Cumulative Racial and Ethnic Disparities Along the School-to-Prison Pipeline

Using the cumulative disadvantage theoretical framework, the current study explores whether school suspension and expulsion provide an indirect path through which race and ethnicity affect the likelihood of experiencing arrest, any incarceration, and long-term incarceration in adulthood. To address these issues, we use data from Waves I, II, and IV of the Add Health survey (N = 14,484), and we employ generalized multilevel structural equation models and parametric regression methods using counterfactual definitions to estimate direct and indirect pathways. We observe that Black (but not Latinx) individuals are consistently more likely than White persons to experience exclusionary school discipline and criminal justice involvement. However, we find a path through which race and Latinx ethnicity indirectly affect the odds of adulthood arrest and incarceration through school discipline. Disparate exposure to school suspension and expulsion experienced by minority youth contributes to racial and ethnic inequalities in justice system involvement. By examining indirect paths to multiple criminal justice consequences along a continuum of punitiveness, this study shows how discipline amplifies cumulative disadvantage during adulthood for Black and, to a lesser extent, Latinx individuals who are disproportionately funneled through the “school-to-prison pipeline.”

Examining the School-to-Prison Pipeline through Juvenile Public Policy Initiatives and Prison Expenditures

The 21st century has brought a stark reality to American society: young people are becoming increasingly disillusioned with the opportunities provided to them through school systems that perpetuate racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps. Generations that were once lauded as future leaders are now completely unconvinced that they will ever have opportunities to assume leadership, and droves are failing to complete compulsory courses of education as a result. Many are turning to lives of crime out of necessity and frustration over the stark realities they face as children of color in an increasingly divided nation. To understand the current issues impacting young people and creating what has become known as the school-to-prison pipeline, an in-depth examination of the social, economic, and educational factors creating increased numbers of incarcerated youth must be undertaken and connections between systemic dysfunction and racial disparities investigated.

School deferred: When bias affects school leaders

In the classroom, Black students are disciplined more frequently and more severely for the same misbehaviors as White students. Though teachers have influence over disciplinary actions, the final decisions for exclusionary discipline (i.e., suspensions and expulsions) are principals’ responsibility. We test how principals make disciplinary decisions in a preregistered experiment. Principals endorsed more severe discipline for Black students compared with White students across two time points. Further, this discipline severity was explained through Black students being more likely to be labeled a troublemaker than White students. Future efforts should focus on principals in order to mitigate the negative impacts of the school-to-prison pipeline.

Conclusion

The concluding chapter documents the impact of the school-to-prison pipeline movement on reducing suspensions and challenging policing practices in schools. It then highlights the features that help explain the growth and success of the movement and its emerging intersectional nature—like centering the participation of people most impacted by injustice. It draws lessons from this study for reconceptualizing social justice movements as ones that “nationalize local struggles.” It considers the enduring challenges facing the movement to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline, including the persistence of racial disparities in exclusionary discipline, tensions between local and national organizing, and the difficulties of implementing restorative alternatives that serve to transform deep-seated racialized processes. It ends with a discussion of the challenges and opportunities to building racial and educational justice movements powerful enough to fully transform entrenched systems of racial inequity and educational injustice, particularly in an era that has witnessed the rise of white nationalism.

“There Is No National without the Local”

Chapter 3 charts the development of the movement to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline as a national movement with deep local roots. It documents the beginnings of the movement in places like Holmes County, Mississippi, where African American parents first raised the alarm. It shows how national actors played important roles in spreading local victories, while both strengthening local organizing and working to influence federal policy. It discusses the struggle in the Dignity in Schools Campaign to create a coalition in which community groups would have a majority say and keep the coalition focused on supporting local organizing rather than Washington politics. It charts the movement’s victories, shifting discourse away from zero tolerance and getting the federal government to issue guidelines warning against zero-tolerance discipline. These victories became resources to groups in local- and state-level campaigns, creating a rolling series of policy wins across the country.

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.

The Movement Spreads

Chapter 7 discusses the spread of the movement across the country. It shows how small, under-resourced groups like Racial Justice NOW! in Dayton, Ohio, won significant victories by combining strong parent organizing with critical support from the national Dignity in Schools Campaign. It charts the efforts of Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children to combat the school-to-prison pipeline in a privatized district dominated by charter schools. It examines the work of the Gwinnett Parent Coalition to Dismantle the School-to-Prison Pipeline outside of Atlanta. It shows how students of color face sharply inequitable discipline despite attending higher performing schools and the challenges of confronting the school-to-prison pipeline in white-dominated districts used to serving majority white populations. The chapter ends in the suburbs surrounding Richmond, Virginia, where local organizers confront a system that has systematically denied educational opportunities to students of color with special needs.

Introduction

The Introduction opens with the stories of a Black parent and a Black student who were victims of the school-to-prison pipeline and their journeys to racial justice organizing. These experiences and these stories ground the emergence of the movement to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline. The Introduction then recounts the author’s own journey to awareness of the school-to-prison pipeline and describes the development of the community engaged research project upon which the book is based. It recounts the author’s traumatic experiences in the field witnessing the abusive treatment of students and parents of color, and it discusses the challenges faced addressing the author’s privileges and positionality as a white, male professor partnering with and studying organizers and leaders of color based in low-income communities. It ends with an overview of the book and its chapters.