supposed to be, it’s just another way for the legal system to justify searching minority students due to skin color. This means your children can be searched just because there’s a lot of, for example, Hispanic families, in the school neighborhood. This racist narrative is problematic as innocent students are searched for their school just happening to be in minority neighborhoods. By staying with Reasonable Suspicion, means the US supports your innocent kids being searched due to school location, and not your kids’ actions. By implementing Probable cause, however, means students will no longer be searched due to their skin color or the character of their schools neighborhood. Silverman of the Institute for Global Policy concludes, probable cause will decrease the racial disparity between those searched and those not. By keeping reasonable suspicion as the search mechanism will lead to three harmful impacts. First, reasonable suspicion literally creates racism in the long term. According to Paul of Psychology, Today, racial biases are created based on people’s perceptions of social environments. This is problematic because seeing minorities searched in schools as a child would create a criminal stereotype in the minds of students early on. Growing up with a mental stereotype of certain races being criminals creates a racist future, continuing the injustice done to minorities. Reasonable Suspicion will be the reason why stereotypes and racism with remain in the U.S. Do not let your kids or yourself get searched on the basis of skin color. Second, you turn all minorities to a life of crime. According to Tania Gupta of York University, minorities are 4 times likelier to be searched and 48 times likelier to be arrested when compared to white students. This also a major problem because innocent minorities do not deserve these punishments. Kerrin Wolf of Delaware State concludes, 90 percent of the arrests are for minor events that shouldn’t be taken to court. Because one is born with a different skin color, minority races face harsher consequences than needed. Johnson of American University links that unreasonably searched students are four times likelier to commit crimes. This is counter productive for Reasonable suspicion which was built to increase school security. But it’s low standard will lead students being searched Third, reasonable suspicion increases crimes for everyone. According to Kim of the Racial Justice Program, not only the minorities actually arrested are likelier to commit crimes. Also, classmates who even witness a child being unfairly arrested will also develop negative views of law enforcement. In conclusion, Bunch of Montana State University confirms that voting for us and probable cause is the best path. Adopting probable cause means crime decreases by 47 percent, decreases the criminal stereotype, thus decreases racism, and restricts crime long term. Let me know about your stance on this issue by emailing me at the email address given below! Thanks for reading! Ashutosh Maheshwari PTown Web Team Email: am3497@pleasantonusd.net