The findings and analysis from the literature is presented in four parts. The database searches utilized the following terms, both individually and in combination with each other: school discipline, school-to-prison pipeline, history, impact, school safety, outcomes, disproportionate, zero tolerance, school resource officers, special education, delinquency, juvenile, detention, incarceration, trauma, policy, and practice. This systematic review of the literature focused on the following empirical questions: (1) what is the history of school discipline? (2) is the school-to-prison pipeline real, and if so, who does it impact? (3) what are the outcomes of school discipline policies across stakeholders? and, (4) do these policies make schools safer? To answer these questions, the review search was completed of the following databases: Social Work Abstracts, SocIndex, ERIC, Criminal Justice Abstracts, PsychInfo, and Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection as well as gathering all relevant policy papers and discussions across various stakeholders and interested parties. For those students ultimately disciplined within the school-to-prison pipeline, it is a system that is difficult to escape (American Psychological Association 2008). These problems, though, are often part of the explanation for the children and adolescents’ initial involvement in the discipline systems: poverty, trauma, mental health difficulties, and/or developmental and cognitive deficits, among others (Mallett 2013). However, those students involved in the pipeline, and in particular those who are suspended or expelled from school or subsequently held in juvenile justice facilities, have complicated problems and poor long-term outcomes (Advancement Project et al. In other words, most students pose little to no threat of harm to other students, their schools, or their communities. Most of the young people involved in these harsh discipline systems among the schools and juvenile courts need not be, for they are minimal safety risk concerns. The evidentiary impact of these policies and disproportionate impact on many of the most at risk children and adolescents supports the use of the more harsh “school-to-prison pipeline” terminology (Mallett 2013). This pipeline is best understood as a set of policies and practices in schools that make it more likely that students face criminal involvement with the juvenile courts than attain a quality education (Advancement Project et al. 2013) or “school pathways to the juvenile justice system” (Marsh 2014). This phenomenon is often referred to as the “school-to-prison pipeline” (Kang-Brown et al. Unfortunately, over the past 30 years a partnership among schools and courts has developed through a punitive and harmful framework, to the detriment of many vulnerable children and adolescents. The United States school districts and juvenile courts were never intended to operate in a collaborative paradigm. Thus, the school-to-prison pipeline does not improve school or community safety. Very few of these young people are actually appropriately involved, in that they do not pose safety risks to their schools or communities. Thus, millions of young people have become encapsulated in harmful punitive systems. While impacting many, unfortunately, these changes disproportionately affect vulnerable children, adolescents, and their families. The increased use of zero tolerance policies and police (safety resource officers) in the schools has exponentially increased arrests and referrals to the juvenile courts. In the school systems, and particularly those that are overburdened and underfinanced, many students have been increasingly suspended and expelled due to criminalizing both typical adolescent developmental behaviors as well as low-level type misdemeanors: acting out in class, truancy, fighting, and other similar offenses. While there was crossover impact between these systems, the movements were both independent and inter-dependent. This paper reviews evidence of the school-to-prison pipeline, a confluence of two child- and adolescent-caring systems-schools and juvenile courts-that simultaneously shifted over the past generation from rehabilitative to punitive paradigms.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |