Inside the Systems that Fuel the School-to-Prison Pipeline

The demographics of the juvenile justice system are a stark misrepresentation of the youth population of the United States.

This illustrates a failure by the education system and other institutions that consistently harm adolescents by creating a set of exclusionary practices that specifically push a select demographic towards prison. 

This collection of institutions, practices, and experiences is known as the school-to-prison pipeline. The school-to-prison pipeline is a national trend showing that children, many of those who have suffered from abuse or learning disabilities, are channeled from public school systems into the juvenile and criminal justice system.

The system starts in schools, through different disciplinary practices, it can continue with status offenses, and ultimately ends with the juvenile justice system itself. Juvenile justice system policy is harming students across the country, especially the most vulnerable students, and we need to and can actively be taking steps to eliminate this pipeline.

The Beginning of the Pipeline: School Discipline

Why Students Are Disciplined

The school-to-prison pipeline begins in schools, with school disciplinary practices, school policing, and zero-tolerance policies. The main reasons students are disciplined in the first place are for “disrespectful” or “disruptive” behavior, absenteeism, and tardiness. Absenteeism most commonly occurs in LGBTQ students or students experiencing homelessness. Thus, these are situations outside of school that are out of control of students and prevent them from going to school, and the punishment for this is to suspend students which further keeps them out of school.

Furthermore, what does “disrespectful” and “disruptive” behavior mean? When we use these words to try and describe and quantify discipline, the idea of implicit bias into play. The perception of what is disrespectful or disruptive is up to teacher discretion, with minimal direction as to what qualifies. What one teacher might interpret and punish as disrespectful may not accurately reflect a student’s culture and his intentions. This is one of the points of disconnect with 45 percent of students in public schools across the country being students of color, but only 17 percent of teachers are teachers of color, with only 7 percent being Black. 

Black students are significantly overrepresented in every disciplinary category: suspension, expulsion, referral to law enforcement, and school-related arrests. Black boys are suspended three times more than white boys and black girls are suspended six times more than white girls. Black girls don’t misbehave more than white girls, but they are more often dress coded and “adultified,” held to a higher standard and given harsher punishments than their white peers for the same actions. One example of this is at a high school in Texas where two students made derogatory comments. The black girl was given two days of suspension and the white student got a parent-teacher conference and warning to “think before you speak.” In addition to these racial biases, students with disabilities are twice as likely to be suspended than students without disabilities. 

Police in Schools

In recent decades, there has been an exponential increase in the presence of police officers in school. As of 2017, New York City Public Schools employs 5,200 school resource officers, effectively police officers assigned to schools. This gives the city more police officers in schools than counselors. Schools state that they have  these officers in schools for student safety, and that a desire for a greater police presence was sparked following horrific school shootings such as Columbine, which created an uptick in the desire to protect students.

Unfortunately, having these police officers present often does more harm than good to the students in these schools. Just having police present led to the handling of any school discipline by law enforcement as opposed to school officials – setting up a direct link to the justice system from schools. Furthermore, the schools that have the most police officers in them are in urban areas, which have disproportionately higher numbers of black and latinx students.

Zero-Tolerance Policies

The Columbine shooting combined with other movements in the country at the time, such as the War on Drugs, to prompt zero-tolerance policies in schools. The idea was founded on the concept that cracking down on minor violations would prevent larger tragedies – such as bringing guns to school. 

These minor violations range based on schools and districts, from having alcohol or drugs, small fights, swearing to a teacher or principal, and “disrespectful” behavior, which could mean something as small as cutting a student in the lunch line.

Zero-tolerance policies have not been proven by research to work. Instead, these minor offenses that used to result in a visit to the principal’s office now end in suspension. The US Department of Education reports that one in five students are suspended at some point in middle and high school. Thus, instead of helping to protect students, they have only increased the rate that students are suspended and out of school, which has magnified the racial disparities in school punishment.

Resulting Effects of Suspension

Once a student is suspended they “not only fall behind academically, but are significantly more likely to drop out of school altogether, fail to secure a job, rely on social welfare programs,” and having more free time as a result of not being in school leads to more unsupervised time and further disengagement from academics and society. 

Steps – Forward and Backward – by the Federal Government 

The Obama administration took steps to eliminate these zero-tolerance policies and provided disciplinary policies intended to reduce the number of suspensions among black children. Unfortunately, in 2018 Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos rescinded these guidelines citing that they “made schools less safe,” because teachers were not free to discipline students as much, although her evidence was mostly anecdotal and had little research to back it up. 

The Role of Status Offenses

Next, police officers and schools overall play a part in the referencing of students to the legal system through status offenses.

What are Status Offenses?

A key link between school discipline and the justice system is the presence of police in schools. This presence is magnified by status offenses. Status offenses are crimes committed by minors that would not be a crime if they were committed by an adult. The most common one that comes to mind is drinking alcohol underage, but this can also include skipping school (truancy), tobacco use, and running away.

Legally, status offenses can be defined in three categories: status offenders as delinquents, status offenders as neglected/abused dependents, and status offenders in a different legislative category. How the court defines a status offense can have substantial implications on the punishments given out to the youth as a result. 

Police Referrals

Black students are far more likely to be referred by school officials to the police. They make up 31 percent of referrals to law enforcement while only being 15 percent of school attendance. In contrast, white students are 49 percent of enrollment while only being 36 percent of referrals. Males are also overrepresented in school-related arrests. They represent 51 percent of students and 69 percent of school-related arrests. Lastly, students with disabilities are also more likely to be referred to law enforcement or arrested from school. Students with disabilities are 12 percent of enrolled students, but they are 28 percent more likely to be subject to a school-related arrest or referral to law enforcement. While not all of these are status offenses, they represent the data available by the U.S. Department of Education on inherent inequities in these referrals and arrests. 

Placement of Status Offenses

Although there is some federal legislation around status offenses, most of the policies are made by each state. This means different localities can define what the qualifiers are for an act to count as a status offense that needs to be referred to court. In Wisconsin, “habitual truancy” is defined as “missing all or ‘part of’ five days within a semester,” and it is up to the discretion of each school district what “part of” means.

In some places, status offenses lead to a child being referred to a social worker or other crisis network to help target what is causing the behavior, but in many places these students are still directly referred to law enforcement. This is despite significant evidence that these punitive measures are ineffective and don’t discourage this behavior in the future. In 2016, 94,700 juvenile justice cases on status offenses were handled in juvenile courts across the country.

Although the most common punishment from these cases is juvenile probation, there is still an over-confinement of juveniles for status offenses, and many of these probation cases still lead to confinement due to technical violations. Placement in juvenile detention, treatment centers, or group homes also disproportionately harms Black students, accounting for 53 percent of youth confined for status offenses. 

Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974

Efforts to keep youth out of the juvenile justice system are not new. In 1974, the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 was passed that in part targeted status offenses and encouraged states to pursue more community measures as opposed to the justice system. If too many young people end up in juvenile detention states risk losing funding. 

However, loopholes have been created to help authorities and courts circumvent elements of this act. In 1980, an amendment was added called the “Valid Court Order” that states that “although kids cannot be detained for, say, skipping school, they can be detained for violating a judge’s order to attend school every day.” This also applies to orders such as “stop violating curfew” or any other order from a judge that can then lead to youth detainment even if the original offense does not permit that. However, this VCO exemption is not used in all states; as of 2015, it was used in 25 states and the District of Columbia. This further contributes to exacerbating inequities in juvenile justice. 

Impact of Status Offenses

Since status offenses are defined differently in different states and jurisdictions, it’s hard to find federal data that encompasses all of the effects of status offenses on individuals. But we do have some general understandings of the impact of confinement. It takes youths away from their support centers in family, friends, and educational institutions. Additionally, it does not prevent them from reoffending in the future and instead increases the odds that they do. This is likely because confinement “fails to address the underlying causes of status-offending behavior”– so instead of correcting these problems while they are young, detention perpetuates this behavior going forward.

The Pipeline Ends in the Justice System

School discipline and status offenses are two of the elements that cause students to end up in the justice system. Once in the justice system, it’s a steep climb out, and punitive punishments can make it hard for young and inexperienced youths to build the confidence, tools, and relationships they need to work on helping themselves and building them out of the system. 

Punitive Means of Punishment

Punitive punishment refers to programs designed to deter and punish behavior and emphasize deterrence of criminal behavior through punishment instead of rehabilitation. The most punitive means of punishment for juveniles are home confinement, group home, bootcamp, probation, and finally, the juvenile detention center. These methods all have the same commonalities of enforcing detention, discipline, and surveillance. They represent the same tough policies and harsh treatment that are seen in the adult prison system, but instead administered on youths.

Origins of these Punitive Punishments

Throughout the mid 1980s and early 90s, there was a wave of crime among teenagers sparking panic and fear of adolescents and their increase in violent crime. This response wasn’t completely unfounded– there was a spike in violent crime among teenagers. 

This increase caused the public to put pressure on local, state, and federal officials to make laws that would incite harsher punishments against these teenagers and made it easier for teens’ crimes to be allowed to be transferred to the adult criminal system. 

This heightened the emphasis on punitive punishments as opposed to therapeutic punishments. Therapeutic punishments emphasize restorative justice through building connections among peers, problem-solving, and communication skills. These means have seen significantly more positive outcomes in preventing adolescents from reoffending compared to these punitive measures.

Trapped in the System

Punitive punishments often have measures reflective of what we would expect to see in the adult prison system. They have very sterile accommodations, shackles, and a repeated emphasis on control. These rigid structures make it seem like an impossible task for students to be able to climb out of this system, instead getting caught in it. 

Furthermore, the concept of socialization also helps explain how individuals get caught in the system. School is one of the most formative experiences of a youth’s upbringing, and aside from home it is where they spend the most time. Their friends, peers, and teachers illustrate social norms for them to follow and they learn the behavior of the people around them. Removing students from this system takes the structure out of their lives, can cause more harmful behavior and hurts their development in the long term.

On the other side, when you put youths in the criminal justice system, you are telling them that is what they are. Now, they are spending time with other criminals which increases the likelihood of them spending time engaged in further criminal activity. 

Additionally, by punishing students and referring them to law enforcement, that student’s support and trust in authority figures like educators is lessened and can lead to further conflicts with teachers if that student does return to school. In turn, this causes them to be punished more and this system of exclusion and harm perpetuates.

Who is In The System

Like the other stages of the pipeline, Black and hispanic youth are disproportionately put into confinement compared to their white counterparts. According to statistics from New York City, Blacks and hispanics represent 66 percent of the school population, but are 93 percent of students who are detained by police in juvenile detention facilities. 

As adults, one in three black men in this country will spend time in a U.S. prison. This mass incarceration is a structural problem partly caused by this use of the justice system from an early age to discipline students and youths when the education system has failed them.

Additionally, this leads to significantly fewer Black and hispanic students graduating from high school on time, and significantly more Blacks, hispanics, and American Indians ending up in jail or prison.

Incarceration of Girls

Another youth demographic that are disproportionately harmed by the juvenile justice system are girls of color and girls that have been sexually abused. Of the girls who enter the juvenile justice system, over 70 percent say they have been a victim of physical and/or sexual abuse. This can cause a disrupted home life, physical injury and traumatic stress which can all contribute to a struggle to concentrate and learn in a classroom, and the willingness or ability to show up for school. As we have seen, this battle to be present or focus in school can be a means for punishment and makes this population more vulnerable to school suspensions and discipline.

While girls are 3-5 times more likely to experience sexual abuse than boys, and black and Latina girls are twice as likely as other groups to experience sexual abuse. The intersection of these issues, combined with other harmful school practices such as the punitive punishments, implicit biases, and tracking put this group at an even greater risk for harsher discipline and exposure to the juvenile justice system.

What This Tells Us

Overall, this data shows us the harm and racial bias that fuels the school-to-prison pipeline and causes alarming numbers of students to wind up in confinement instead of in school. This system does not need to be a foregone conclusion– there are steps that schools and policymakers can take to combat this. Additionally, state and local jurisdictions should be looking to therapeutic measures to help these students and help improve their life outcomes instead of the punitive punishments that make them more likely to reoffend in the future.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Eliminating the Pipeline

From segregated schooling practices to a system relying on punitive punishment, this system harms students across the country, disproportionately hurting students of color– especially Black and latinx students.

These issues are systemic and ingrained in the fabric of our education system. But they’re also not impossible to overcome. There are steps and measures that can and need to be taken to eliminate this unjust system. These steps are costly, but more costly is letting this pipeline continue to harm students in this country.

Preventative Measures

Teacher Diversity

One of the first ways to improve conditions for minority students is to hire more teachers of color. Teachers of color have higher expectations of minority students, develop closer relationships with students, provide culturally responsive teaching and confront issues of racism. All of these factors correlate with better rates of retention of students of color in schools and show that minority teachers teach minority students and students from lower-income backgrounds better than white educators. Without these understandings and with detachment from students and their lives, teachers attribute academic struggles to a lack of motivation or other factors, without acknowledging cultural behaviors or trying to build relationships with students that can decrease classroom discipline. 

Another aspect of teacher diversity is the importance for students to have “‘mirrors and windows.’” This is a reference to the importance for minority children to be able to see themselves in the stories they are reading. The same applies to people and professions and the necessity for children to see people that look like them– and there are not enough teachers that reflect this. Not every teacher needs to be a mirror of their students, but demographically there is too wide of a gap between teachers and students. 

Socio-Emotional Programs

In addition to the importance of teachers being able to relate to their students, there is also a need for schools to understand students’ socio-emotional skills. Some of these key competencies include “self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship management, and responsible decision making.” When students are able to exhibit these traits, they have increased motivation, reduced behavioral problems, and overall have greater academic success. 

The benefits of instituting programs that directly address and teach these skills are enormous and extend beyond the classroom. They can improve the attitudes about oneself and those around them, improve prosocial behavior, and improve one’s ability to deal with their emotions and cause lower levels of emotional distress. 

Restorative Justice

Therapeutic punishments encompass restorative justice by way of forming connection with peers, building communication, and problem-solving. Restorative justice focuses on the whole person and includes the community in the justice process and not just the criminal.

This means including mediation and family conferencing. Restorative justice promotes the idea that people can change their behavior and move forward from their past actions to learn and grow. 

Shifts in Punishment

There needs to be an investment in resources for therapeutic measures of punishment. Up front, this will bring a greater cost, but in the long-term addressing these up front will decrease the amount of funding given to juvenile detention centers. This will also empower students to give meaningful contributions to society and their communities.

Therapeutic measures focus on providing mental health resources in schools. An increase in therapeutic measures would mean having more support services and counselors available for students in schools. This would provide an alternative to suspension and outsourcing punishment by getting to the root cause and by helping students instead of punishing them.

Providing mental health services has been proven to decrease crime. One study in Illinois found that every $1 spent on “Aggression Replacement Training, Functional Family Therapy, and substance abuse treatment” saved $3.50 on incarceration expenses. 

What You Can Do

Add your community here to support the movement for police free schools. Look at the model code for a toolkit on recommended policies for educators and school districts to support the human rights and well-being of all students.

Call your local and state representatives and tell them to invest in students, not cops. The movement to eliminate the school-to-prison pipeline is closely entwined with the movement to abolish police. It expands the understanding that we fund too many police officers in our schools when we should be funding guidance counselors, psychologists, and social workers. Use your voice – and your vote. Encourage officials to invest more resources in supporting mental health staff for students. Voice opposition to the cops in schools which set up the direct link to the justice system that this pipeline thrives off of.

Calling your officials works. Singing petitions is effective. Pressuring the systems that have gotten away for too long with these harsh and discriminatory practices works. When I first wrote about eliminating this pipeline, I linked to a petition for Grace, a 15 year old Michigan student who violated her parole by not completing school work during the pandemic. As a result, she was sent to a juvenile detention facility until her next hearing in September by a judge who claimed she was a “threat to the community.” Grace has an IED meaning she had been diagnosed with ADHD and receives special education services. Like many special education students across the country, she was not receiving the special education assistance she is legally entitled to because of the pandemic. Grace is a black student in a predominantly white community that disproportionately punishes and criminalizes black youth. On August 11th, a Michigan judge ended Grace’s probation and terminated her case. Grace is back home with her mother, and out of court involvement. That happened because of the immense public pressure, protests, and calls to action that came out to support her.

But, Grace is not alone in her story. She is one of the many students whose stories show how the school-to-prison pipeline continues to play out today and disproportionately harm students of color and students with learning disabilities. More needs to be done to help the thousands of kids already out there in the system, and to prevent potentially millions more from ever entering it in the first place.

Education is one of the hallmarks of communities. It is looked at as a place of opportunity, growth, potential, and safety. But it doesn’t play that role for every student it serves. From harsh school discipline practices and zero-tolerance policies, to school police officers enforcing punishments for status offenses, too many students continue to be forced out of the education system and into the justice system, one that retains the values seemingly the exact opposite of education, hopelessness, solitude, dissolution, and injustice. It remains in every person, educator, parent, student, legislator, and counselor’s best interest to be motivated to take every step necessary to mitigate the risks and effects of the school-to-prison pipeline. Eliminating the pipeline won’t be an easy and straightforward path, but at this moment it’s necessary in order to ever achieve justice for all students, and create a more equitable future for all children in this country.