A trenchant and wide-ranging look at this alarming national trend, Disrupting the School-to-Prison Pipeline is unsparing in its account of the problem while pointing in the direction of meaningful and much-needed reforms. The “school-to-prison pipeline” has received much attention in the education world over the past few years. A fast-growing and disturbing development, it describes a range of circumstances whereby “children are funneled out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems.” Scholars, educators, parents, students, and organizers across the country have pointed to this shocking trend, insisting that it be identified and understood—and that it be addressed as an urgent matter by the larger community. This new volume from the Harvard Educational Review features essays from scholars, educators, students, and community activists who are working to disrupt, reverse, and redirect the pipeline. Alongside these authors are contributions from the people most affected: youth and adults who have been incarcerated, or whose lives have been shaped by the school-to-prison pipeline. Through stories, essays, and poems, these individuals add to the book’s comprehensive portrait of how our education and justice systems function—and how they fail to serve the interests of many young people."

This volume examines the school-to-prison pipeline, a concept that has received growing attention over the past 10–15 years in the United States. The “pipeline” refers to a number of interrelated concepts and activities that most often include the criminalization of students and student behavior, the police-like state found in many schools throughout the country, and the introduction of youth into the criminal justice system at an early age. The school-to-prison pipeline negatively and disproportionally affects communities of color throughout the United States, particularly in urban areas. Given the demographic composition of public schools in the United States, the nature of student performance in schools over the past 50 years, the manifestation of school-to-prison pipeline approaches pervasive throughout the country and the world, and the growing incarceration rates for youth, this volume explores this issue from the sociological, criminological, and educational perspectives. Understanding, Dismantling, and Disrupting the Prison-to-School Pipeline has contributions from scholars and practitioners who work in the fields of sociology, counseling, criminal justice, and who are working to dismantle the pipeline. While the academic conversation has consistently called the pipeline ‘school-to-prison,’ including the framing of many chapters in this book, the economic and market forces driving the prison-industrial complex urge us to consider reframing the pipeline as one working from ‘prison-to-school.’ This volume points toward the tensions between efforts to articulate values of democratic education and schooling against practices that criminalize youth and engage students in reductionist and legalistic manners.

The school-to-prison pipeline is often the path for marginalized students, particularly black males, who are three times as likely to be suspended as White students. This volume provides an ethnographic portrait of how educators can implement restorative justice to build positive school cultures and address disciplinary problems in a more corrective and less punitive manner. Looking at the school-to-prison pipeline in a historical context, it analyzes current issues facing schools and communities and ways that restorative justice can improve behavior and academic achievement. By practicing a critical restorative justice, educators can reduce the domino effect between suspension and incarceration and foster a more inclusive school climate.

Examines the relationship between the law and the school-to-prison pipeline, argues that law can be an effective weapon in the struggle to reduce the number of children caught, and discusses the consequences on families and communities.

Print+CourseSmart

This edited volume focuses on the role that school climate and disciplinary practices have on the educational and social experiences of students of color.

"Arguing that the school-to-prison pipeline is "one of the most urgent educational issues of our time," this volume seeks to (1) examine how and why increasing numbers of students, disproportionately youth of color, are being taken from our schools into our prisons and (2) consider what school-based educators can do to disrupt this flow and dismantle the school to prison pipeline, using examples drawn from both schools and prisons. Incorporating perspectives from both 'ends' of the pipeline, the volume provides specific strategies on curriculum, pedagogy, and disciplinary practices that can help redirect our collective efforts from carceral practices to education that will be valuable for all educators in keeping students in school and out of prison"--