Where is school along the path to prison

Over a quarter of African-American boys with disabilities, and 19 percent of African-American girls with disabilities, received at least one out-of-school suspension in — African-American students with disabilities represent Many disabled youth in the juvenile justice and criminal justice systems go through general education with unaddressed academic, behavioral, or mental health needs.

For example, one study found that up to 85 percent of children in juvenile detention facilities have disabilities that make them eligible for special education, yet only 37 percent receive services while in school.

This type of early invention is the key to changing their STPP trajectory. For students with Individualized Education Plans IEPs , short-term suspensions and other warning signs should trigger a review of the IEP to determine if there is a problem with instruction or other underlying problems that schools cannot remedy through exclusionary discipline. As the statistics demonstrate, we cannot address this crisis without a disability lens. But in order to sell the promise of the IDEA in diverting students from the Pipeline, we must first address the fact that many families reject special education because of the stigma attached to disability.

School-to-Prison Pipeline reform must include efforts to combat the disability stigma that schools have too often re-enforced through segregation and sub-par curricula. Their purpose is not punitive or disciplinary yet these practices continue to be applied when students are judged annoying or disruptive but not dangerous, and when lower—level intervention earlier would have worked preventively. Currently, there is no data proving that students — including very young children — who are subjected to improper restraint and seclusion practices are being channeled into the Pipeline.

Whether students are traumatized by being held face down on the floor or kept alone in a room for long periods, or suspended, expelled, and thrown into the justice system, the results are young people who lose any future their education would have made possible. PBIS aims to help create equitable and safe classrooms for all students. A small but growing number of schools across the United States have adopted PBIS-infused discipline policies in response to traditional discipline policies that have resulted in disproportionate discipline of students of color and disabled students.

The two key forces that produced and now maintain the school-to-prison pipeline are the use of zero tolerance policies that mandate exclusionary punishments and the presence of SROs on campuses. These policies and practices became common following a deadly spate of school shootings across the U. Lawmakers and educators believed they would help to ensure safety on school campuses.

Having a zero tolerance policy means that a school has zero tolerance for any kind of misbehavior or violation of school rules, no matter how minor, unintentional, or subjectively defined it may be. In a school with a zero tolerance policy, suspensions and expulsions are normal and common ways of dealing with student misbehavior. Research shows that the implementation of zero tolerance policies has led to significant increases in suspensions and expulsions.

They jumped from just 21 expulsions in the —95 school year to in — Once suspended or expelled, data show that students are less likely to complete high school , more than twice as likely to be arrested while on forced leave from school, and more likely to be in contact with the juvenile justice system during the year that follows the leave.

In fact, sociologist David Ramey found, in a nationally representative study, that experiencing school punishment before the age of 15 is associated with contact with the criminal justice system for boys.

Other research shows that students who do not complete high school are more likely to be incarcerated. In addition to adopting harsh zero tolerance policies, most schools across the country now have police present on campus on a daily basis and most states require educators to report student misbehavior to law enforcement.

The presence of SROs on campus means that students have contact with law enforcement from a young age. Though their intended purpose is to protect students and ensure safety on school campuses, in many instances, the police handling of disciplinary issues escalates minor, non-violent infractions into violent, criminal incidents that have negative impacts on students.

By studying the distribution of federal funding for SROs and rates of school-related arrests , criminologist Emily G. Owens found that the presence of SROs on campus causes law enforcement agencies to learn of more crimes and increases the likelihood of arrest for those crimes among children under the age of Christopher A. Mallett, a legal scholar and expert on the school-to-prison pipeline, reviewed evidence of the pipeline's existence and concluded that "the increased use of zero tolerance policies and police Overall, what over a decade of empirical research on this topic proves is that zero tolerance policies, punitive disciplinary measures like suspensions and expulsions, and the presence of SROs on campus have led to more students being pushed out of schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems.

In short, these policies and practices created the school-to-prison pipeline and sustain it today. But why exactly do these policies and practices make students more likely to commit crimes and end up in prison? Sociological theories and research help answer this question. One key sociological theory of deviance , known as labeling theory , contends that people come to identify and behave in ways that reflect how others label them.

Applying this theory to the school-to-prison pipeline suggests that being labeled as a "bad" kid by school authorities or SROs, and being treated in a way that reflects that label punitively , ultimately leads kids to internalize the label and behave in ways that make it real through action.

In other words, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. In his first book, Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys , Rios revealed through in-depth interviews and ethnographic observation how increased surveillance and attempts at controlling "at-risk" or deviant youth ultimately foster the very criminal behavior they are intended to prevent. In a social context in which social institutions label deviant youth as bad or criminal, and in doing so, strip them of dignity, fail to acknowledge their struggles, and do not treat them with respect, rebellion and criminality are acts of resistance.

According to Rios, then, it is social institutions and their authorities that do the work of criminalizing youth. Publication Type. More Filters. Telehealth consultation in a self-contained classroom for behavior: A pilot study.

ABSTRACT Students with challenging behavior severe enough to warrant placement in a self-contained special education classroom statistically have poor school and post-school outcomes compared to … Expand. View 1 excerpt, cites background. The importance of rule fairness: the influence of school bonds on at-risk students in an alternative school.

In this article, school bonds are defined as the … Expand. Clemson grew up in a small farming community in Northeast Ohio, where she was involved in her community and excelled in athletics. Chapter Our Future. The Prison Path: School Practices that Hurt Our Youth addresses ethical and moral issues associated with incarceration and schooling drawing an interesting and challenging parallel between both social processes.

Christen Clemson challenges preconceived images of prison and school life aims to have readers reflect and rethink their approaches to the morality of institutional life. The correlations she has made between school and prison spaces are extremely powerful and gut wrenching.