Intro to Criminal Justice
Zachary Newcity
March 19, 2013
School Searches How do you feel about school officials being able to search our children such as bags, lockers and their person? I feel that school officials should be able to search our children with reasonable suspicion that they are going to harm someone or their self’s with a weapon or drugs. However their search should be limited on what they can search. They should be able to search lockers due to the fact that the school owns the property. Back packs should be able to be searched due to the easiness to conceal contraband inside them. To conduct a search thou, I believe that the school needs at least reasonable suspicion. Such has a teacher seeing, smiling, hearing of any contraband, what if a student reports another student? I think that school official need to have more than one report from a student to conduct a search. I think this because children can lie and tell stories just to get the other student sent to the office. I do not think they should be able to strip search children. I think to conduct a strip search the parents need to be with the child. I also think parents and police officers should be the only ones to search children and not school officials for example in Redding case. In Savana Redding case she was stripped searched after a student reported that she had pills on her. School officials decide to search her back pack and clothing when they found nothing the proceeded to strip search Redding. The search was conducted in the nurse office with the female nurse and a female administrative assistant. My thoughts are that the strip search should have never happened without the parents’ consent or a police officer conducting the search. I think they need to have my evidence that shows a student is in danger to strip search. I think the supreme court should have made it harder for schools to conduct strip searches of students and made it so the only the parents or a law enforcement officer are the only ones that can conduct the search. I think that we can protect the rights of our kids by stopping school officials from being able to search our children on reasonable suspicion. We still can protect the safety of our schools by having the student wait for their parents