NEW JERSEY - A Middlesex County school district will mandate all pre-K through 12th grade students to use clear, plastic backpacks as a measure to boost safety in area schools.

In a July 27 letter to district families, South River Superintendent of Schools Sylvia Zircher noted the mandatory use of free, school-provided clear bags beginning this upcoming school year at all four schools in the district. The high school adopted the measure during the 2019-20 school year and has continued with the protocol since, Zircher said.

Those who wish to purchase their own clear bag may do so, Zircher said.

"This is something that many districts have adopted over the last several years, Zircher said. "The use of clear backpacks is just an 'extra' measure in keeping prohibited items from entering our schools."

In 2018, Lakewood schools introduced a similar all-district requirement in response to an incident where a fourth grader brought a handgun on a school bus and into school. Read more: Lakewood Schools To Require Clear Backpacks After Gun Incident

Small handbags the size of a half sheet of paper or less for "personal items" are still permitted at South River schools. Lunch boxes are also allowed but should be left in a lunch bin or locker before and after lunchtime, Zircher added.

The transparent book bag trend dates back to the April 20, 1999, shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, that left 12 students and one teacher dead. They were a hot item in back-to-school shopping after large pharmacies and retailers stocked shelves with them at the request of school administrators nationwide, The Wall Street Journal reported.

After the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, administrators required students to wear clear backpacks when they returned to the school where 17 of their classmates and faculty were killed.

Student activists mocked the policy, saying they were no safer than before the massacre. Survivor and activist Lauren Hogg tweeted her backpack "is almost as transparent as the NRA's agenda," referencing the National Rifle Association, the powerful lobbying group that has stood in the way of efforts to restrict access to guns.

"Clear backpacks don't do anything except make us look stupid," Carly Novell, a senior at Stoneman Douglas in 2018, wrote in a tweet at the time. "We want to be safe, not uncomfortable. The only thing that can really have an impact on our safety is gun control."

"Optically, it's good," Thaddeus Johnson, a Council for Criminal Justice senior fellow at Georgia State University's Andrew Young School of Policy Studies in Atlanta and an assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology, told Patch.

"It's kind of like surveillance cameras," Johnson said. "It makes you feel safe, but you're not safer."

Michael Dorn, who leads the nonprofit school safety group Safe Havens International, called the national rise in clear backpack polices "a facade of safety" that make adults feel safer, but kids see through. In youthful defiance, they aren't above punking their elders by sneaking in weapons, realistic looking toy guns and other contraband, Dorn said.

In a test, his organization was able to hide 26 weapons in a backpack small enough for an elementary student to carry, including a broken-down shotgun, a number of knives and grenades, Dorn said.

With reporting by Beth Dalbey.

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