School-to-prison pipeline
The school to prison pipeline describes policies and practices in schools that move children away from learning and into the criminal legal system. This includes policies that encourage police presence at schools, excessive disciplinary procedures that result in children being out of class for ever-lengthening periods of time, removal of children to alternative educational settings, and the use of citations and criminal charges to punish children for school-based behaviors.
The school-to-prison pipeline starts (and is best avoided) in the classroom. Teachers, principals, school administrators, and school boards create and enforce policies that either welcome children into the classroom (and allow for mistakes along the way) or exclude students with disruptive or difficult behaviors, preventing them from accessing their education.
What is the school-to-prison pipeline?
The school-to-prison pipeline refers to the pattern of policies and practices that funnel students—especially students of color and students with disabilities—out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. What begins with exclusionary discipline (like suspensions and expulsions) often ends with incarceration, creating lifelong consequences for vulnerable youth.
Facts about the school-to-prison pipeline:
Nationally, Black girls are referred to the juvenile court 3 times more often than White girls, but Black girls in Allegheny County are referred to the juvenile court at a rate 11 times that of White girls
Black boys are seven times more likely to be referred to Juvenile Court than white boys
Black students overall are more likely to be suspended than white students and are disciplined more often and more severely than white or Hispanic students
Decades of research have found a direct correlation with out of school suspensions and later arrests and incarceration. Excluding children from school funnels them into the pipeline.
Students with disabilities are dramatically overrepresented at all stages of the school-to-prison pipeline