User:Architect21c/Schooltoprisonpipeline

U.S. School-to-Prison Link increasingly reflects practices of Mass Incarceration unique to the U.S.

The school-to-prison pipeline (SPP), the United States school-to-prison link, and schoolhouse-to-jailhouse track are terms used to describe the non-academic interaction between young students, schools, and the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems in the United States. The term is also used to describe the related laws, policies, and practices of the education and justice systems. Students' contact with the justice system frequently means arrest, suspension or expulsion from school, stigmatization, lower high school graduation rate, and a higher rate of juvenile and adult incarceration. The SPP affects students of all ages by pushing them out of school; many of them into the streets and the juvenile and adult correctional systems. The school-to-prison pipeline is understood to operate at all levels of US government (federal, state, county, city and school district), both directly and indirectly. This has become a major topic of debate in discussions surrounding educational disciplinary policies as media coverage of youth violence and mass incarceration has grown since the end of the 20th century. This cycle deprives youth of meaningful opportunities for education, future employment, and productive participation in society.

The current sociopolitical climate relating to mass incarceration in the United States serves as a critical component in increasing the contact the incarceration system has with the United States education system, as patterns of criminalization translated into the school context in the form of increased criminalization of youth behavior, mirroring law enforcement models in society at large. Specific practices implemented in United States educational institutions since the 1990's to reduce violence in schools, including zero tolerance policies, school disturbance laws, and the increasing use of police as School Resource Officers in schools have created the environment for criminalization of youth in schools.

The SPP's disciplinary policies and practices, including suspension, expulsion, and arrest, have been shown to disproportionately affect students considered to be most "at-risk": students of color, specifically Latino, African American, and Native American students; students with a history of abuse, neglect, poverty, or learning disabilities; and students who identify as LGBTQ. These disproportionate effects have been identified even among students of similar socioeconomic status. Between 1999 and 2007, the percentage of black students being suspended has increased by twelve percent, while the percentage of white students being suspended has declined since the implementation of zero tolerance policies.

"The ugly truth – the harsh reality – is that still today in 2015, some children are far more likely to face harsh discipline than others, simply because of their zip code or the color of their skin." (Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, October 30, 2015)

History

The SPP is a concept that was named in the 1980s

For the half-century prior to 1975 the incarceration rate in the U.S. was fairly constant at roughly 0.1 percent of the population, as indicated in the accompanying figure.

What triggered the increase? Columbine?

"This funneling of students out of school and into the streets and the juvenile correction system perpetuates a cycle known as the School to Prison Pipeline, depriving children and youth of meaningful opportunities for education, future employment and participation in our democracy" https://www.dshs.wa.gov/sites/default/files/JJRA/jr/documents/STPP_ConceptPaper073112%28BG-Final%29.pdf

Enough of the changes listed here as possible drivers of the "school-to-prison pipeline" occurred during the last quarter of the twentieth century and may have been large enough to explain this increase. Any changes since 2000 that might contribute to this phenomenon are either too minor to have such a macro effect or were too recent to be reflected in these numbers yet.

Corrective measures

"Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, and Attorney General, Eric Holder, together have launched the Supportive School Discipline Initiative (SSDI), a collaborative project between the Departments of Education and Justice that will address the School to Prison Pipeline " 2012

Incarceration rates

A graph of the incarceration rate under state and federal jurisdiction per 100,000 population 1925–2008 (omits local jail inmates). The male incarceration rate (top line) is roughly 15 times the female rate (bottom line).

From 1980 to 2008, the number of people incarcerated in the United States quadrupled from roughly 500,000 to 2.3 million people. The graphic to the right shows the uniqueness of this practice in comparison to other countries across the globe, with the United States incarcerating a larger portion of its population than any other country in 2008. The United States holds 25% of the world's prisoners, but only has 5% of the world's population. To put this rate in perspective, it should be noted that the United States homicide rate is 4.3x that of the UK (3.9 vs. 0.9 per 100,000), and that the United States also incarcerates at a close ratio to the UK, with 4.7x ( 693 vs 146 per 100,000). Hence, the United States' higher incarceration rate may well represent a wealthier nation's natural reaction to higher crime rates. Of course, this implies the real issue maybe the motivation to crime itself versus incarceration's overuse. Of the total incarcerated population in the United States, 61% are Black or Latino.

Students most impacted

Visible minority students

See also: Youth incarceration in the United States

School disciplinary policies disproportionately affect Black and Latino youth in the education system, a practice known as the discipline gap. This discipline gap is also connected to the achievement gap. The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights issued a brief in 2014 outlining the current disparities. Black students are suspended and expelled at a rate three times greater than white students. The Advancement Project found that "In the 2006-2007 school year, there was no state in which African-American students were not suspended more often than white students". On average, 5% of white students are suspended, compared to 16% of black students. Black students represent 16% of student enrollment, and represent 27% of students referred to law enforcement and 31% of students subjected to a school-related arrest. Combined, 70% of students involved in "In-School arrests or referred to law enforcement are Black or Latino." The majority of these arrests are under zero tolerance policies.

Disparities were found in the implementation of zero tolerance policies (ZTPs) in relation to minor offenses. In 2010, in North Carolina black students were punished for the same minor offenses, specifically cell phone, dress code, disruptive behavior and display of affection by more than 15 percent for each category of offense than white students. "The Council of State Governments Report found that black students were more likely to be disciplined for less serious "discretionary" offenses, and that when other factors were controlled for, higher percentages of White students were disciplined on more serious nondiscretionary grounds, such as possessing drugs or carrying a weapon".

A 2009 study reported that the racial disparity in rates of school suspensions could not be explained solely by racial differences in rates of delinquent behavior, and that this disparity in turn was "strongly associated with similar levels of disproportion in juvenile court referrals". Similarly, a 2010 study found that black students were more likely to be referred to the office than students of other races, and that this disparity could be partly, but not completely, explained by student behavior and school-level factors. In contrast, a 2014 study found that although black students were more likely to be suspended, this disparity "was completely accounted for by a measure of the prior problem behavior of the student", and concluded that "the use of suspensions by teachers and administrators may not have been as racially biased as some scholars have argued".

Schools with a higher percentage of black students are more likely to implement zero tolerance policies and to use extremely punitive discipline, supporting the racial threat hypothesis.

LGBTQ students

National and state-wide studies have shown that students that identify as or are perceived to be LGBTQ are more likely than their peers to be disciplined, expelled, arrested, or incarcerated than their heterosexual peers. A national study concluded in 2010 that these students are disproportionately punished by the educational and criminal-justice systems despite not displaying more illegal or dangerous behaviors than their heterosexual peers. It was also concluded that LGBTQ students had a significantly greater chance of being stopped by the police, expelled from school, arrested, and convicted as either youth or adults. These students were expelled at more than twice the rate of heterosexual students.

According to a 2012 report by the Center for American Progress:

• Gay and transgender youth, particularly gender nonconforming girls, are up to three times more likely to experience harsh disciplinary treatment by school administrators than their heterosexual counterparts.
• As with racial disparities in school discipline, these higher rates of punishment do not correlate to higher rates of misbehavior among gay and transgender youth.
• LGBT youth make up 13–15 percent of the juvenile justice system, even though they make-up only 5–7 percent of the population overall, and 60 percent of these youth are black or Latino.
• This high rate of contact with the system is due in part to harsh school sanctions often based on their perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.

GLSEN Educational Exclusion - Drop Out, Push Out, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline among LGBTQ Youth, A report from GLSEN, 2016. Retrieved 2017-12-12

"LGBTQ youth’s higher likelihood of victimization may put them in greater contact with school authorities and increase their risk of discipline. These youth may be punished even when they are the victims in bullying incidents, including as a result of defensive or preemptive violence."

"LGBTQ youth who had experienced discriminatory policies and practices at school experienced higher rates of school discipline. For instance, 48.0% of LGBTQ students experiencing discrimination at school had been disciplined at school, compared to 32.0% who had not been discriminated against."

"Punitive Responses to Harassment and Assault Students who are victimized are more likely to come into contact with school officials especially when they attempt to address victimization incidents. School officials may then involve law enforcement in their disciplinary approaches. • LGBTQ students who reported higher levels of victimization were more likely to have been involved with the justice system as result of school disciplinary actions than those with lower levels of victimization (victimization based on their sexual orientation: 4.7% vs 1.2%; victimization based on gender expression: 3.8% vs. 1.5%)."

Special needs students

Special needs students - autism, etc. that result in disruptive behavior

A 2011 study by the New York Civil Liberties Union shows that youth with disabilities are four times as likely to be suspended as their peers without disabilities. A 2011 report by the Justice Policy Institute outlined multiple factors contributing to this disparity, including a reliance on law enforcement to enforce school discipline.

Contributing factors

The School-to-prison-pipeline (SPP) is the cumulative effect of a wide variety of federal, state, local, and school district disciplinary and discretionary laws and policies that push students out of school and into the criminal justice system. Some have been in place for over a century while others have been implemented much more recently. Contributing factors to the underlying problems include societal and individual characteristics, but these are not in any way way new; the responses of governments and school authorities that define the SPP are much more recent.

Literacy and graduation

See also: Literacy in the United States

See also: Decreasing graduation completion rates in the United States

Students who don't master reading at Grade 3 are much more likely to not graduate. Prisons are not planned based on 3rd or 4th grade test results - urban myth - but it has been suggested they might be. Students who don't graduate are much more likely to be incarcerated.

"More than two-thirds of state prison inmates are high school dropouts, according to the department. And an African-American male between the ages of 20 and 24 without a high school diploma or GED has a higher chance of being imprisoned than of being employed." https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/09/30/education-secretary-duncan-combats-school-to-prison-pipeline

Expulsion and exclusion

See also: School discipline

See also: Expulsion (education)

See also: Suspension (punishment)

Early expulsion

"Students who are forced out of school for disruptive behavior are usually sent back to the origin of their angst and unhappiness—their home environments or their neighborhoods, which are filled with negative influence. Those who are forced out for smaller offenses become hardened, confused, embittered. Those who are unnecessarily forced out of school become stigmatized and fall behind in their studies; many eventually decide to drop out of school altogether, and many others commit crimes in their communities."(Tavis Smiley)

Barriers to readmission

social / peers school policies missed opportunities - out of step with cohorts self-esteem

School performance reporting

No Child Left Behind

Zero tolerance policies

See also: Zero tolerance (schools)

Zero tolerance policies are school disciplinary polices that set predetermined consequences or punishments for specific offenses. By definition zero tolerance policies, as any policy that is "unreasonable rule or policy that is the same for everyone but has an unfair effect on people who share a particular attribute" are necessarily discriminatory.. The zero tolerance approach was first introduced in the 1980s to reduce drug use in schools. The use of zero tolerance policies spread more widely in the 1990s. To reduce gun violence, the Gun Free Schools Act of 1994 (GFSA) required that federal funding "must 1) have policies to expel for a calendar year any student who brings a firearm to school or to school zone, and 2) report that student to local law enforcement, thereby blurring any distinction between disciplinary infractions at school and the law" . During the 1996-1997 school year, 94% of schools had zero tolerance policies for fire arms, 87% for alcohol, and 79% for violence.

Over the past decade, zero tolerance policies have expanded to predetermined punishments for a wide degree of rule violations. Zero-tolerance policies do not distinguish between serious and non-serious offenses. All students who commit a given offense receive the same treatment. Behaviors punished by zero tolerance policies are most often non-serious offense and are punished on the same terms as a student would be for bringing a gun or drugs to school. In 2006, 95% of out-of-school suspensions were for nonviolent, minor disruptions such as tardiness. In 2006-2007, "out-of-school suspensions for non-serious, non-violent offenses accounted for 37.2% of suspensions in Maryland, whereas only 6.7% of suspensions were issued for dangerous behaviors". In Chicago, the widespread adoption of zero-tolerance policies in 1994 resulted in a 51% increase in student suspensions for the next four years and a 3,000% increase in expulsions.

The most direct way these policies increase the probability of a youth coming into contact with the incarceration system is through their exclusionary methods. Suspension, expulsion, and an increased risk of dropping out all contribute to a youth's increased chances of becoming involved with the incarceration system. Suspension removes students from the structure and supervision provided through schooling, providing opportunities for youth to engage in criminal activities while not in the school environment. Other factors may include "increased exposure to peers involved in antisocial behavior, as well as effects on school performance and completion and student attitudes toward antisocial behavior". Suspension can lead to feelings of alienation from the school setting that can lead to students to feel rejected, increasing chances of relationships with antisocial peers. Relationships with peers have strong impacts on student behavior, demonstrated through differential association theory. Students are more than twice as likely to be arrested during months in which they are forcibly removed from school. Students who have been suspended are three times more likely to drop out by the 10th grade than students who have never been suspended. Dropping out makes that student three times more likely to be incarcerated.

Exclusionary disciplinary policies, specifically zero tolerance policies, that remove students from the school environment increase the probability of a youth coming into contact with the incarceration system. Approximately 3.3 million suspensions and over 100,000 expulsions occur each year. This number has nearly doubled since 1974, with rates escalating in the mid 1990s as zero tolerance policies began to be widely adopted. Rising rates of the use of expulsion and suspension are not connected to higher rates of misbehaviors. Zero tolerance policies are discussed in more detail later in the article, in the Current policies maintaining the link section.

Research is increasingly beginning to examine the connections between school failure and later contact with the criminal justice system for minorities Once a child drops out, they are eight times more likely to be incarcerated than youth who graduate from high school. Studies have found that 68% of all males in state and federal prison do not have a high school diploma. Suspensions and expulsions have been shown to increase a young person's probability of dropping out and becoming involved with the criminal justice system.

Although the school-to-prison pipeline is aggravated by a combination of ingredients, zero-tolerance policies are viewed as main contributors.

In 2011, a study by the National Education Policy Center found that zero-tolerance policies across the nation were increasing suspension rates, with students being accused of offenses such as attendance violations, dress code violations, cell phone use, and other minor offenses. They found that zero-tolerance policies put children, particularly black and Latino children, on a path of truancy and likely incarceration. Black students are 3.5 times more likely to be suspended than White students and are held responsible for 70% of arrests while attending school. Simultaneously Latino students are 1 and ½ more likely to be suspended than their White classmates

According to the ACLU, many schools rely on poorly trained police, rather than teachers and administrators, to handle minor school misconduct. The reality is that public schools have in the last 15 years undergone mass changes in school security policies. Video surveillance, drug-sniffing dogs, and sworn-in security officers are now commonplace fixtures in most public schools in the United States. Scholars argue that this increase in security measures is a result of rising fears about violence in schools. One highly publicized example is the 1999 Columbine High School Shooting. The irony of the increase in security after the Columbine Shooting is that armed police officers were stationed at the Columbine High School at the time of the massacre, yet they were still unable to stop it. Now that police are more present in public schools, the line between disciplining under a schools' general policy standards versus disciplining by law enforcement standards is getting blurred.

A 2012 school "lockdown" in Casa Grande, Arizona, included employees of the private Corrections Corporation of America company—unusual participants in a government policing action. Caroline Isaacs of the Tucson American Friends Service Committee said of the event: "To invite for-profit prison guards to conduct law enforcement actions in a high school is perhaps the most direct expression of the 'schools-to-prison pipeline' I've ever seen."

Institutional similarity

Another facet of the school-to-prison pipeline involves overlapping patterns of institutional structure. These include disciplinary and bureaucratic practices for storing human beings in buildings, as well as institutional culture that degrades the people affected. A simple but widespread example of this culture is the division of students into "good kids" and "bad kids," which paves the way for the promotion of some and the abandonment of others (often resulting in identification with 'badness').

Michel Foucault, in his 1975 Discipline and Punish, suggested that different institutions had gradually become an extension of the prisons, resulting in a "carceral system" that now regulates much of society

Economic disparity

Research doesn't support this when other factors are considered.

Criminalizing behavior

"ting youth of color to prison. With law enforcement actively patrolling school hallways, student infractions that once merited a trip to the principal’s office now have a greater chance of leading to a police citation or arrest." https://www.dshs.wa.gov/sites/default/files/JJRA/jr/documents/STPP_ConceptPaper073112%28BG-Final%29.pdf

School disturbance laws

Main|School disturbance laws}}

Policing in schools

Zero tolerance policies increase the number of School Resource Officers (SRO) in schools, which increases the contact a student has with the criminal justice system. Students may be referred by teachers or other administrators but most often zero tolerance policies are directly enforced by police or school resource officers. The practice of increasing the number of police in schools contributes to patterns of criminalization. This increase in SROs has led to contemporary school discipline beginning to mirror approaches used in legal and law enforcement. Zero tolerance policies increase the use of profiling, a very common practice used in law enforcement. This practice is able to identify students who may engage in misbehavior, but the use of profiling is unreliable in ensuring school safety, as this practice over identifies students from minority populations. There were no students involved in the 1990s shootings who were Black or Latino and the 1990s school shootings were the main basis for the increase in presence of police in schools.

A Justice Policy Institute report (2011) found a 38% increase in the number of SROs between 1997 and 2007 as a result of the growing implementation of zero tolerance policies. In 1999, 54% of students surveyed reported seeing a security guard or police officer in their school, by 2005, this number increased to 68%. The education system has seen a huge increase in the number of students referred to law enforcement. In one city in Georgia, when police officers were introduced into the schools, "school-based referrals to juvenile court in the county increased 600% over a three year period". There was no increase in the number of serious offenses or safety violations during this three-year period. In 2012, forty-one states required schools to report students to law enforcement for various misbehaviors on school grounds. This practice increases the use of law enforcement professionals in handling student behavior and decreases the use of in-classroom (non-exclusionary) management of behaviors.

In 2014, the United Nations Human Rights Committee (HRC) expressed concern with increasing criminalization of students in response to school disciplinary problems, and recommended that the US government "promote the use of alternatives to the application of criminal law" to address such issues. The HRC also noted its concern with the use of corporal punishment in schools in the US. In the second Universal Periodic Review of the United States' human-rights record, the government avowed taking "effective measures to help ensure non-discrimination in school discipline policies and practices".

Editorial policies of major media

See also: United States incarceration rate § Editorial policies of major media

A substantial body of research claims that incarceration rates are primarily a function of media editorial policies, largely unrelated to the actual crime rate: Beginning especially in the 1970s, the mainstream commercial media in the U.S. increased coverage of the police blotter, while reducing coverage of investigative journalism. This had at least two advantages for the commercial media organizations:

1. Poor people can be libeled and slandered with impunity, and stories based on interviewing police are easy and cheap to create.
2. This reduces the space that might otherwise be filled with investigative journalism, which too often threatens major advertisers.

Advertising rates are set based on the audience. Because "if it bleeds, it leads," the media were able to accomplish this change without losing audience.

Beyond this, the growth of private prisons increased the pool of major advertisers who could be offended by honest reporting on incarcerations and the school-to-prison pipeline: It makes financial sense to report on this only to the extent that such reporting is needed to maintain an audience.

Punishment not treatment

A high correlation exists between Black female dropouts and those that end up in abusive relationships, pregnant at an early age, victims of substance abuse and often wind up w/partners in the underground economy 31% girls incarcerated have been sexually abused.

Incarcerating people is BIG business in this country!

Kids for cash scandal [3]

An extreme example being convicted "on charges that stemmed mostly from acting out in school". Why did this not ring alarm bells sooner? Ciavarella was already sending juvenile to lockup for sketchy reasons even before the builder of the new facility offered him money. the public embraced the notion that by locking up kids earlier for discipline problems, it would send a message that would somehow prevent youth crime. [4]

Alternative approaches

Restorative justice model

Restorative justice approaches provide the space for students, teachers, families, schools, and communities to "resolve conflict, promote academic achievement, and address school safety". The use of restorative justice in schools began in the early 1990s with initiatives in Australia. Restorative justice models are used globally and have recently been introduced to school disciplinary policies in the United States as an alternative approach to current punitive models, such as zero tolerance.

Intervention programs

http://docplayer.net/57585490-The-road-to-re-engagement-providing-an-education-to-long-term-suspended-and-expelled-youth.html

Behavioral Intervention Strategies and Supports

California policies https://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/ss/se/behaviorialintervention.asp

Costs to society

"When these long-term suspended and expelled youth drop out, the state pays. Each student that is unable to earn a diploma costs Washington State an average of $127,000 more than the average high school graduate in unemployment, welfare, food stamps and criminal costs." https://www.dshs.wa.gov/sites/default/files/JJRA/jr/documents/STPP_ConceptPaper073112%28BG-Final%29.pdf (The Road to Re-Engagement: Providing and Education to Long-Term Suspended and Expelled Youth, TeamChild Law and Policy Internship, 2009)

$3.8 million cost of incarceration vs. $1 million lifetime income tax paid by college graduate

See also

• List of U.S. states by incarceration rate
• List of countries by incarceration rate
• Prison–industrial complex
• Kids for cash scandal

Further reading

• School Resource Officers: Safety Priority or Part of the Problem? Tierney Sneed, USA Today, January 30, 2015.

• Illinois new law disrupting SPP

“Just being arrested can have long-term consequences,” says Josh Gupta-Kagan, an assistant professor specializing in juvenile justice at the University of South Carolina School of Law. “Teenagers start to see the school as out to get them.”How America Outlawed Adolescence, The Atlantic. November 2016. Retrieved 2017-12-07</ref>

References

[Category:Education in the United States]] [Category:Imprisonment and detention in the United States]] [Category:Juvenile justice system]] [Category:Juvenile delinquency]]