The School-to-Prison Pipeline

Chapter 1 offers an analysis of the school-to-prison pipeline as the modern incarnation of a system of white supremacy based upon the mass criminalization of Black and Brown communities. It documents the rise of the school-to-prison pipeline in zero-tolerance school discipline policies and the increasing presence of police and security measures in schools. The school-to-prison pipeline is more than a set of well-intentioned but misguided school discipline policies that require reform. Rather, it represents an interlocking system of racial domination and control that keeps communities of color poor and lacking in power. It signifies the current version of the historic effort to maintain white supremacy by denying education to African Americans and criminalizing generations of young people of color and their families. This larger analytical framework of systemic racism is important because it establishes the need for a racial and educational justice movement to dismantle it.