A study by The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) ranked Wyoming as the state with the fourth highest number of students referred to the police, and also found black students in Wyoming are three times more likely to be referred to the police than white students.
Published on April 10, the study looked at data provided by the Department of Education to make its rankings. It found Wyoming had on average 11.9 students referred to the police per thousand students, and additionally broke the data down by demographics.
Though white students make up the overwhelming majority of the referrals at 71.7%, blacks faced a disproportionate amount of referrals at 4.2%. Blacks students in Wyoming had a rate of referral of 3.28% while white students had a rate of referral of 1.07%, meaning that black students had over three times the likelihood of being referred to the police compared to white students.
Albany County Attorney Peggy Trent said she believes the data may present an inaccurate picture of the situation of students referred to the police. Trent reviews every juvenile referral in Albany County and said race may be a smaller part of the equation.
“We do see those of lower socio-economic status come through the court system,” Trent said.
The American Psychological Association corroborates Trent’s point of view. According to their page, Minorities & Socioeconomic Status, black children are “three times more likely to live in poverty than Caucasian children.”
Trent said Albany County has no measures to track the ethnicity of those referred in place, and decisions on whether or not to prosecute are made without ethnically identifying information.
“We have no process currently to track or keep statistics based on racial demographics or how that breaks down in Albany County.” Trent said.
One of the claims levied by an article accompanying the CPI’s findings is that police referrals establish school to prison pipelines, effectively institutionalizing young people before they have a chance to experience the world as adults. If this is true, Wyoming’s fourth place ranking in the study could mean grave things for the future of the state’s citizenry. But Trent said she feels some important factors are ignored and many of the cases that come through the referral system have a basis in concerns relating to mental health.
“We’re seeing more depression and mental health issues,” Trent said. “Mental health issues are at the top of our concern with our youth.”
Since being elected to the county attorney position last November, Trent has spent her time in office trying to update the way the county handles juveniles. She is trying to establish a juvenile service board that focuses on more effective mediation of issues with troubled youth and may provide alternatives to punishment, especially in regards to mental health issues.
“We’re looking at how to deal with the emotional issues of a child and how to assist that child without putting them through the court system,” Trent said.
The study by The Center for Public Integrity puts smaller states at a disadvantage, and due to Wyoming’s low black population, any offense committed by a black student will be magnified in terms of percentage due to the smaller population of black students. Despite this, and Trent’s aforementioned concerns, Trent said the disparity between the rates of referral between blacks and whites is bothersome to her.
“It raises the issue, should we be tracking?” Trent said.
