Schools, Prisons, and Pipelines: Fixing the toxic relationship between public education and criminal justice (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Palgrave International Handbook of School Discipline, Surveillance, and Social Control, 2018
The anchoring weight of slavery continues to ground schools by design and implementation, 151 years after the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. Empirical literature is rife with evidence that Black and Brown youth are penalized more frequently and with greater harshness than their white, suburban counterparts for the same offenses (Gregory, Skiba, & Noguera, 2010; Welch & Payne, 2010), to the point where Triplett, Allen, and Lewis (2014) describe this phenomenon as a civil rights issue. The authors examine how a constellation of school-sanctioned discipline policies have connected the legacy of slavery with punishment. In order to curb burgeoning suspension rates that disproportionately target Black youth, schools and grassroots organizations have adopted various tiers of Restorative Justice (RJ). This article draws upon existing theoretical frameworks of Restorative Justice to discuss new approaches and directions, as well as the limitations of its hyper-individualized applications in K-12 schools. Finally, the authors assess two case studies that aim to transform schools and community engagement by refocusing restorative philosophy on the ecological conditions of student contexts, rather than the presumed intrapsychic symptoms habitually ascribed to youth behavior and Black culture.
Beyond School-to-Prison Pipeline and Toward an Educational and Penal Realism
Equity and Excellence in Education
Much scholarly attention has been paid to the school-to-prison pipeline and the sanitized discourse of “death by education,” called the achievement gap. Additionally, there exists a longstanding discourse surrounding the alleged crisis of educational failure. This article offers no solutions to the crisis and suggests instead that the system is functioning as it was intended—to disenfranchise many (predominately people of color) for the benefit of some (mostly white), based on economic principals of the free market. We begin by tracing the economic interests of prisons and the prison industrial complex, juxtaposing considerations of what we call the “educational reform industrial complex.” With a baseline in the economic interests of school failure and prison proliferation, we draw on the critical race theory concept of racial realism, to work toward a theory of educational and penal realism. Specifically, we outline seven working tenets of educational and penal realism that provide promise in redirecting the discourse about schools and prisons empowering those interested in critically engaging issues of racism that permeate U.S. orientations to education and justice.
THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM in the United States, like the country as a whole, is plagued by vast inequalities-that all too frequently are defined along lines of race and class. Students in high-poverty, high-minority schools are routinely provided fewer resources, fewer qualified teachers, and fewer advanced-level courses than their more affluent white peers. 1 Not surprisingly, they experience lower rates of high school graduation, lower levels of academic achievement, and higher rates of college attrition.
SCHOOLYARD COPS AND ROBBERS: LAW ENFORCEMENT'S ROLE IN THE SCHOOL-TO-PRISON PIPELINE
While there is a large amount of scholarship discussing the discipline and policing policies that aggravate the school-to-prison pipeline, this article specifically uses WCPSS as a model to highlight the challenges that many school districts face nationwide. This article not only evaluates conventional methods to extinguish the school-to-prison pipeline that have been widely introduced, but it also tenders non-conventional methods such as goodwill, as an effort to cure the community from the harms suffered by the pipeline's powerless targets. This paper examines America's racially discriminatory criminal justice system and climate of law enforcement in America, while exploring the correlations of this inequitable climate with schools. Additionally, it summarizes extensive data on the school-to-prison-pipeline and analyzes WCPSS' security and policing policies, by incorporating narratives of instances in which students-of-color suffered injuries under WCPSS' unjust student discipline and policing practices. Also, this paper explores multiple programs that have proven to be successful in improving school discipline and policing policies to extinguish the school-to-prison pipeline. Finally, it concludes by proposing solutions for WCPSS and surrounding areas which will ideally serve as a standard of development for school districts nationwide that have encountered similar challenges within their respective school-to-prison pipelines.
School to Prison Pipeline Annotated Bibliography 1
Native Americans experience disproportionate referrals to law enforcement and arrests in public schools in Montana. The study uses U.S. Office of Civil Rights data reported at the school level (n = 822) for the 2015-2016 school year, which is aggregated by race and gender. All students in schools with school resource officers (SROs) and/or security guards (SGs) present have higher total numbers and rates of referrals and arrests. Native American female students are twice as likely to be referred to law enforcement (p <.001) and 2.5 times more likely to be arrested when SROs and/or SGs are present at the school (p <.05). Native American male students are 2.2 times more likely to be referred to law enforcement (p <.001) and 1.7 times more likely to be arrested when SROs and/or SGs are present at the school (p <.001). Native American mean rates of referrals and arrest are higher in urban and reservation contexts (p <.05). Native American student disparities in referrals and arrests mirror disproportionate percentage of Native American female and male adults incarcerated in Montana. Native American students are more likely to experience the school-to-prison pipeline unless SROs and SGs are removed from Montana schools.
Journal of Family Diversity in Education
In this article, I present a theoretical analysis of the school-to-prison pipeline in relation to youth from diverse families and the politics of educational policy and practice and call for equitable education without recourse to incarceration. First, by deconstructing historical documents, I highlight the philosophical and discursive production of the criminalization of youth from diverse families who do not conform to dominant norms of Western European tradition. Second, I juxtapose historical documents with contemporary events showing how current educational policies normalize the school-to-prison pipeline and subjugate youth from diverse families to exclude them from equitable education. Third, bearing witness to the ways youth resist socialization and exclusion, I recommend an interdisciplinary, multilevel socio-ecopol-edu approach calling upon policy makers, teacher educators, and researchers to develop new theoretical frameworks, policies, and practices for equitable education and social justice.
Reframing Policy Discourse on the School-to-Prison Pipeline
Urban Review, 2021
This work selects a political cite in which the state policy reform occurs to examine reasons and underlying ideologies for some consensus on the debates regarding the need to criminalize or decriminalize truancy. Studying the legislation help to unpack the nature of relationships in social systems, with the purpose of eliminating unbalanced power relations in the politics of school discipline policy reform. Embedding whiteness as a grounded lens, we conducted critical discourse analysis and critical policy analysis to deconstruct one bill to capture major competing political discourses pertinent to school disciplinary policy reform the Texas State Legislature. Although the counter-discourse of the reform shows resistance toward change, findings reflect widespread concerns across broad constituencies about the injustice of school disciplinary policy, the necessity of decriminalizing students, and the ideologies of discipline and control. The rich discourses reveal tensions of opponents' political stances on the issues of school-to-prison pipeline at the macro-level. With an eye toward reframing the academic discourse with respect to school disciplinary issues, we further discuss the language used in describing truancy issues and offer an in-depth understanding of the dominant discourse of discipline policy reform.