School-to-prison pipeline
[1] This has become a hot topic of debate in discussions surrounding educational disciplinary policies as media coverage of youth violence and mass incarceration has grown during the early 21st century.
The disciplinary policies and practices that create an environment for the US SPP to occur disproportionately affect disabled, Latino, and Black students, which is later reflected in the rates of incarceration.
[13] Suspensions and expulsions have been shown to correlate with a young person's probability of dropping out and becoming involved with the criminal justice system.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, "Students suspended or expelled for a discretionary violation are nearly 3 times more likely to be in contact with the juvenile justice system the following year.
[23][non-primary source needed] According to Fordham Law Review Online, "In the juvenile justice system, black girls are the fastest growing demographic when it comes to arrest and incarceration.
It also been noted that students of minority groups were vulnerable to expulsions and that Black girls are also highly criminalized for being absent from a schooling context.
Dorothy E. Hines and Dorinda J. Carter Andrews have argued that increasing rates criminalization of Black girls, disciplinary enforcements such as harsh policies, and bans against "various student offenses" can be illuminated through (a) zero-tolerance policies including various forms of surveillance measures, (b) policing of their bodies as criminals, and (c) penalizing "bad" girl attitudes.
"[27] 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.
[41] This increase in SROs has led to contemporary school discipline beginning to mirror approaches used in legal and 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".
[45] In the second Universal Periodic Review of the US's human rights record, the government avowed taking "effective measures to help ensure non-discrimination in school discipline policies and practices".
[46] In March 2010, at the Carver Primary School in the lower South Side, Chicago, several first-grade students were handcuffed, and told that they were going to prison and would never see their parents again, after they talked in class.
[47][48] In November 2011, at Orange River Elementary School in Florida, an assistant principal called the police after a girl kissed a boy.
[49][50] In February 2010, the principal of a junior high school in Forest Hills, Queens, New York, called police after a 12-year-old student used a green magic marker to write, "I love my friends Abby and Faith.
Some time later, this same kid was walking to join other students, and the same officer that reprimanded him for the trash can grabbed him, pushed him to the floor, and arrested him.
The child's mother claimed, "The vice principal told my son that he needed to cut his hair because it was distracting and violated the dress code."
The child's mother claims she agreed to get her son a new haircut; she also said she was unable to immediately get an appointment due to a lack of Black barbers in her area.
[62] In mid-2018, an 11-year-old Black girl, Faith Fennidy, was sent home from a private Roman Catholic school in Louisiana because she had hair extensions.
[63] In 2012, at Creekside Elementary School in Milledgeville, Georgia, a six-year-old student, Salecia Johnson, was crying and flailing on the floor of her principal's office.
[64] On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 disease a global pandemic, resulting in school shutdowns across multiple countries, including the US.
[65] Based on a report by UNICEF, approximately 94 percent of all countries enacted forms of remote learning to continue education for children in response to government closures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
As school districts in the US encountered difficulty navigating requirements to provide education in remote settings, disciplinary practices continued to reflect aspects of the SPP with zero-tolerance policies just as harmful as those before the COVID-19 pandemic.
"[7] In 2014, the Obama administration issued guidance that urged schools to reduce the number of suspensions and expulsions, especially of minority students, thereby stemming the school-to-prison pipeline.
[73] In doing so, she cited research by John Paul Wright and four coauthors that purported to show that the disparate rates of suspensions and expulsions were due not to racism but rather to prior poor behavior by Black students.
They concluded that "the racial gap in suspensions was completely accounted for by a measure of the prior problem behavior of the student—a finding never before reported in the literature".
[81][82] Correcting for sample bias in the study by Wright et al. led Huang to conclude that their data confirmed what earlier researchers had found regarding racial disparities in punishment that could not be accounted for by actual differences in behavior.
[83] The idea behind these programs is that students should be encouraged to participate in their punishments and school administration should refrain from using suspensions and expulsions for minor offenses.
Despite concerns by some that a softer approach would yield school safety issues, the data shows an increase in graduation rates of approximately 20 percent and an eight-percent decline in suspensions.
Such policies aim to create safer classrooms by removing potential disruptions, but many in mental health, social services, courts, or other related fields believe they fail in this goal and may result in less safe schools and communities.
[89] An American Psychological Association Zero Tolerance Task Force report found that "students with disabilities, especially those with emotional and behavioral disorders, appear to be suspended and expelled at rates disproportionate to the representation in the population".
