The School-To-Prison Pipeline: Education, Discipline, and Racialized Double Standards 978-1440831119, 1440831114

Table of contents :
Cover......Page 1
Half Title......Page 2
Title Page......Page 4
Copyright
......Page 5
Contents
......Page 6
Series Foreword
......Page 8
Introduction
......Page 10
Part 1: School-to-Prison Pipeline: Education on Lockdown......Page 14
1. Education, Race, and Social Control......Page 16
2. Segregated Schools, Sociopolitical Shifts, and Education under Siege......Page 30
Part 2: School-to-Prison Pipeline: The Context of Social Control......Page 46
3. Racialized Control in the Era of Color Blindness......Page 48
4. The Prison Industrial Complex: Profit, Race, and the Prison Track......Page 64
5. The Medical Industrial Complex: Race and the Double Standards of Diagnosis......Page 82
Part 3: School-to-Prison Pipeline: Punitive Policies and Transformative Alternatives......Page 100
6. Criminalized Education: Schoolhouse as Jailhouse......Page 102
7. Education Not Incarceration: Ending the School-to-Prison Pipeline......Page 118
Notes......Page 138
Bibliography......Page 168
Index......Page 186
About the Author......Page 190

Citation preview

The School-toPrison Pipeline

Recent Titles in Racism in American Institutions Brian D. Behnken, Series Editor The Color of Politics: Racism in the American Political Arena Today Chris Danielson How Do Hurricane Katrina’s Winds Blow?: Racism in 21st-Century New Orleans Liza Lugo, JD Out of Bounds: Racism and the Black Athlete Lori Latrice Martin, Editor Color behind Bars: Racism in the U.S. Prison System Volume 1: Historical and Contemporary Issues of Race and Ethnicity in the American Prison System Volume 2: Public Policy Influence(s) toward a Racial/Ethnic American Prison System Scott Wm. Bowman, Editor White Sports/Black Sports: Racial Disparities in Athletic Programs Lori Latrice Martin Racism in American Popular Media: From Aunt Jemima to the Frito Bandito Brian D. Behnken and Gregory D. Smithers Voting Rights under Fire: The Continuing Struggle for People of Color Donathan L. Brown and Michael Clemons The Race Controversy in American Education Lillian Dowdell Drakeford, PhD, Editor How Racism and Sexism Killed Traditional Media: Why the Future of Journalism Depends on Women and People of Color Joshunda Sanders

The School-toPrison Pipeline Education, Discipline, and Racialized Double Standards NANCY A. HEITZEG

Racism in American Institutions Brian D. Behnken, Series Editor

Copyright © 2016 by Nancy A. Heitzeg All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Heitzeg, Nancy A., author. Title: The school-to-prison pipeline : education, discipline, and racialized double standards / Nancy A. Heitzeg. Description: Santa Barbara : Praeger, 2016. | Series: Racism in American institutions | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015046761 (print) | LCCN 2016009074 (ebook) | ISBN 9781440831119 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781440831126 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Racism in education—United States. | Prison-industrial complex—United States. Classification: LCC LC212.52 .H45 2016 (print) | LCC LC212.52 (ebook) | DDC 370.89—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015046761 ISBN: 978–1–4408–3111–9 EISBN: 978–1–4408–3112–6 20 19 18 17 16

1 2 3 4 5

This book is also available as an eBook. Praeger An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 www.abc-clio.com This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America Portions of this text have been adapted, with permission, from: Nancy A. Heitzeg, “Race, Class, and Legal Risk in the United States: Youth of Color and Colluding Systems of Social Control.” Forum on Public Policy, Summer 2008. Nancy A. Heitzeg, “Education or Incarceration: Zero Tolerance Policies and the School to Prison Pipeline.” Forum on Public Policy, Summer 2009. Nancy A. Heitzeg, “ ‘Whiteness,’ Criminality, and the Double Standards of Deviance/Social Control.” Contemporary Justice Review, 18 (2), 2015.

Contents Series Foreword

vii

Introduction

ix

Part 1: School-to-Prison Pipeline: Education on Lockdown

1

1. Education, Race, and Social Control

3

2. Segregated Schools, Sociopolitical Shifts, and Education under Siege

17

Part 2: School-to-Prison Pipeline: The Context of Social Control

33

3. Racialized Control in the Era of Color Blindness

35

4. The Prison Industrial Complex: Profit, Race, and the Prison Track

51

5. The Medical Industrial Complex: Race and the Double Standards of Diagnosis

69

Part 3: School-to-Prison Pipeline: Punitive Policies and Transformative Alternatives

87

6. Criminalized Education: Schoolhouse as Jailhouse

89

7. Education Not Incarceration: Ending the School-to-Prison Pipeline

105

Notes

125

Bibliography

155

Index

173

Series Foreword While Praeger’s Racism in American Institutions (RAI) series has explored various aspects of institutionalized racism in education,The School-toPrison Pipeline is the first book to examine how educational policies lead to mass incarceration. The book thus merges institutionalized racism in schools with the institutionalized racism in the criminal justice system. The RAI series focuses on the ways in which racism has become, and remains, a part of the fabric of many American institutions. For example, while the United States may have done away with overtly racist acts such as extralegal lynching, racism still affects many of America’s established institutions from public schools to corporate offices. While the media discarded many of its most racist practices and characters years ago, stereotypical depictions of people of color remain with us. Schools were supposed to be integrated after 1954, yet today many American schools remain one-race schools. This open-ended series examines the problem of racism in established American institutions. Each book in the RAI series traces the prevalence of racism within a particular institution throughout the history of the United States and explores the problem in that institution today, looking at ways in which the institution has attempted to rectify racism, but also the ways in which it has not. The School-to-Prison Pipeline examines a critically important subject. The school-to-prison or cradle-to-prison pipeline is a concept that explains how so many young people of color seem to go directly from school to jail. It explains how race and criminalization continue to go hand in hand. In many cases the pipeline emerged from schools’ zerotolerance policies—policies that were designed to send a powerful message about school behavior, and expectations that were supposed to be colorblind but that often demonstrated differential treatment for white students and students of color. Zero-tolerance policies also go far in explaining differences in treatment for white and nonwhite students. For example, while a young Black male may be expelled from school for fighting, a

viii

Series Foreword

young while male might receive psychological counseling instead. The treatment thus differs and the broader societal perceptions of each of these students also differ. The school-to-prison pipeline also explains how schools have become entangled with law enforcement. Schools frequently now have police on staff to protect school buildings, staff, and students, but these police are also often the enforcers of district zero-tolerance policies, bringing young people—from elementary students to high schoolers—into contact with law enforcement and the criminal justice system at a very young age. Sociologist Nancy A. Heitzeg has researched and written on these issues for many years. Her work in The School-to-Prison Pipeline examines the school-to-prison pipeline in almost every possible, conceivable way. The book moves seamlessly from a detailed explanation of the school-toprison pipeline to a fascinating chapter on how the pipeline serves as a method of social control. She also explores mass incarceration, punitive educational punishment policies versus other less-severe forms of punishment, and the growing criticisms of the school-to-prison pipeline. Most importantly, Dr. Heitzeg demonstrates conclusively that the school-toprison pipeline exacerbates racialized mass criminalization, which facilitates the flow of people of color and the poor from schools and into the criminal justice system. The School-to-Prison Pipeline explores an important subject, one that profoundly impacts the lives of millions of young Americans on a daily basis. Zero-tolerance policies, color-blind policies (which are frequently racist), and mass incarceration have all worked together to create the school-to-prison pipeline. That pipeline has worked to further institutionalize racism in the American educational arena. Brian D. Behnken Iowa State University Ames, Iowa

Introduction I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. —Eugene V. Debs1

This volume will explore how structural racism is perpetuated by the education system particularly via the “school-to-prison pipeline.” The pipeline describes the policies and practices that further racialize criminalization by routing youth of color out of school and on a pathway toward prison. This is accomplished by simultaneously medicalizing white youth for comparable behaviors and via double standards in the application of disciplinary policies that are “color-blind” in theory, but not in practice. The school-to-prison pipeline is most immediately facilitated by the proliferation of harsh zero-tolerance policies and a police presence in the schools, but it flourishes in a larger social climate of under-resourced schools and overlapping systems of control that criminalize Blackness while mitigating white deviance with medical labels. This volume will locate the school-to-prison pipeline in that larger climate of color-blind, yet heavily racialized social control. In Part 1, School-to-Prison Pipeline: Education on Lockdown, the pipeline is defined and the racial dynamics that shape it revealed. Entry into the pipeline is neither random nor race neutral; students of color, particularly Black, students who are poor in under-resourced schools, and students with disabilities are most at risk. The pipeline is located too in the context of schools that are underfunded and under pressure. The pipeline has emerged primarily in public schools that remain segregated by both race and class, and are dominated by private, for-profit interests; a regimental emphasis on testing as the primary pedagogy; and the early tracking of students into various sectors of the economy. The school-to-prison pipeline refers to this growing pattern of tracking students—largely students of

x

Introduction

color—out of educational institutions and, directly and/or indirectly, into the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems, where, viewed as disposable with regard to service sector employment, they, instead, serve as “clients” for a burgeoning “industry” in the control of correctional populations. In Part 2, School-to-Prison Pipeline: The Context of Social Control, the pipeline is linked with overlapping systems of social control that produce racialized results in a color-blind climate, one that masks racism with ostensibly race-neutral policy and practice. Color-blind racism has become the dominant paradigm of the post–Civil Rights era, and it serves to cloak systemic racism with carefully coded appeals to racist archetypes. Both historically and currently, the equation of crime with communities of color is a major tactic of color-blind racism. Media plays a major role in disseminating these racial archetypes that equate criminality with people of color, and is a significant contributor to the sensationalism regarding youth violence, which fueled public support of the harsh policies that led to mass incarceration in the United States and the creation of the schoolto-prison pipeline. In the past decades, there has also been a growing convergence between schools and legal or medical systems of social control. The school-toprison pipeline is deeply connected to the rise of the so-called “prison industrial complex” in the United States, a trend that has resulted by a more than 10-fold increase in incarceration in a period of 40 years. These increases can almost exclusively be traced to the War on Drugs. It is indeed impossible to consider this mass incarceration without considering race, and race as it intersects with class, gender, ability, and age. Racialized mass criminalization is furthered by policies and practices that facilitate the flow of people of color and the poor into the criminal justice system while offering alternatives for other rule-breakers. Mass incarceration of people of color in the context of the Drug War, for example, is made possible by the corresponding rise of the medical model of treatment as an option for the middle class and whites. While these systems of social control serve the function of policing the boundaries of race, class, and gender, they also serve as lucrative profit and employment sectors in late postindustrial capitalism. This trend toward criminalization for people of color and medicalization for whites provides the larger sociopolitical context for the school-to-prison pipeline as youth of color, particularly Black males, are increasingly “criminalized” within the context of schools, while their white counterparts are “medicalized” for the same disruptive behaviors. When youth of color are medicalized at school, they

Introduction

xi

are given heavily stigmatized labels that signal intellectual disability, the need for special education, and ultimately then, an increased risk of being funneled out of school and into the pipeline. Part 3, School-to-Prison Pipeline: Punitive Policies and Transformative Alternatives, offers a closer look at policies at the epicenter of the schoolto-prison pipeline—zero tolerance and school policing—and efforts to dismantle the pipeline. While the pipeline is facilitated by a number of social and educational trends, it is most directly attributable to the expansion of zero-tolerance policies and the escalated presence of police in schools. These policies and practices have had no measureable impact on school safety, but have racially disproportionate effects, increase suspensions and expulsions, elevate the drop-out/“push-out” rate, and raise multiple legal issues of due process. In addition, a growing police presence has significantly exacerbated the likelihood of arrest at school for youth of color—mostly for minor misbehavior—and the attendant lifelong legal consequences that this brings. A growing critique of these policies has led to calls for both reform and transformative alternatives. For the first time in more than two decades, the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Justice have issued new guidelines for school climate and discipline that call for the use of suspension and expulsion as the last resort for school misconduct. A variety of alternatives to zero tolerance and policing in the schools will be explored by this volume as well. So, too, will larger calls to question the context in which the school-to-prison pipeline emerges—a deeply rooted racism masked by color-blind ideology and policy, divestment in education and other social programs, and heavy reliance on policing and punishment at the expense of the public good. Finally, we are asked to take a stand: Education Not Incarceration.

PART 1 School-to-Prison Pipeline: Education on Lockdown

Chapter 1

Education, Race, and Social Control Milwaukee, Wisconsin, July 2010. “Ava Hernandez . . . is upset her 15-year-old brother, Adam, will face a trial on theft charges for allegedly stealing a chicken nugget meal during lunch at the Shorewood High School cafeteria.”1 Her brother, Adam Hernandez, a Shorewood High freshman, faces theft charges over what he says is a misunderstanding over $2.60 in chicken nuggets. Adam was given the chicken nuggets at lunch from a friend who was in the free school lunch program. A cafeteria worker accused Adam of stealing the nuggets and the result was an intense police encounter in the lunch room. Police were called to the school; Adam was arrested, taken out in handcuffs, and interrogated at the police station. Despite repeated attempts on the part of Ava Hernandez and her brother’s attorneys to get the city and the school to drop the charges, Adam’s trial on misdemeanor theft charges was scheduled to proceed up until the very day before trial. If found guilty, Adam would have faced a fine and a misdemeanor charge on his record.2 Police dropped the charges the day before trial, but Ava Hernandez remains concerned about the time, energy, and trauma inflicted upon her brother in a matter that might have resolved informally in the school. As a woman of color, she is aware of the challenges her brother already faces in the community and school, and a “pipeline that sends young males, particularly minorities like her brother, to prison on a regular basis.” ‘It’s like they think he’s expendable. I don’t like the idea of someone his age already in the criminal system; that happens too often.’ ”3

Introduction Free and compulsory public education has a long and uneven history in the United States. In theory, education for all is interwoven with our

4

The School-to-Prison Pipeline

national promise of opportunity, equal access, and full democratic engagement. Educational institutions provide the avenue for upward mobility, prepare a skilled and ready workforce, and in their finest moments, “unite us, enlighten us, and provide a culture commons where our differences become a source of strength and not conflict.”4 Education, in this sense, is not just a source of personal advancement or potential enrichment, but a public good that uplifts the civic discourse and political engagement and is, as Jefferson noted, “the cornerstone of democracy.”5 In practice, educational institutions also serve a social control function; they indoctrinate, regulate, seek to assimilate, and replicate an already unequal social order. Educational settings can insure that those with privilege and advantage will retain it via access to elite institutions and the economic and political status that flows from them. Conversely, educational institutions can solidify second-class citizenship through limited resources, nonrepresentative curricula, the stifling of aspirations, and the imposition of labels that further constrict opportunity.6 This social control function has a particular primacy in our current condition of neoliberal postindustrial capitalism, where schools are increasingly subject to privatized profit-seeking influences that promote standardized testing and public school closures in favor of largely unaccountable charters. This is consistent too with the demands of a labor market dominated by minimum-wage service jobs and vast employment sectors for correctional and medical control. Students are socialized to become drone-like workers and consumers or, failing that, fodder for our vast correctional industry, whose long reach has now extended into the schools. As Henry Giroux observes: No democracy can survive without a formative culture that offers the public the opportunity to broaden their knowledge, skills, and values in ways that enhance and expand their capacities to think critically, imagine otherwise, create the conditions for shared responsibilities, and hold power accountable. A vibrant formative culture expands the critical educative nature of all cultural apparatuses—from schools to the old and new media—as part of a wider project of enabling people to be able to assume the role of critical agents, thinking subjects, and critically engaged citizens willing to learn how to govern rather than merely govern and to able to care for the other. Education becomes central to any viable notion of politics because it provides the tools to enable people, as C. Wright Mills reminded us, to translate private troubles into public concerns. Neoliberalism has created the conditions in which civic literacy and moral responsibility disappear. This Jeffersonian ideal

Education, Race, and Social Control

5

of education providing the conditions to produce an informed citizenry is now under siege at every level of society in which knowledge is produced and circulated. Moral indifference now replaces social responsibility just as civic literacy is now replaced by the idiocy of celebrity culture, the anti-intellectualism embraced by a commodity-based culture, and the current utterly instrumental and repressive view of education.7

Certainly, education as a constrainer rather than a liberator has provided the paradigm for public education with regard to race and ethnicity. The very foundation of universal public education in the United States is entangled with a desire to “Americanize” children of immigrants, and from the outset, educational settings have been marked by segregation in terms of both race and class.8 For much of our history this segregation was legal, upheld at the level of the Supreme Court of the United States and viewed as part of the larger landscape of everyday Jim Crow. The expectation that schools—as all civic life—would be racially divided remained as law and practice until 1954, when the Supreme Court finally, in Brown v. the Board of Education, Topeka Kansas, declared “separate and equal is inherently unequal” and in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.9 Sixty years since Brown, the promise of equal educational opportunity remains elusive. The legal reality and ideological underpinning of overt de jure segregation has given way to the paradigm of color-blind racism, which denies the consideration of race while masking persistent de facto racial inequality. This color-blind framework pervades all aspects of contemporary post–Civil Rights U.S. racial relations in law, politics, and institutional access, including education.10 The call in Brown for desegregation with “all deliberate speed” has been stymied at every turn, and now has been abandoned by the “race-neutral” language of the post–Civil Rights era, which has essentially forbidden any consideration of race to balance school enrollments.11 In this era of color-blind racism, separate and unequal education continues, characterized now by de facto hyper-segregation by both race and class, and by gulfs in both funding and quality. The separate but inherently unequal conditions that marked the Plessy era of legalized segregation has remained intact albeit under color-blind legal cover.12 Further shifts in educational policy in the past decades have exacerbated the inequities. Decreased funding, high-stakes testing with sanctions for “underperforming” schools, overcrowded classrooms, massive school closures, a neoliberal push toward privatization and “charterization,” and the proliferation of harsh labels have widened the racial gaps in both

6

The School-to-Prison Pipeline

opportunity and achievement.13 Students of color, then, rather than being uplifted by education, are increasingly deemed disposable. According to Giroux: [L]ow-income and poor minority youth, in particular, are no longer the register where society reveals its dreams for a just and equitable future. On the contrary, such youth increasingly symbolize a space where neoliberal society reveals its nightmares and invokes a culture of cruelty that appears more savage than its full embrace of the ethos of greed. Within neoliberal narratives, youth are either defined as a consumer market, advertisements for such a market, or they symbolize trouble—a generation who do not have problems but are the problem. The mall and the prison have become the preeminent institutions and spaces for symbolizing what the future holds for young people as they experience either the soft war of commodification or the hard war of hyperpunitiveness and possible incarceration. This shift in how American society talks about young people marginalized by race, class and ethnicity betrays a great deal about what is increasingly new about the economic, social, cultural and political landscape of American society and its growing disinvestment in the common good, democratic public spheres, the social state, and democracy itself. Long-term planning and the institutional structures that support it are now relegated to the imperatives of privatization, deregulation, flexibility and short-term investments. Social bonds have been shredded as a result of the ongoing elimination of social protections provided by the welfare state, just as the current neoliberal mantra places an emphasis on individual solutions to socially produced problems[.] . . . The logic of disposability now threatens anyone who cannot fulfill their role as a consumer, provide unquestioned support to established corporate and political bastions of power, willingly accept the capitalist drive for profits regardless of the social costs, and accommodate a notion of the public sphere that is largely white, male and deeply conservative.14

Perhaps, the most troubling development is the trend toward criminalization of these same students in under-resourced schools and the blurring of the distinction between these schools and jail. This is the essence of the school-to-prison pipeline: an erasure of the boundaries between schooling and legal systems and, in fact, the creation of an intersecting set of policies that sends students in some schools on a pathway toward prison. For these students, rather than creating an atmosphere of learning, engagement, and opportunity, current educational practices have put them at risk.

Education, Race, and Social Control

7

The School-to-Prison Pipeline: Definition and Context Schools have long been characterized by both formal and informal tracks that route students into various areas of the curriculum and, ultimately, the job market. But tracking students out of school and into jail is a new phenomenon, one that coincides with the rise of mass hyper-incarceration in the United States. The school-to-prison pipeline refers to this growing pattern of tracking students out of educational institutions directly and/or indirectly into the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems via suspension/expulsion and increasingly arrest for minor infractions. Sometimes this push toward prison and jail is indirect; students who are suspended and/or expelled are less likely to return to school, are sent to under-resourced alternative schools, and are, in effective, “pushed out” of the educational system. Increasingly, the pipeline operates in a more direct fashion, as misconduct has become criminalized and as a growing police presence in the schools allows for direct arrests and ticketing, often for minor misconduct that once would have been handled by teachers and school administrators.15 For nearly two decades, scholars, educators, and activists have identified and decried the emergence of this school-to-prison pipeline. Most immediately, the pipeline is a consequence of the “criminalization of school discipline” 16 via zero-tolerance policies. It is characterized by schools that rely on suspensions, expulsions, and arrests for minor infractions, and which have police and/or security officers (School Resource Officer, or SRO) present for enforcement. While these policies were motivated, in part, by the perceived need to increase “safety” and “security,” zero-tolerance policies and police in schools have instead increased the risks of criminalization for segments of the student body, particularly students of color. This pattern of “push-out” has become so pronounced that scholars, child advocates, and community activists now refer to it as “the school-to-prison pipeline,” the “schoolhouse to jailhouse track,” or as younger and younger students are targeted, “the cradle to prison track.”17

Zero Tolerance and Police in the Hallways While there is no official definition of the term “zero tolerance,” generally the term means that a harsh predefined mandatory consequence is applied to a violation of school rules without regard to the seriousness of the behavior, mitigating circumstances, or the situational context. Violators are suspended, expelled, and increasingly arrested and charged in juvenile

8

The School-to-Prison Pipeline

court as a result.18 Zero-tolerance rhetoric, which was borrowed from the War on Drugs, became widespread by the mid-1990s, despite school crime/violence rates that were stable or declining. Implementation was achieved by appeals to fears and calls for safety, and further enforced by the connection of related policies to both federal and state school funding. The Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994 (GFSA) provided the initial impetus for zero-tolerance policies. The GFSA mandates that all schools that receive federal funding must (1) have policies to expel for a calendar year any student who brings a firearm to school or to school zone and (2) report that student to local law enforcement, thereby blurring any distinction between disciplinary infractions at school and breaking the law. Subsequent amendments to the GFSA and changes in many state laws and local school district regulations broadened the GFSA focus on firearms to apply to many other kinds of weapons.19 While the original intent of the GFSA was to require these punishments for serious violations involving weapons, most schools nationally have adopted zero-tolerance policies for a variety of behavioral issues— weapons, alcohol/drugs, threatening behavior, fighting on school premises, and increasingly, minor “misconduct” such as tardiness, “defiance,” and disorderly conduct.20 Zero-tolerance policies often do not distinguish between serious and nonserious offenses, nor do they adequately separate intentional troublemakers from those with behavioral disorders. And as the name implies, these policies indicate zero tolerance for any infractions, casting a very wide net. Zero-tolerance policies are additionally associated with an increased police presence at school, metal detectors, security cameras, locker and person searches, and all the accoutrements of legal control. The Safe Schools Act of 1994 and a 1998 amendment to the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 promoted partnerships between schools and law enforcement, including the provision of funding for in-school police forces or SROs.21 In 1999, the U.S. Department of Justice “COPS in Schools” grant program dramatically increased the use of SROs, in part as a response to the highly publicized Columbine shootings.22 The presence of uniformed police officers in schools is now a routine feature of many schools. An estimated one-third of all sheriffs’ offices and almost half of all municipal police departments assign nearly 17,000 sworn officers to serve in schools, and nearly half of all public schools have assigned police officers. 23 It is less common, but also possible now for some schools to employ canine units, Tasers, chemical weapons, and

Education, Race, and Social Control

9

SWAT team raids for drug and weapons searches.24 Although enhanced security measures were largely inspired by the school shootings in predominately white suburban schools, they have been most readily adopted and enforced in majority poor, majority student of color urban schools, where nearly 70 percent report a police presence.25 The result, according to Giroux, is criminalized education: With the growing presence of police, surveillance technologies and security guards in schools, more and more of what kids do, how they act, how they dress and what they say are defined as a criminal offense, regardless of how trivial the offense may be—in some cases just doodling on a desk or violating a dress code. Such behaviors, which teachers and administrators use to regulate through everyday means, are now treated as infractions within the purview of the police. Consequently, suspensions, expulsions, arrests and jail time have become routine for poor youth of color. Even more shocking is the rise of zero-tolerance policies to punish Black students and students with disabilities. Instead of recognizing the need to provide services for students with special needs, there is a dangerous trend on the part of school systems to adopt policies “that end in seclusion, restraint, expulsion, and—too often—law enforcement intervention for the disabled children involved.” Sadly, this is but a small sampling of the ways in which children are being punished instead of educated in US schools, especially inner-city schools. Rather than treating school infractions as part of the professional responsibilities of teachers and administrators, schools are criminalizing such behaviors and calling the police. What might have become a teachable moment becomes a criminal offense.26

Zero tolerance and school policing were promoted as policies that would increase the safety and security of students and enhance the orderly delivery of education. In reality, the opposite has occurred. There is little research that documents any correlation between these policies and reduced school violence. In fact, rates of school violence had remained low and stable at the time these policies were enacted. A growing body of work, however, documents the myriad risks created for students, including increased rates of suspension/expulsion and drop-puts/push-outs, hostile climate, and racial disparities in the application of discipline.27 It is these very policies that have facilitated the flow of students out of schools and into legal systems, in fact, creating the school-to-prison pipeline. Under zero-tolerance policies, over 3.4 million students are suspended each year and over 130,000 expelled, this out of the 49 million children

10

The School-to-Prison Pipeline

enrolled in public schools.28 This number has nearly doubled since 1974, with rates escalating in the mid-1990s as zero-tolerance policies began to be widely adopted.29 Suspension and expulsion rates increased most dramatically immediately following the adoption of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation in 2001 and related forms of high-stakes testing. Critics have noted that zero-tolerance policies have been used to “push out” lowperforming students. Since school funding is directly tied to test scores, NCLB gives schools an incentive to get rid of rather than remediate students with low test scores; it is more “efficient” to simply remove the child from class through punitive disciplinary measures and focus on the remaining students.30 Students who are suspended and/or expelled are deprived of educational services or are at best referred to substandard alternative schools. Many states fail to offer any access at all to alternative schools. In fact, only 13 states mandate alternative education for expelled students, and those that do often rely on educational settings that are less resourced than the schools that students were expelled from in the first place.31 Students are left to fend for themselves, and if they are reinstated, they are now further behind their peers and more likely to be suspended again. In fact, rather than deterring disruptive behavior, the most likely consequence of suspension is additional suspension.32 Increased drop-out rates are directly related to the repeated use of suspension and expulsion. Students who have been suspended or expelled are more likely to experience poor academic performance, and eventually drop out.33 Additional suspensions increase this likelihood; the National Center for Education Statistics documents this: 31 percent of high school sophomores that dropped out of school had been suspended three or more times, a rate much higher than for those who had not been suspended at all.34 Both suspension/expulsion and drop-out/push-out rates are highly correlated with future involvement in the juvenile and adult legal systems, creating an indirect pathway out of school and into jail.35 It is, however, the growing police presence at schools that contributes to the direct flow of youth into the juvenile justice system. Police in schools means more arrests, not necessarily for serious criminal violations, and within the context of the schools, it often means less consideration of legal rights and due process.36 A variety of studies have shown that a police presence significantly increases both arrests and the criminalization of minor misconduct;

Education, Race, and Social Control

11

one three-year study of numerous schools in the same district, for example, found that the schools with police had nearly five times the number of arrests for disorderly conduct as schools without a police presence.37 The Advancement Project sums up the perils:38 Zero tolerance has engendered a number of problems: denial of education through increased suspension and expulsion rates, referrals to inadequate alternative schools, lower test scores, higher dropout rates, and racial profiling of students. . . . Once many of these youths are in “the system,” they never get back on the academic track. Sometimes, schools refuse to readmit them; and even if these students do return to school, they are often labeled and targeted for close monitoring by school staff and police. Consequently, many become demoralized, drop out, and fall deeper and deeper into the juvenile or criminal justice systems. Those who do not drop out may find that their discipline and juvenile or criminal records haunt them when they apply to college or for a scholarship or government grant, or try to enlist in the military or find employment. In some places, a criminal record may prevent them or their families from residing in publicly subsidized housing. In this era of zero tolerance, the consequences of child or adolescent behaviors may long outlive students’ teenage years.

The immediate impetus for the pipeline is “zero tolerance” policies, which, when accompanied by a growing police presence in schools, result in the indirect/direct funneling of millions of youth out of school and on a pathway toward prison. But it is also the result of larger social and political trends. The school-to-prison pipeline is consistent with an increasingly harsh legal system for both juveniles and adults, and the rise of the prison industrial complex, where punishment translates into profit. These policies exactly mirror the “get tough” practices associated with the War on Drugs, “broken windows” policing, and the corresponding rise in mass incarceration, a trend that has resulted by a more than 10-fold increase in incarceration in a period of 40 years.39 It is consistent too with the emergence of an extensive treatment industrial complex, a multi-billion-dollar enterprise that provides therapeutic alternatives to harsh punishment in the age of mass incarceration. 40 The treatment industrial complex has reached in to the schools as well, and metes out its own labels for school performance and behavior, some of which exacerbate entrance into the school-to-prison pipeline while others offer a mitigating alternative.

12

The School-to-Prison Pipeline

Criminalization, Medicalization, and Race in Educational Settings The policies that undergird the creation of a school-to-prison pipeline are, like all color-blind polices of the post–Civil Rights era, race neutral. Like the War on Drug rhetoric on which they are modeled, school policies outline guidelines and consequences for prescribed and prohibited behavior and conditions with attendant consequences and with no mention of race. A growing body of research, however, indicates that the application of these educational policies is neither neutral nor random. The pipeline disproportionately impacts the poor, students with disabilities, and youth of color. Students of color, especially African Americans, are suspended and expelled at more than three times the rate of their white peers, this despite no documented differences in rates of disciplinary infractions.41 This racial overrepresentation then manifests itself in both higher drop-out/push-out rates for students of color and the racialized dynamic of the legal system.42 It was, in fact, alarm over racial disproportionality in the application of discipline that raised the first flags for researchers and advocates. From the outset, it was clear that students of color were being policed and punished at rates that far exceeded that of their white peers. This pattern is evidenced as early as preschool, has persisted over the decades, and even recently widened, especially in conjunction with the rise of high-stakes testing.43 A recent comprehensive analysis of the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) documents the racial gulfs in suspension, expulsion, and arrest. The report includes data from every public school in the nation (approximately 16,500 school districts, 97,000 schools, and 49 million students) in all school types—traditional public schools (preschool through 12th grade), alternative schools, career and technical education schools, and charter schools. • Suspension of preschool children, by race/ethnicity and gender (new for 2011–2012 collection): Black children represent 18% of preschool enrollment, but 48% of preschool children receiving more than one out-of-school suspension; in comparison, white students represent 43% of preschool enrollment but 26% of preschool children receiving more than one out of school suspension. Boys represent 79% of preschool children suspended once and 82% of preschool children suspended multiple times, although boys represent 54% of preschool enrollment. • Disproportionately high suspension/expulsion rates for students of color: Black students are suspended and expelled at a rate three times greater than

Education, Race, and Social Control

•

•

•

•

•

13

white students. On average, 5% of white students are suspended, compared to 16% of Black students. American Indian and Native-Alaskan students are also disproportionately suspended and expelled, representing less than 1% of the student population but 2% of out-of-school suspensions and 3% of expulsions. Disproportionate suspensions of girls of color: While boys receive more than two out of three suspensions, Black girls are suspended at higher rates (12%) than girls of any other race or ethnicity and most boys; American Indian and Native-Alaskan girls (7%) are suspended at higher rates than white boys (6%) or girls (2%). Suspension of students with disabilities and English learners: Students with disabilities are more than twice as likely to receive an out-of-school suspension (13%) than students without disabilities (6%). In contrast, English learners do not receive out-of-school suspensions at disproportionately high rates (7% suspension rate, compared to 10% of student enrollment). Suspension rates, by race, sex, and disability status combined: With the exception of Latino and Asian-American students, more than one out of four boys of color with disabilities (served by IDEA)—and nearly one in five girls of color with disabilities—receives an out-of-school suspension. Arrests and referrals to law enforcement, by race and disability status: While Black students represent 16% of student enrollment, they represent 27% of students referred to law enforcement and 31% of students subjected to a school-related arrest. In comparison, white students represent 51% of enrollment, 41% of students referred to law enforcement, and 39% of those arrested. Students with disabilities (served by IDEA) represent a quarter of students arrested and referred to law enforcement, even though they are only 12% of the overall student population. Restraint and seclusion, by disability status and race: Students with disabilities (served by IDEA) represent 12% of the student population, but 58% of those placed in seclusion or involuntary confinement, and 75% of those physically restrained at school to immobilize them or reduce their ability to move freely. Black students represent 19% of students with disabilities served by IDEA, but 36% of these students who are restrained at school through the use of a mechanical device or equipment designed to restrict their freedom of movement.44

While race is the most significant factor, disparities in suspension/ expulsion escalate at the intersections of class, gender, sexual orientation, and ability. Heavy reliance on policing and punishment is most highly correlated with schools that are segregated by race and class, that is, schools where the majority of students are both poor and of color.45 It is students

14

The School-to-Prison Pipeline

in these schools that are most likely to be criminalized via disparate application of zero-tolerance policies and the often heavy hand of school policing. Further, it is Black children of all genders, especially those with a disability label, that experience the highest risk for harsh discipline and arrest at school.46 But differences in the nature and type of psychiatric labeling also play a role in diverting white students from disciplinary action and increasing the risk for students of color. As the aforementioned report indicates, the students at the highest risk for suspension and expulsion are Black students who have been labeled as having disabilities. “Disability” in an educational context is often a psychiatric label, one derived from various diagnostic categories in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), that carries stigma as well as a lowered expectation for academic success.47 Black youth, especially males, are additionally at risk due to their overrepresentation in special education programs for disability.48 They are nearly twice as likely as any other group to receive services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). They are often mislabeled as mentally retarded; they are nearly three times more likely to receive special education services under IDEA for mental retardation, and more than two times more likely to receive services for emotional disturbance than same-age students of all other racial/ethnic groups combined.49 The implicit biases of teachers and other school personnel may play a role in the application of harsh medical and criminal labels. Eighty-three percent of the nation’s teaching ranks are filled by whites, mostly women, and implicit biases, partly formed by exposure to unrelenting media depictions such as Blackness as synonymous with criminality, can shape labeling decisions.50 This is supported by recent research that suggests creative play is viewed negatively when exhibited by Black children and that young white females in particular view Black male children as young as 10 as “criminals” rather than “innocent” children.51 In fact, the highest rates of racially disproportionate discipline are found in states that have low minority populations, indicating that boys of color are potentially threatening to white teachers, even in small numbers.52 While students of color are being criminalized for disruptive behaviors at school, white middle class students have their behavior mitigated with therapeutic labels. One of the growth sectors of psychiatry is the diagnosis and treatment of what were previously termed disorders of infancy, childhood and adolescence (DICA), particularly attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and oppositional defiant disorder.53 These psychiatric

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labels perfectly overlap with potential educational and legal labels, and thus offer an alternative mechanism for parents, school officials, and law enforcement to deal with disciplinary infractions. ADHD in particular has become the diagnosis of choice for addressing the issues of white children who are disruptive at school. ADHD becomes a vehicle for the medicalization of disruptive white students, as well as a perceived panacea in the climate of high-stakes testing. While there is growing concern about overdiagnosis of ADHD, overmedication, and a growing black market for ADHD medications, this medical label is arguably preferable to suspension/expulsion for comparable disruptive behaviors.54 This diagnosis serves as a barrier to the de facto criminalization experienced by students of color at school, who are suspended, expelled, and/or arrested at school at rates more than three times that of their white classmates.55 These double standards of control are consistent with the larger context of for-profit medicalization and criminalization in the post–Civil Rights era of color blindness. Disproportionately, whites are medicalized, while Blacks and other people of color are criminalized, all under the guise of legal, social, and educational policies that, on the face of it, are race neutral. So while white deviance is medicated in the hopes that this will further academic success, students of color are funneled out of schools via a very deliberate pipeline, and sent, instead, on a pathway toward prison.

The School-to-Prison Pipeline: Educational Tracking in a Color-Blind Era It is difficult to imagine that the school-to-prison pipeline can exist but by design. The scope, scale, and persistence of this phenomenon, with its economic functions and racialized impact, point toward an intentionality that is difficult to deny. What has been termed a “hidden curriculum” for Black students, especially boys, has been transparent more than a decade and remains unchanged.56 It is only the race-neutral language of educational policies that provides a thin cover for racialized results. In the post–Civil Rights era of color blindness, unequal educational opportunities persist via seemingly race-neutral policies of zero tolerance and medicalized labeling, which criminalize students of color and steer their white counterparts toward treatment. This is a pattern that reflects larger sociopolitical creation of a prison industrial complex and the corresponding ascendance of the treatment industrial complex. Our postindustrial service

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The School-to-Prison Pipeline

sector economy relies heavily on these social control complexes to create jobs and produce clients. As Davis observes: To deliver up bodies destined for profitable punishment, the political economy of prisons relies on racialized assumptions of criminality—such as images of black welfare mothers reproducing criminal children—and on racist practices in arrest, conviction, and sentencing patterns. Colored bodies constitute the main human raw material in this vast experiment to disappear the major social problems of our time. Once the aura of magic is stripped away from the imprisonment solution, what is revealed is racism, class bias, and the parasitic seduction of capitalist profit. The prison industrial system materially and morally impoverishes its inhabitants and devours the social wealth needed to address the very problems that have led to spiraling numbers of prisoners.57

To the extent that educational institutions serve to socialize students into future careers, the question must be asked: are certain demographics of students being selected and trained for careers as prisoners? The school-to-prison pipeline starts with the school and a host of educational policies and practices that systematically disadvantage students of color from the outset. As the NAACP notes: In the last decade, the punitive and overzealous tools and approaches of the modern criminal justice system have seeped into our schools, serving to remove children from mainstream educational environments and funnel them onto a one-way path toward prison. These various policies, collectively referred to as the School-to-Prison Pipeline, push children out of school and hasten their entry into the juvenile, and eventually the criminal, justice system, where prison is the end of the road. Historical inequities, such as segregated education, concentrated poverty, and racial disparities in law enforcement, all feed the pipeline. The School-to-Prison Pipeline is one of the most urgent challenges in education today.58

But the school-to-prison pipeline does indeed end with the prison, and exists in a swirl of larger social policy that promotes racialized mass incarceration in race-neutral terms, for purposes of both social control and profit. Dismantling this pipeline requires a close examination of this complicated context of double-edged social control in the post–Civil Rights era of color blindness, from which it emerges and is sustained.

Chapter 2

Segregated Schools, Sociopolitical Shifts, and Education under Siege Arlington, Texas, April 2013. Texas is the birthplace of standardized testing and its students spend more time testing and preparing for tests than any in the nation. It is this model of high-stakes testing that former governor George W. Bush brought to the nation when, as president, he signed into law No Child left Behind.1 Until recently, students were required to take 15 tests before graduation and spent 90 hours’ preschool year in test preparation. While the state has claimed the testing is necessary to insure a prepared workforce, it is a lucrative proposition for testing companies like Pearson, which holds nearly $500 million in contracts to produce and score tests for Texas.2 It also can be a nightmare for students who are subjected to an endless round of tests, sometimes duplicative. This was the case in April 2013 as Texas was rolling out a new set of tests—Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (STARR)—while phasing out the existing set of Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) tests. Now students were additionally required to take both tests in the transitional phase. Arlington High School junior Kyron Birdie objected and tweeted his defiance. This was the message, accompanied by a smiley face, he wrote on his otherwise blank STARR test: “I have the TEKS test to study for, not this unneeded craziness. YOLO.”3 He took a photo of the test and tweeted it out to the Arlington Independent School District and the Texas Education Agency. School and agency officials were not amused. Kyron was immediately given four days of in-school suspension.4 But Kyron remained defiant, continuing to tweet about his ordeal. His protest expressed the sentiments of other students, who later followed suit, and his suspension was well chronicled with a Twitter hashtag, #FreeKyron.5

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The School-to-Prison Pipeline

Introduction The history of public education in the United States is deeply disentangled with both race and class. From the onset, education was meant to assimilate immigrants, install white middle class values and story lines, and instill the hope that hard work, in whatever labor market sector, would lead to achievement of the “American Dream.”6 Education has been a socializer; a replicator of race, class, and gender stratification; and an institution of both social control and labor force preparation. For much of this history, public education occurred in spaces that were highly segregated by both race and class. Racial segregation in schools was legally enforced under the Jim Crow standards of “separate but equal,” which remained in effect until 1954 in Brown v. The Board of Education, Topeka Kansas.7 Funding for schools revealed stark socioeconomic gaps too, as public education has always been primarily controlled and funded on the local level with property taxes as the major source of funding. Wealthy communities had better resourced schools, with the expectation too that their students would go on to higher education and more lucrative professional white-collar jobs, while their less-affluent counterparts would be tracked toward blue-collar vocations. The Civil Rights Movement inspired efforts to both desegregate schools and increase equity in funding. Guided by a vision of public education as a force for equal opportunity, courts ordered desegregation plans, and federal legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) signed into law in 1965.8 The ESEA intended to achieve resource equity by supplementing local and state funds with federal grants to impoverished districts. These political commitments were short lived and in the post–Civil Rights era of race neutrality and color blindness, desegregation orders have been lifted and federal contributions to public education is in steady decline.9 This, in combination with persistent residential segregation, has resulted in the resegregation of schools, and doubly so, as schools are again segregated not only by race but additionally by class. The result is a situation where students of color, particularly African Americans and Latino/ as, are overwhelmingly isolated in high-poverty, under-resourced schools. The results have consistently been lower rates of graduation, literacy, and college attendance.10 Beyond these challenges, the educational opportunities for youth of color and the poor are further constrained by the ESEA reauthorization

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of 2001, known as No Child Left behind (NCLB).11 NCLB has a heavy emphasis on standardized testing as a measure of school success and ties school funding to test scores. (NCLB was recently replaced by the December 2015 ESEA reauthorization known as Every Student Succeeds (ESSA). The new Act, however, does little to remedy the difficulties of NCLB. ESSA continues to emphasize some testing and accountability, but now offers states wider latitude to set and enforce the standards, perhaps at the risk of diminished federal oversight with regard to civil rights protections.)12 The result has been additional pressure on already underresourced schools via the mandate to increase test scores or risk losing even more scare funding. Add to the mix an educational situation where the curriculum and tests themselves reflect a white middle class bias, where the teachers are overwhelmingly white and female, and where public funds are increasingly diverted toward privatized charter schools.13 This already challenging situation for public education is further exacerbated by economic shifts toward a service sector economy that centers an expanded criminal justice system and a political climate obsessed with “law and order,” “public safety,” and crime.14 The proliferation of zerotolerance policies and school policing is most heavily felt in the most challenged schools, in schools that are under-resourced and have majority students of color and poor. It is here that a school-to-prison pipeline flourishes, with students of color pushed onto that pathway, in service of both the immediate challenges of the schools and the larger economic demands of the times.

Double Segregation by Race and Class Despite the Brown II mandate that schools desegregate “with all deliberate speed,” 60 years later, schools remain highly segregated by race as well as by class.15 The Civil Rights era of the 1960s did produce substantial, but ultimately short-lived, declines for school segregation; the effect was most dramatic for Black students in the South. These gains were made possible by a political commitment to enforce desegregation with federal policy and by a series of Supreme Court decisions that ordered districts to enact desegregation plans.16 By the late 1960s, however, federal political support for desegregation waned under the Nixon administration, and federal policy on Civil Rights legislation took a turn toward “color blindness,” an emphasis on reading

20

The School-to-Prison Pipeline

the law as “race-neutral,” and an abandonment of the legal pursuit of remedies for cumulative historical and institutionalized disadvantage. This paradigm shift marks the beginning of what is referred to as the post–Civil Rights era, an end to proactive use of Civil Rights legislation as a mechanism for remediating past discrimination, and a reading of the law as color-bind where race can be considered only under “strict scrutiny” and where claims of discrimination must involve intent.17 This legal interpretation has been embraced by the Supreme Court of the United States, and in accordance with this perspective, Civil Rights legislation became constrained from the 1980s through to the present. This includes the Supreme Court’s position on enforcing schools desegregation, which began in the 1980s to significantly weaken or reverse previous desegregation plans. By the early twenty-first century, most districts under previous court order had been released from required desegregation plans.18 The result is racial segregation that approaches the pre-Brown rates. According to the Civil Rights Project, “six decades of ‘separate but equal’ as the law of the land have now been followed by six decades of ‘separate is inherently unequal’ as our basic law.”19 The school segregation now, in fact, persists despite its legal rejection. White flight to suburbs was one of the consequences of Brown, as families fled, in part to escape the new mandates to desegregate. As a result, federal and then state-level abandonment of desegregation enforcement has allowed “geography to do the work of Jim Crow” in the era of color blindness.20 Absent any plans designed to move students across district and neighborhood lines, highly segregated neighborhoods continue to reproduce highly segregated schools. Schools remain highly segregated by race, especially for certain communities of color. Despite a dramatic increase in the diversity of today’s school populations as compared to 1954, Black, Latino/as, and American Indian students are overwhelmingly enrolled in schools that are 81–100 percent youth of color. This is true for major metropolitan areas as well as for a growing number of inner-ring suburbs. Latino/a students in the West are the most likely to have lower exposure to racial groups in all residential areas, even those that are rural.21 The problems related to the persistence of racially segregated school are compounded by the correlation with social class and socioeconomic status of associate communities and schools. Segregation to day occurs across both race and class lines. While white and Asian American students are most likely to be in middle class suburb schools, African Americans and

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21

Latino/as are doubly segregated together by class and race into schools in high poverty areas. The Civil Rights Project reports: In schools that are 81–100% black & Latino, over three-quarters of the students are also enrolled in schools where more than 70% of the students live in poverty. In fact, half of students in 91–100% black & Latino schools are in schools that also have more than 90% low income students. This means that these students face almost total isolation not only from white and Asian students but also from middleclass peers as well. These figures represent extreme overlaps of poverty and racial concentration and help to explain why schools with high concentrations of black and Latino students often have fewer educational resources and lower student outcomes. . . . In many respects, the schools serving white and Asian students and those serving black and Latino students represent two different worlds. School segregation by both racial race and class plays a major role in the perpetuation of the socalled “achievement gap,” but the racial divides in academic outcomes that may more accurately be described as opportunity gap.22

When compared to their white and Asian American peers, Black, Latino/a, and American Indian students, especially males, have less access to preschool education opportunities, lower scores on standardized tests in math and reading at all grade levels, limited access to Advanced Placement (AP) classes, experienced teachers and curricular rigor, lower rates of graduation within four years, and lower rates of college attendance.23 Conversely, as will be detailed later, these students have disproportionate access to deficit labels and special education classes and punitive school climates, heavily enforced zero-tolerance policies, and police in the hallways.24 In the era of double segregation, they face double-edged risk. As they are locked out of opportunities, they are simultaneously placed on a pathway to being pushed out of school and unto a pathway toward prison.

ESEA, NCLB, Declining Funding, and Standardized Testing Shifting federal educational policy over the past 50 years has also produced funding challenges for schools, especially those located in low-income/ high-poverty neighborhoods. The ESEA of 1965 was intended to reduce resource gaps in public schools as part of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.25 The legislation designed to support education as a force for equal opportunity, and provided, through Title I, federal funds for low-income districts to offset the resource gap between these schools and wealthy

22

The School-to-Prison Pipeline

suburban districts. The Act also provided funding for bilingual education and students with disabilities. Federal funding was available for both school-wide programs and targeted assistance, which allows schools to identify at-risk students.26 Since the passage of the original legislation, the provisions of ESEA have dramatically changed with each new congressional authorization. In the post–Civil Rights era, there has been declining funding for Title I, strict guidelines for receipt and use of funding, increased state oversight, and escalating standards for school accountability.27 This shift began in the 1980s, concurrent with the move away from federal enforcement of desegregation orders, and has continued to the present. These policy changes have contributed to the pressures faced by under-resourced schools, an effect that is the opposite of the original intent of ESEA. The reauthorization of ESEA, NCLB, is at the epicenter of these pressures.28 NCLB resulted in dramatic changes to how low-resourced schools received funding. Funding is now tied to teacher quality and student achievement on mandated standardized tests, with annual test-score targets for subgroups of students, based on a goal of 100 percent proficiency by 2014. Key features of NCLB included29 • Annual testing. NCLB requires states to test students in reading and mathematics annually in grades 3–8 and once in grades 10–12. (And once during grades 3–5, 6–9, and 10–12 for science.) • Accountability. Individual schools, school districts, and states must publicly report these test results. And not just the overall results—they need to report for specific student subgroups, including low-income students, students with disabilities, English-language learners, and major racial and ethnic groups. • School improvement. If schools fail to make progress against state-set goals over a number of years, overall and for each subgroup of students, the law requires states to implement escalating interventions in these schools. Under NCLB, this includes offering school choice options, tutoring services, and school “restructuring.”

While NCLB has been praised by some for surfacing gaps in both teacher quality and student achievement by subgroups, it has not closed educational gaps, but rather exacerbated them. First of all, NCLB emphasized the punishment of “underperforming” schools. Schools that are already under-resourced face additional pressure to teach to the test or risk funding cuts, closure, or loss of students to “voucher” schools, many of

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23

which are nonprofit or for-profit charter schools.30 (Recent initiatives such as Race to the Top have allowed states to opt out of NCLB, but this voluntary option, as does the 2015 ESSA authorization, continues to favor charters and does not resolve fundamental issues of NCLB.)31 Secondly, despite the demands for improvements and accountability, much of NCLB has been described as an “unfunded mandate.”32 Many of the resources promised simply do not exist; the funding provided by NCLB is less than 10 percent of most schools’ budgets.33 The threat of decreased funding occurs in the context of already underfunded education. The federal government’s contribution to public education accounts for less than adds less than 10 percent to local education budgets and invests 5 percent of the GDP in public education.34 Beyond this, public schools must now compete for funding with a proliferation of charter schools, which, while receiving public monies, have no comparable accountability or expectation to hire professional, unionized teachers.35 NCLB furthered this trend by closing failing public schools and then shifting the students and funds to privatized charters with no discernable improvement in educational outcomes. As the Advancement Project notes: Unfortunately, [NCLB] has helped advance an education “reform” agenda, which is hurting the low-income children who were supposed to be its beneficiaries. These are disproportionately children of color. In the 2012–2013 school year, for example, 50 Chicago public schools were closed. While African-Americans made up 43 percent of all Chicago students, they were 87 percent of the students affected by the closures. Last year, in New Orleans’ Recovery School District, the city closed its last remaining public school, making it the nation’s first all-charter district. Of the students impacted, 1,000 were Black. Only five were White[.] . . . These policies have not produced higher quality education. Public schools must now compete with privately operated charter schools for federal funding and local tax dollars. Children of color are increasingly pushed out of the classroom and into the criminal justice system. School closures disrupt the education of students who must be relocated and shuffled around, sometimes multiple times. Fifty years after ESEA, and 14 years after its reauthorization to No Child Left Behind, the achievement gap still exists.36

Thirdly, NCLB has narrowed the curriculum, constrained teachers, and bombarded students with a “test and drill” climate.37 (Ironically perhaps, NCLB also allows military recruiters full access to the schools.) The pressure on high-stakes testing diverts attention away from creativity and the

24

The School-to-Prison Pipeline

development of critical thinking skills, and in many cases, “as emphasis on drilling for multiple-choice tests has increased, the amount of research, project work and scientific inquiry has declined, and twelfth grade reading scores have dropped nationwide.”38 Beyond this, state standards for performance vary widely, casting doubt on the efficacy of the measures for indicating proficiency.39 And standardized tests have long been noted for their white middle class bias and tendency to invoke “stereotype threat” and lower performance among students of color and females.40 In short, NCLB’s emphasis on teaching to the test has reduced, rather than expanded, educational opportunities, most especially for students in under-resourced schools that it purports to serve. Finally, NCLB played a key role in the proliferation of the school-toprison pipeline. The schools that face the most pressure to improve test scores—highly segregated under-resourced urban schools—are exactly the schools that feed the pipeline. Research indicates that, in light of high-stakes testing pressures, wealthier districts turn to medicalization and poorer schools use criminalization via zero-tolerance policies and policing as a mechanism to “push out” underperforming students. 41 According to the NAACP: Ironically, some of the hallmarks of modern education reform—including demands for greater accountability, extensive testing regimes, and harsh sanctions imposed on schools and teachers—actually encourage schools to funnel out those students whom they believe are likely to drag down a school’s test scores. Rather than address the systemic problems that lead to poor educational performance, harsh discipline policies provide schools with a convenient method to remove certain students and thereby mask educational deficiencies.42

While NCLB’s new 2015 replacement, ESSA, seeks to limit the amount of testing and increase some resources for low performing schools, there is concern that increased state-level flexibility will exacerbate race and class gaps in educational attainment and the school-to-prison pipeline. States are encouraged to consider school climate and disciplinary practices as part of overall “success,” but the federal government may now lack the tools needed to require states to remedy racial disparities in the application of disciplinary policies. This is particularly true with regard to the pipeline, where loss of federal oversight may reduce civil protections for students who are most at risk for suspension and expulsion. In short, ESSA seems unlikely to reverse the test-punish-push-out climate that feeds the

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school-to-prison pipeline.43 In an ironic twist then, the aftermath of NCLB actually left many—not only out of educational opportunity but outside of the law itself. The impossible climate of testing pressures, inadequate resources, and under-experienced and culturally ill-equipped teachers creates a powerful impetus for pushing out children into the school-to-prison pipeline.

White Curriculum, White Teachers Public education’s ability to adequately grapple with race and serve all students is a long-standing issue, one that precedes even resegregation, declines in funding, and NCLB. A substantial body of work points to the Eurocentric, middle class, and male vantage point of the public school curriculum, in both content and pedagogy. Students of color find themselves absent from the curriculum or as mere historical footnotes to slavery and conquest.44 They find their cultural and linguistic styles, including African American English Vernacular (AAEV), devalued and denied.45 They do not see themselves either figuratively or literally as part of schools, as they are absent too from representation in the ranks of teachers, administrators, and school personnel, all of whom are overwhelmingly white.46 In a discussion of legal challenge to Eurocentric curriculum in the schools, Ware and Ware note that the pre-Brown bias toward white-centered curriculum persists: The persistence of discrimination is attributable to a combination of conscious beliefs and unconscious assumptions that are made about AfricanAmericans. These views are reflected in images that predominate mass media. They are evident in the pronouncements of political leaders. They are implicit in what is deemed American culture. These beliefs are inculcated in educational settings through an “official” version of American culture. This Eurocentric perspective operates as an ideological censor that privileges Americans of European descent while systematically denying the legitimacy of all other views. The Eurocentric perspective has had a profound effect on efforts to desegregate educational institutions. [E]ducators have resisted efforts to diversify the curriculum. Efforts to expand the curriculum and embrace other perspectives have been summarily dismissed as “political correctness.” Yet, the predominant curricular values and traditions in American education were developed during the Plessy era when African-Americans and other people of color were excluded from the dominant intellectual community. The failure of school desegregation is

26

The School-to-Prison Pipeline

directly related to the educational hierarchy’s failure to acknowledge the legitimacy of perspectives that are different from its own.47

Some progress toward multicultural education was attained in the Civil Rights era and in its immediate aftermath. But this too has dissipated in the age of high-stakes testing and color blindness. This is evident in ongoing debates over the offering of ethnic studies courses to students and in the textbook framing of histories of slavery and conquest and the extent to which they are “white-washed.”48 A truly multicultural curriculum requires substantial teacher training, access to inclusive curriculum, and a district-level commitment to multicultural competence as involving nine interrelated factors:49 (1) respect for diversity, (2) an intense curriculum, (3) communicating high expectations, (4) motivating students, (5) modeling positive attitudes and behaviors toward learning, (6) using curricular materials that are culturally inclusive, (7) teaching students to be proactive in dealing with prejudice and discrimination, (8) acknowledging linguistic diversity, and (9) identifying and utilizing the cultural strengths that students bring to the school.

What is described is the antithesis of what is promoted by an educational system that relies on high-stakes standardized testing in an era of color blindness. Diversity of learning and linguistic styles, life experiences, and complexity are all secondary to the ability to pick the one correct answer from a cookie cutter one-size-fits-all test. Even teachers who are committed to multicultural education find that testing pressures undermine the time and attention required for this complicated curriculum.50 The matter is further complicated by the dearth of experienced teachers in majority poor and student-of-color schools. Schools serving the most African American and Latino/a students are nearly twice as likely to employ teachers who are newest to teaching, most with one or two years of experience. In addition, these are the teachers who are paid the least and who experience the highest rates of absenteeism and turnover.51 The absence of multicultural curriculum, teachers of color, and skilled educators in under-resourced urban public schools additionally fosters the antipathy toward schools that have been documented among some students of color, particularly African American and Latino boys. The notion that school is a white institution (which it has been) sometimes leads to the development of oppositional attitudes toward school and negative peer pressure toward rejection of academic success. A substantial literature documents this dynamic of rejection and resistance,

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27

where “cool pose” and “code of the street” are posited as alternatives to success in school.52 It is often initially sparked by mislabeling by teachers and institutionalized racism, and then the cycle is reinforced by defiance of school norms and academic expectations.53 The tension is complicated by the fact that nearly 85 percent of K–12 teachers are white women, who may have inadequate diversity training, implicit biases accrued through media exposure, and lack of cross-racial interactions in real life, a tendency to view cultural differences through the lens of deficiency, and of course, the increasingly high-stress environment of testing pressure. This phenomenon is central to the school-to-prison pipeline, where young males of color are disproportionately labeled as intellectually and academically deficient and then criminalized via the differential application of zero-tolerance policies.54

Divestment, Disposability, Discipline, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline The challenges facing public education today are consistent with a larger shift in the sociopolitical climate and late capitalist underpinning the U.S. economy. The school’s role in socialization and labor market preparation is called into question in light of these conditions.55 As Stanley Aronowitz and Henry Giroux have noted: The labor market is becoming increasingly bifurcated: organizational and technical changes are producing a limited number of jobs for highly education and trained people-managers, scientific and technological experts, and researchers. On the other hand, we are witnessing the disappearance of many middle-level white collar subprofessions. . . . And in the face of sharpening competition, employers typically hire a growing number of low paid, part-time workers. . . . Even some professionals have become free-lance workers with few, if any, fringe benefits. These developments call into question the efficacy of mass schooling for providing the “well-trained” labor force that employers still claim they require. Rather than blaming youth for the economic slump, the culture of racially coded violence, or the hopelessness that seems endemic to dominant versions of the future, it makes more sense for educators to reexamine the mission of the school and the changing conditions of youth in light of these shattering shifts in economic and cultural life.56

The policy response has not been toward creative engagement with schooling or increased funding toward education and job creation,

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The School-to-Prison Pipeline

To the contrary, the tendency has been toward social divestment and then reinvestment in a prison-based economy, where disposable labor may be warehoused and low-skill workers may be paid to guard them. School resegregation by race and by class, declining funding, privatization, and testing pressures is part of this larger landscape of divestment from social programming aimed at increasing opportunity, and toward investment instead in a growing carceral state.57 The post–Civil Rights era is characterized by pronounced economic shifts in the U.S. job sector. Deindustrialization was well under way by the 1970s, as blue-collar manufacturing jobs moved from the Northeast to the Southwest and then out of the country entirely as global capitalism offered increased options for cheap labor and reduced production costs. The result was a labor market that relied heavily now on the unskilled minimumwage, temporary service sector and a surplus (and disposable) labor pool that was once part of an industrial workforce. The effects were most heavily felt in urban neighborhoods that were segregated by both race and class.58 Rather than invest in job creation, increased educational opportunities, and other economic supports, the political response was instead one of retrenchment. The post–Civil Rights era is marked, too, not just by legal claims of color blindness in the midst of increased racial inequity but also by declining governmental support for social welfare programs. Throughout the 1980s and on, there were dramatic declines in funding for economic assistance to the poor and unemployed, including welfare/AFDC, food stamps, medical assistance, and public housing.59 These changes were produced not only via budgetary decisions but also through legislation such as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996, otherwise known as welfare to work.60 This legislation reduced spending on the poor, gave oversight to the states in the form of block grants, and instituted work requirements for fund eligibility. In a period of less than 40 years, Johnson’s War on Poverty had been transformed into what some observers named a “War on the Poor.”61 This divestment in social programming is proportionate to the reinvestment in corrections. While the “welfare state” contracted, the “penal state” expanded as federal and state governments enacted legislation designed to expand what has come to be known as the “prison industrial complex.”62 As Loı¨c Wacquant observes: The single greatest political transformation of the post-civil rights era in America is the joint rolling back of the stingy social state and rolling out of

Segregated Schools, Sociopolitical Shifts, and Education under Siege

29

the gargantuan penal state that have remade the country’s stratification, cities, and civic culture, and are recasting the very character of “blackness” itself. Together, these two concurrent and convergent thrusts have effectively redrawn the perimeter, mission, and modalities of action of public authority when it comes to managing the deprived and stigmatized populations stuck at the bottom of the class, ethnic, and urban hierarchy. The concomitant downsizing of the welfare wing and up-sizing of the criminal justice wing of the American state have not been driven by raw trends in poverty and crime, but fueled by a politics of resentment toward categories deemed undeserving and unruly. Chief among those stigmatized populations are the public-aid recipients and the street criminals framed as the two demonic figureheads of the “black under-class” that came to dominate the journalistic, scholarly, and policy debate on the plight of urban America in the revanchist decades that digested the civil disorders of the 1960s and the stagflation of the 1970s, and then witnessed the biggest carceral boom in world history.63

Prison populations have indeed correspondingly exploded to the highest in the world, largely due to the War on Drugs. More than 2.4 million are now incarcerated in local jails and state and federal prisons, and they are disproportionately young, un/underemployed at the time of arrest, and Black.64 The scope of probation and parole is even more expansive, with more than 7 million now under some sort of correctional control. Budget expenditures at the state and local levels increased exponentially with this rise and are now at more than $250 billion annually. Employment opportunities in “corrections” expanded as well, with this employment sector ranking in the top three nationally.65 Investment in the penal state serves two important economic functions. Certainly, correctional expansion has created new jobs for correctional officers, probation officers, lawyers, police officers, the private prison sector, and in the related industries of prison and the ever-expanding array of services—food, medical, phone, inmate accounts, and more—that service our mammoth prison populations.66 Simultaneously, the “clients” who are swept up to serve as prisoners or probationers are drawn by race, class, and place from those disposable labor pools located economically dispossessed in urban areas. They are overwhelmingly Black, undereducated, poor, and unemployed at the time of commitment offense.67 The ease with which they are easily swept up into the prison industrial complex is facilitated by a regime of racial profiling, broken windows policing, and the proliferation of legislation that de facto criminalizes poverty.68

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The School-to-Prison Pipeline

Of course, the penal state serves ideological functions too. In the post–Civil Rights era of color blindness, it serves to reify old racial archetypes that erroneously conflate crime and welfare receipt with Blackness, fuel white fears of racialized danger, and retain white supremacist practices without question or consequence. A substantial body of research documents white resistance to welfare if they perceive that Blacks benefit, and, conversely, support of harsh penal laws if Blacks are presented as the criminals. All of this occurs under the guise of race-neutral rhetoric and law.69 It was and is via these coded racial appeals that the political climate for the creation of such dramatic shifts was made possible. The current state of education is a product of this trajectory and cannot be disentangled from these larger sociopolitical trends. The resegregation of schools and the decrease in education funding is part of the overall tendency toward divestment in the social good and the abandonment of equity as a political goal. Instead, the tendency has been toward private profiteering and the corporatization of education. As Bill Ayers observes, even this is masked in the language of “reform”: [I]t’s part of a larger pattern and an intentional strategy that becomes clearer day by day. This strategy begins by positing education as a product, like a car or a refrigerator, a box of bolts or a screwdriver—something bought and sold in the marketplace like any other commodity—and schools as businesses run by CEOs with teachers taking the role of assembly line workers and students playing the part of the raw materials bumping helplessly along the factory floor as information is incrementally stuffed into their little up-turned heads. In this metaphoric straitjacket it’s rather easy to suppose that “downsizing” the least productive units or “outsourcing” and privatizing a space that once belonged to the public is a natural event, that teaching toward a simple, standardized metric and relentlessly applying state-administered (but privately-developed and quite profitable) tests to determine the “outcomes,” is a rational proxy for learning, that centrally controlled “standards” for curriculum and teaching are commonsensical, that “zero tolerance” for student misbehavior as a standin for child development or justice is sane, and that “accountability,” that is, a range of sanctions on students, teachers and schools—but never on lawmakers, foundations or corporations—is logical and levelheaded. This is in fact what a range of noisy politicians, and their chattering pundits in the bought media, call “school reform.”70

There are direct correlates too between the divestment in schools and the investment in the penal state. Most infamously, California became, in

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31

the 1990s, the first state where prison building and correctional expenditures outpaced investment in education.71 They are no longer alone; the national average per capita for educating a child is $9,500, while it costs $43,000 per year to keep a person incarcerated. Our political climate favors spending for incarceration at the expense of education.72 Perhaps even more insidiously, investment in the prison industrial complex has immediate implications for the criminalization of education in under-resourced schools. The legislation that provides the immediate impetus for zero-tolerance policies and police in the schools—the Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994, the Safe Schools Act of 1994, and a 1998 amendment to the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 —was passed during the peaks of escalating incarceration and was driven by the same racially coded appeals to fear.73 The rise of schools as “punishing factories” is a product too of this punishing mindset, and results in zero-tolerance policies that criminalize the most minor misbehavior, surveillance cameras, security guards, metal detectors, and all the accoutrements of prison.74 The impact of these policies is most extreme in under-resourced innercity schools, for schools segregated by race and class, and schools located in the very neighborhoods that provide the client pool for the prison industrial complex. Kaba and Meiners note: While the US public education system has historically diverted non-white communities toward under-education, non-living wage work, participation in a permanent war economy, and/or incarceration, the development of the world’s largest prison nation over the last three decades has strengthened policy, practice, and ideological linkages between schools and prisons. Non-white, non-heterosexual, and/or non-gender conforming students are targeted for surveillance, suspended and expelled at higher rates, and are much more likely to be charged, convicted, and removed from their homes, or otherwise to receive longer sentences.75

Perhaps these schools are meant to fulfill, as all schools, the function of socialization into the labor force. In the post–Civil Rights era that has come to mean, for many, service to the prison industrial complex. If underserved students in under-resourced schools manage to survive the endless drill of high-stakes testing, then possible employment awaits them in the semi-skilled sectors of corrections, as police or prison guards. Others, especially Black and Latino boys, may be deemed “disposable,” perceived to be part of that surplus labor pool whose role may be as

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The School-to-Prison Pipeline

“clients” of corrections; that is, they will serve as fodder for the system as probationers or prisoners.76 Certainly, the educational system has prepared them for these roles. They have been tested and drilled and ordered about; they have been searched and surveilled, policed and punished. And ultimately, too, they have been pushed out on a pathway to prison, one fraught with racial and class disparities, which are achieved, not by name, but by a complex web of double standards of discipline and control in an era of color blindness.

PART 2 School-to-Prison Pipeline: The Context of Social Control

Chapter 3

Racialized Control in the Era of Color Blindness Midgeville, Georgia, April 13, 2012. A six-year-old kindergartener at Creekside Elementary, Salecia Johnson, was arrested and handcuffed at school after throwing a tantrum. Police were called after Salecia allegedly tore papers off the walls and threw books and toys, and a small shelf that hit the principal in the leg.1 When police arrived, Salecia was on the floor crying, Despite efforts to calm her, police claim she actively resisted before eventually being handcuffed and taken to the police station. Salecia was originally charged with as a juvenile with simple battery of a schoolteacher and criminal damage to property. Charges were later dropped because of her age, but Salecia was suspended for the rest of the schoolyear. Although police and school officials claim that the handcuffing and arrest was for the safety of Salecia and others, her family disagrees, noting that calling the police was excessive and that Salecia remains traumatized by the event. Her aunt said, “We would not like to see this happen to another child, because it’s horrifying.”2 Salecia’s case is not the first instance of police arrest and handcuffing of extremely young children at school. A comparable Florida case involving a five-year-old girl came to national attention in 2005. And, as these cases and other illustrate, more likely than not, the children who are subject to police intervention in preschools and early elementary years are disproportionately Black.3

Introduction The school-to-prison pipeline is a racialized phenomenon, one that criminalizes youth of color and tracks them toward prison. It emerges in a context of extensive and overlapping social control, where informal

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The School-to-Prison Pipeline

stigma gives shape to the contours of labeling and control. Here, race serves as an unnamed indicator for the definition and control of rule-breakers and shapes the decision to criminalize or medicalize. This choice is a significant one as it shapes the view of the rule-breaker as redeemable or not and also shapes the consequences, which in the case of criminal justice produces long-term stigma, civic death, and loss of all matter of social opportunity. The school-to-prison pipeline is also made possible, as is much institutionalized racism of the post–Civil Rights era, by the context of color blindness. Here, race is the unspoken subtext of policy and practice that is designed to produce racialized results. Race is alluded to in code words and racial scripts, and racial images are reinforced by media images that criminalize Blackness in particular. This stands in stark contrast to media coverage of white criminality, which is minimized, individualized, exceptionalized, and mitigated with the medical model. The pervasiveness of these media images and their solidification within the white racial frame plays a significant role in further shaping everyday interaction and sociopolitical policy. Like the prison industrial complex that it feeds, the school-to-prison pipeline is created and maintained by these coded appeals to race-based fear. The policies that underpin it coincide with the War on Drugs, and an era of media hysteria over gangs and juvenile “super-predators” and enforcement is fueled by the acceptance of such criminalizing archetypes among those empowered to interpret and enforce said policies. Legislators, school boards and administrators, officials, teachers, and police in the hallways all succumb to stereotypes’ sway. The result is heavily racialized systems of punitive social control, which are achieved without the direct mention of race.

Race, Deviance, and Social Control The labeling of “deviants” offers informal/extra-legal, medical, and formal/legal options, all designed, at least in theory, to regulate particular types of rule-breaking (see Figure 3.1). Informal, medical, and formal systems of social control all involve varying degrees of discretion or flexibility in decision-making, as to who should be controlled and how. These models suggest that different types of deviant behaviors warrant different types of social control; that is, minor deviations may be handled via highly discretionary informal social control, deviants who have mental illnesses may best be served by the expert judgment and treatment of the medical

Racialized Control in the Era of Color Blindness

37

model, and intentional violators of the law must be punished via formalized legal systems.4 The criminal law and its corresponding sanctions of imprisonment and sometimes death represent the harshest set of norms and sanctions available. Criminal justice is designed to punish those who have acted in violation of the law. Criminal labels are often relatively permanent in nature, carrying with them informal stigma and, increasingly, additional legal barriers or “collateral consequences.”5 Currently in the United States, a punitive climate and excessive reliance on prison for even nonviolent offenses characterizes formal social control. In contrast, the medical model emerged in order to offer treatment to those whose status or condition contributed to their deviance. This is a model that views deviants are sick rather than just bad, and as such, ultimately redeemable.6 This model too has expanded substantially in the United States, and offers a variety of treatment options for a plethora of conditions defined as mental illness. Informal control of less-serious violations such as etiquette style and personal taste is handled on a discretionary case-by-case basis and exerted by significant others and social institutions. In sum, these systems of control seem to offer distinctive options for regulating distinctly different types of rule-breaking. A closer examination of the mechanisms of social control, however, reveals that the type of social control exerted has much less to do with the deviation in question and much more to do with the demographics of the deviant. Far from being mutually exclusive or race, class, and gender blind, these systems of control are interdependent and overlapping, and discretion often is shaped by discrimination.7 Race, class, and gender are inextricably bound up with the definition and control of deviance. In the United States, the unmarked privileged and empowered “norm” is white, male, financially well off, heterosexual, fully abled, and adult. In contrast then, people of color, women, the poor, GLBTQ persons, the differently abled, and the young become “the Other,” the “abnormal,” the “deviant.”8 The statuses are informally marked as nonnormative and subsequently subjected to stigma and stereotyping. As Heitzeg notes, Race, class, gender and age then are major factors in the social control of deviance. These variables and their intersection are powerful indicators of both stigma and subsequent social control. While race, class, gender and age may play a role in creating opportunities for deviant behavior, their real significance is in shaping the differential direction of power and social

FIGURE 3.1. Discretion and overlap in the definition and control of deviance (Adapted from Heitzeg 1996 [Reprinted with permission]).

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39

control. The intersection of these statuses shapes access to both the power to label and the powerlessness of being subjected to social control.9

These raced, classed, gendered “Others” are subject to labeling and social control based on the intersection of race, class, gender, and other differences. These variables shape access to systems of social control as well as to social opportunity. While there are “deviants” of all classes, all races, all genders, and all ages, the models under which they are controlled reflects their relative social status. As informal social control increasingly gives way to medicalization and criminalization, the informal markers and associated stigmas of race, class, and gender often provide the foundation for further social control. Young males of color in particular are likely to be subjected to an intertwined web of social control as they are labeled and relabeled informally and legally in what has described as a “youth control complex.”10 These informal stigmas of race, class, gender, and age allow for the mitigation and possible medicalization of the “redeemable” white middle and upper classes, while simultaneously offering justification for criminalization of the poor and communities of color.11 These informal definitions of who is deviant and normative, especially those disseminated widely by media, shape everyday interactions, and serve as legitimations for enduring differences in systemic responses to comparable deviant behaviors. This is the storyline that shapes the dynamics of the school-to-prison pipeline. Youth of color are criminalized and their white peers medicalized for comparable behaviors that are simply interpreted via distinct lens of social control. In the post–Civil Rights era of color blindness, however, racial disparities in social control must be achieved in a supposedly race-neutral fashion. This is made possible by conflating race with select types of rule-breaking, and in particular by “imputing crime to color.”12

Normative Whiteness and Color-Blind Racism What has come to be termed the white racial frame plays a key role in rendering whiteness normative, and conversely, associating deviance with communities of color.13 Whiteness becomes “the unmarked marker,” unnamed, unexamined, the unspoken standard by which all “Other” races are judged.14 The white racial frame provides an overarching worldview encompassing important racial ideas and beliefs, terms, images, emotions, inclinations, and interpretations and determining a way of being, perspective on life,

40

The School-to-Prison Pipeline

and language and explanations that help structure, normalize, and make sense out of society.15 Central to this frame are notions of whiteness and those who possess it as virtuous and normative in all senses. In the post–Civil Rights era, color blindness is also a key feature of the white racial frame. This is centered on claims that racism is over, and allows whites (others too) to equate racism with prejudice, ignoring the institutionalized and systemic racial structures that sustain and reproduce white racial privilege.16 One of the major challenges of the post–Civil Rights era involves confronting the notion that racism is now over. White supremacy was removed from its legalized pedestal with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and finally, the Fair Housing Act of 1968.17 The law became “race neutral” and it now suddenly was illegal to discriminate on the basis of race. Much racial inequality is now embedded de facto in structural arrangements; it is certainly more invisible. Racism, as both white supremacist ideology and institutionalized arrangement, remains merely transformed with its systemic foundations intact.18 Segregation in housing and education persists at levels beyond that noted in Brown v. Board of Education, racial wealth gaps grow, and racial disparities in criminal injustice proliferate at a pace that has led to the claim that racial caste has again been reinscribed, this time via color-blind criminal justice policies, aka “The New Jim Crow.”19 Despite the persistence of racial inequality, many are content to believe that once de jure segregation ended, everything was magically equal on a now level color-blind playing field. “Color-blind racism” is the set of ideological devices used to explain contemporary racial inequality as the outcome of nonracial dynamics. Color-blind racism allows whites (and others too) to equate racism with prejudice, ignoring the institutionalized and systemic racial structures that sustain and reproduce white racial privilege.20 A large body of research documents the paradigmatic shift from overt essentialist racism to color blindness.21 As legalized discrimination is outlawed via both Supreme Court rulings and Federal Civil Rights legislation, color blindness emerges as a political strategy.22 The legal requirement of race neutrality in the law rendered earlier appeals to overt racism untenable. The so-called “Southern Strategy” emerged in the late 1960s as a way to signal race/racism via coded appeals.23 The “success” of this tactic lead to its widespread use in debates over welfare reform, affirmative action, and particularly “law and order” criminal justice policy.24 In all these cases, the coded racial subtext reads clearly. And the resultant

Racialized Control in the Era of Color Blindness

41

policies, while purportedly “race neutral,” resulted in disproportionate harm to people of color. This color-blind style of racism relies heavily on ideological frames and linguistic shifts, which allow whites to assert they “do not see race,” deny structural racism, claim a level playing field that in fact now victimizes them with “reverse discrimination” and appeals to the “race card,” and argue that any discussion of race/racism is in fact racist, serving to foment divisions rather than reflect/redress societal realities.25 “Color-blind racism” also creates a set of code terms and frames that implicitly indict people of color without ever mentioning race. There is an emphasis on merit, claims to equal opportunity, natural patterns that explain away institutional discrimination, appeals to cultural racism, and a denial or minimization of the ongoing effects of racism.26 These ideological frames are used to justify all sorts of racial arrangements, but play a particularly strong role in providing cover for institutionalized racism in social control. In the post–Civil Rights era, the color-blind paradigm has become deeply ensconced in law and politics. Movement toward “race neutrality” is the hallmark of a series of Supreme Court decisions that deny the role of institutionalized racism and increasingly limit the role of race in constitutional remedies for inequality in matters of affirmative action and educational access, voting rights, and all matters of criminal injustice.27 Color blindness is the prevailing paradigm in both policy and everyday racism, and serves as the ideological foundation of persistent institutional racism, especially for the criminal justice system and the school-to-prison pipeline.

Color Blindness and Criminalizing Blackness In the post–Civil Rights era, there has been a corresponding shift from de jure racism codified explicitly into the law and legal systems to a de facto racism where people of color, especially African Americans, are subject to unequal protection of the laws, excessive surveillance, extreme segregation, and neo-slave labor via incarceration all in the name of “crime control.”28 “Law and order” criminal justice policies were all guided by thinly coded appeals to white fears of high-crime neighborhoods, “crack epidemics,” gang proliferation, juvenile super-predators, urban unrest, school violence, and more. In all these case, the subtext reads clearly—fear of brown and especially Black people.29

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The School-to-Prison Pipeline

Nowhere have the effects been as pronounced as with the War on Drugs. The post–Civil Rights era has brought an expansion of the use of criminal justice as the primary mechanism for defining and controlling communities of color. The War on Drugs, with its attendant harsh sentences and reliance on racial profiling, has been the essential vehicle for reinscribing racial inequality.30 The legal shifts that accompanied the War on Drugs were race neutral in language, but not in their effect. While a large body of research documents comparable rates of drug use across racial lines, communities of color have been the target of the criminalizing impact of policy shifts. Conversely, white and middle class drug users are less likely to be criminalized than their counterparts of color, and when in need of intervention, are most likely to be diverted into the burgeoning addiction treatment industry.31 They are medicalized for their “illness” and offered treatment rather than punishment. White criminals in general, and white drug users in particular, are individualized, and have their deviance mitigated by the medical model’s appeal to illness, treatment, and recovery, communities of color are criminalized, however, and the War on Drugs has been conducted in their neighborhoods and against them. For more than 40 years, this “war” has served to incarcerate millions of people of color, leave millions more under correctional control, and reify the old archetype that imputes crime to color. Despite the facial race neutrality of the “war” and its ever-expanding punitive policies, legal systems now reinscribe race and race as crime. As Alexander observes in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Era of Colorblindness, criminal justice policies serve to regulate and segregate communities of color in the post– Civil Rights era: What has changed since the collapse of Jim Crow has less to do with the basic structure of our society than with the language we use to justify it. In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don’t. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color “criminals” and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination— employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service—are suddenly legal. As a criminal

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you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.32

This is the continuation of an old theme: post slavery, the criminalizing narrative has been a central cultural feature of ongoing efforts at oppression; from convict lease/plantation prison farms to the contemporary prison industrial complex the control of Black bodies for profit has been furthered by the criminal justice system.33 “Slave Codes” become Black Codes and Black Codes become the War on Drugs with the “race-neutral” language but racialized enforcement of gang legislation, mandatory minimum and three-strikes sentencing.34 The Black Man as Dangerous is an old idea, now honed and solidified into an archetype that scholars and activists now refer to in aggregate shorthand: the Criminal-Black-Man.35 The Criminal-Black-Man archetype is the centerpiece of the post–Civil Rights era’s reliance on color blindness. Race need never be explicitly named but “high crime neighborhoods,” “gangs,” “thugs,” “ghettos,” “hoods,” and “hoodies” all evoke a racialized image.36 All people of color— Latino/as and Native American especially and the poor, women, the young, the queer—are targets here too, but it is Blackness that provides the paradigm.37 This image is ubiquitous; it offers the framework for both creating and then perversely justifying the demographics of both the prison industrial complex and the downward punitive drift that establishes the school-toprison pipeline and unnamed double standards of social control. The result has been an unparalleled explosion in imprisonment, the emergence of the prison industrial complex, and the concomitant creation of the school-toprison pipeline.

Color Blindness and Media Construction of Criminals38 Media, particularly television, serves as a major purveyor of the imagery and stereotypes that are foundational to social control. In particular, media plays a key role in perpetuating racial stereotypes that are then translated into a central justification for the disproportionate criminalization and incarceration of people of color. Nowhere is this truer than with regard to the portrayal of both crime and criminals.39 In an era of color blindness, the Criminal-Black-Man archetype is solidified via mediated representation. Media depictions often convey this image without overt reference to race but instead by framing, visuals, and coded language.

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The School-to-Prison Pipeline

News and entertainment representations of crime, offenders, victims, and the workings of legal systems are portrayed in a fashion that is diametrically opposed to any semblance of reality. A substantial body of research indicates that violent crime and youth crime are dramatically overrepresented, crime coverage has increased in spite of falling crime rates, African Americans and Latinos are overrepresented as offenders and underrepresented as victims, and interracial crime, especially crimes involving white victims, is overreported.40 The media’s racialized misrepresentation of crime and criminals certainly extends to youth; some estimates indicate that as much as two-thirds of violent crime coverage focused on youth under age 25.41 Media framing of crime stories is of particular significance. When perpetrators are white, coverage tends to minimize any racial references or exceptionalize the crime/criminal as detached from normative whiteness. The first response to particularly shocking crimes such as mass shootings (which are overwhelmingly committed by white men) is often immediately met with appeals to the medical model to explain the deviance as “mental illness.” Further, media accounts often go to great lengths to humanize the suspect, presenting the suspect in everyday photos—as opposed to mug shots—replete with neighbors or family “witnesses” who express shock and disbelief and attest to the character of the alleged perpetrator or the neighborhood from whence they came.42 When confronted with white criminality, several options exist to divorce suspects/ offenders from normative whiteness. Race is never discussed as a key signifier when crimes are committed by whites. Whiteness is largely absent, as Rhymes notes: Let’s think about it, when the tragedy at Columbine occurred there were literally hundreds of news stories asking the question: “Why are our kids becoming so violent?” Not, “Why are white kids becoming so violent,” but “our” kids. Now let’s contrast that with what happens when a black child is killed in a predominantly black community. The newspaper accounts more often than not refer to “the problem of black-on-black crime” or “violence amongst black youth.” There are two scenarios unfolding here: 1) De-emphasizing or minimizing ethnicity. When the crime is perpetrated by whites, color is not the issue; the issue is “our” children and violence. 2) Emphatic emphasizing and alienation when blacks are deemed the culprits. It is no longer “our” kids; it is “black” kids or youth. There’s a big difference.43

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Conversely, African American offenders of all ages, in addition to being overrepresented as suspects, are depicted in a more negative way than their white counterparts. Blacks are mostly likely to be seen on TV news as criminals, particularly as violent, and then presented in additionally dehumanizing ways. They are four times more likely than whites to be seen in a mug shot, twice as likely to be shown in physical restraints, and less likely to be identified by name.44 Black suspects are also depicted as more poorly dressed and were much less likely to speak than white suspects, reinforcing the notion that they were indistinct from noncriminals. Blacks are additionally stereotyped as poor, with both implicit and explicit links between poverty and criminality.45 In general, the research, as reviewed by Dorfman and Schiraldi, indicates: [D]epictions of crime in the news are not reflective of either the crime rate generally, or the proportion of crime which is violent. . . . The proportion of crime committed by people of color (usually African Americans) is overreported and Black victims are under-represented[.] . . . The problem is not the inaccuracy of individual stories, but that the cumulative choice of what is included- or not included-in the news presents the public with a false picture of higher frequency and severity of crime than is actually the case.46

Media coverage of crime directly impact public perceptions of Blacks and Latinos, and creates and reinforces the stereotype of the young Black male, in particular, as the criminal. A vast body of research indicates a deep implicit bias toward Black males, young and old, as dangerous and violent. A variety of studies reveal that the images of Black males as criminals are so deeply entrenched in the public’s mind that viewers imagine Black suspects in newscasts where none were present, and report elevated fear rates when briefly exposed to mugshots of Blacks.47 A key study found that 60 percent of people watching a newscast without an image of the offender falsely “remembered” seeing one. Seventy percent of these viewers “remembered” the perpetrator as Black.48 In one experimental study, brief exposures to mug shots of Blacks and Hispanic males increased levels of fear among viewers, reinforced racial stereotypes, and led viewers to recommend harsh penalties. Other studies have found that Black suspects were more likely than whites to be viewed as guilty and more likely to commit violence in the future.49 These media representations have real consequences for both public policy and everyday interactions. TV news coverage of crime reflects and reinforces a “culture of fear.”50 This is supported by decades of research. Study after

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The School-to-Prison Pipeline

study finds that heavy TV viewers (i.e., those who watch TV more than four hours a day) overestimate the crime rate, the likelihood of crime victimization, and the extent of stranger-related violence. In general, heavy TV viewers are nearly twice as likely as light viewers to report crime as the most serious problem, believe crime rates are rising, and indicate personal fear of victimization. Further, they are more likely to advocate for harsh adult and juvenile justice penalties.51 This is especially true for whites who have developed a strong association of race of crime. The more whites associate criminality with Blacks and other people of color, the more likely they are to advocate for harsh criminal and juvenile justice policies.52 As Entman and Gross note: The implications of this research for public attitudes are troubling. Messages continually associating people of color, especially blacks, with poverty and crime reinforce the updated form of racial prejudice known as symbolic racism, racial resentment, or racial animosity. In the absence of contextual information about discrimination and other forces that produce the poverty, racialized images of poverty reinforce the stereotype that blacks are lazy and therefore deserve their impecuniousness. Racialized crime coverage reinforces the stereotype that blacks are not just lazy, but violent. Both of these stereotypes are important components of this new form of racial prejudice. Moreover, empirical evidence demonstrates associations between racial resentment and whites’ support of punitive crime policies and opposition to preventative policies.53

Media-driven fears over drugs, gangs, and violence provided the backdrop for increasingly harsh legal penalties and our current situation of mass incarceration. This was achieved via crisis coverage of celebrity drug deaths, the media construction of a gang-driven crack “epidemic,” and elected officials’ racially coded appeals to fear of violent crime. The context for the current climate of repressive youth policies was also set in the same time period of the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s.54 The coverage of youth gangs, which focused almost exclusively on African American and Latino gangs, exaggerated the extent of gang membership and gang violence, contributing the creation of “moral panic.”55 Headlines screamed dire warnings about the legions of teen superpredators that would come of age by 2010; of course, they were urban, they were Black and brown, and they were relentlessly violent.56 Here is John Diluio’s seminal and hyperbolic description of pending super-predators:

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On the horizon, therefore, are tens of thousands of severely morally impoverished juvenile super-predators. They fear neither the stigma of arrest nor the pain of imprisonment. . . . In prison or out, the things that superpredators get by their criminal behavior—sex, drugs, money—are their own immediate rewards. Nothing else matters to them.57

Given apparent legitimacy by conservative academics, this super-predator script took off among both media and policy-makers. Violence, gangs, crack, and youth of color became synonymous in the public imagination, and despite later evidence that the super-predator script was a myth, the consequences for youth of color were dire.58 This super-predator myth and the attendant media panic coverage translated into a series of changes in juvenile justice policies that included a plethora of gang legislation that was designed to target youth and new policies that ease the transfer of juveniles into adult court and otherwise extend the scope of jurisdiction. The punitive approach that came to characterize juvenile justice became the paradigm for the treatment of youth of color in the schools, as both underlying fears and supposedly race-neutral policy wend their way into educational institutions. Media misrepresentation of youthful crime provided the foundation from which to change policy: Underlying this assault on juvenile justice is the demonization of youth, particularly young people of color, who are stereotypically portrayed as roaming the streets and destroying the fabric of society. . . . The media’s imagery reflects confused reporting of crime statistics, at best, and forsakes the reality of crime rates in favor of sensationalized accounts of youthful offenders, at worst.59

Again, these mediated representations of racialized criminality are achieved almost entirely without explicitly mentioning race. The messages of white mitigation and Black criminality are conveyed with images, framing, and well-understood code words of color-blind racism. The resultant racial stereotypes are reified in public policy as legal systems and schools devise punitive schemes that are race neutral in language but certainly not in practice. In the era of colorblind racism, media plays a key role in furthering the racial stereotypes that underpin and then legitimate the public policy that disproportionately targets people of color for the most extensive sorts of social and legal control.

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Color-Blind Racism, Mediated Representation, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline Widespread acceptance of media stereotypes by the general public has implications for policy; these facilitate and reinforce tendencies toward mass incarceration and the school-to-prison pipeline. Most immediately, these stereotypes frame the everyday interactions that youth of color have in public places, with employers, with teachers, with public officials, and with the police.60 Certainly, TV-driven notions of Blacks and Latinos as “predators” provide whites and others with justification for prejudgments and negative responses. These media-based preconceptions play a significant role in the school-to-prison pipeline as teachers and other school officials are not immune from this media exposure, and may, especially in moments that require snap judgments, be influenced by the pervasive power of these stereotypes. While the school-to-prison pipeline emerges out of social context and public policy, it is immediately fed by the everyday decisions that teachers and school officials make in the schools. The decision to informally reprimand, refer to counseling, or criminalize via suspension, expulsion, or policing determines the demographics of the pipeline at the most basic level. Children disrupt the classroom in a variety of ways on a daily basis; how their behavior is labeled in the moment is key to understanding how the pipeline operates. African American students and other students of color, starting as early as preschool, are suspended and expelled at rates that far exceed those of their white peers. Prejudice and stereotype acceptance of media images of Black students by white teachers is a possible contributor to the racial disproportionality in suspension and expulsion. In fact, the highest rates of racially disproportionate discipline are found in states that have low minority populations, where the communication gap between white teachers and Black students may be greatest and boys of color are potentially threatening, even in small numbers.61 Since research has found no indication that African American youth violate rules at higher rates than other groups, the persistence of stereotypes of young Black males and “cultural miscommunication” between students and teachers is often cited as one key factor. Eighty-three percent of the nation’s teaching ranks are filled by whites, mostly women, and implicit biases with attendant stereotyping can shape the decision to suspend or expel. 62 This is supported by a range of studies that have

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documented the extent to which Black and Latino boys in particular are subjected to “labeling hype” and punitive scrutiny from the earliest of ages.63 Teachers who have internalized the stereotypes of Black children as aggressive, defiant, and learning disabled are likely to mete out the most serious punishments for any misbehavior. Researchers have termed this the “Black escalation effect.”64 Here, Black students receive increasingly harsh punishments for misbehavior as compared to white peers, and are more quickly suspended or expelled than white peers for comparable behavior. A recent study by Okonofua and Eberhardt documented the following pattern: In sum, teachers escalated their response to a Black student more so than to a White student when the student had only one previous infraction, even though both infractions were minor and each was distinctive from the other— insubordination versus classroom disturbance. As predicted, for the Black student, the first infraction seemed to influence how the second infraction was regarded. Indeed, our theory held that teachers are more likely to view multiple infractions as a connected pattern when the student is Black as opposed to White[.] . . . [W]hat we have shown here is that racial disparities in discipline can occur even when Black and White students behave in the same manner. We have shown experimentally, for the first time, that teacher responses can contribute to racial disparities in discipline.65

The matter is complicated by the extent to which white teachers may not see Black children as “children” at all. A growing literature on dehumanization and perceived innocence reveals that white adults overestimate the actual ages of Black male children by as much as four years, viewing them instead as adults. In many cases, Black boys as young as 13 were seen as adults. This is correlated then with the imputation of criminal motives for misbehavior.66 Goff and colleagues make these observations: Black boys are seen as more culpable for their actions (i.e., less innocent) within a criminal justice context than are their peers of other races. In addition, Black boys are actually misperceived as older relative to peers of other races. Further, the above research provides evidence that, in undergraduate and police populations, these racial disparities are predicted by the implicit dehumanization of Blacks. These findings demonstrate that dehumanization of Blacks not only predicts racially disparate perceptions of Black boys but also predicts racially disparate police violence toward Black children in real-world settings.

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Sociologist Michael Kimmel (2008) has suggested that, for middle-class White males, the period of time when boys are not held fully responsible for their actions can extend well into their late 20s. In contrast, the present research suggests that Black children may be viewed as adults as soon as 13, with average age overestimations of Black children exceeding four and a half years in some cases. . . . In other words, our findings suggest that, although most children are allowed to be innocent until adulthood, Black children may be perceived as innocent only until deemed suspicious.67

The usual veil of innocence that exempts most children from heavily punitive social and legal consequences of youthful misbehavior does not apply to children of color, especially young Black males. This stands in sharp contrast to extended periods of innocence for white middle class children, who are sometimes allowed an exemption on adult responsibility into well into their 20s. Further, their deviance, their rule-breaking, even when extreme, is often mitigated by appeals to the medical model, which offers treatment rather than punishment. The implications of this for the school-to-prison pipeline are profound. How else to make sense of the staggering numbers of suspensions, expulsions, and arrests of even preschool students of color at school? The persistent media stereotypes of Blackness as criminal, of youth of color as dangerous, are omnipresent, and educators are not immune to their effect. The ubiquity and power of said stereotypes are difficult to cast off in the best of moments, but under the duress of overcrowded classrooms, highstakes testing pressures, and a culture steeped in punitive responses, they are even harder to resist. In an era of color blindness, where overt racial discrimination is illegal and race-neutral policies are the mainstay, this is how a racialized schoolto-prison pipeline is created. The deeply rooted informal stigmas attached to race produce disparate labeling for the same behavior. So as white students have their deviance mitigated by the medical model of treatment, students of color are criminalized and pushed onto a pathway toward prison. The result is a heavily racialized pattern of suspension, expulsion, and arrest at school, all occurring under the guise of color-blindness and race-neutrality.

Chapter 4

The Prison Industrial Complex: Profit, Race, and the Prison Track Salt Lake City, Utah, December 14, 2012. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a class action lawsuit against West High School in Salt Lake City. The suit pertains to a gang sweep of the school in 2010 that involved the targeting of dozens of students of color by a gang task force. Sixteen gang task force officers interrogated students and accused them of being gang members. Only students of color were questioned. Officers took photographs of the students and put them in a gang database. Students were denied the right to call their parents or leave during the interrogation. The suit maintains that the rights of students were infringed during this sweep in violation of the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments and that the school district’s anti-gang policy is unconstitutionally vague.1 The suit was filed on behalf of the parents of Kaleb Winston, a 14-year-old biracial student who was one of those questioned that day. Confronted by plainclothes officers whom he thought were teachers, Kaleb was questioned, assaulted when he tried to leave, and accused of graffiti vandalism, which he denied. Winston, who is biracial, denied any gang affiliation, but the officers accused him of tagging sites around the school. They made the boy hold a plate like those used when offenders are booked into jail that read, “My name is Kaleb Winston and I am a gang tagger.” Officers then told the teen they would keep a file on him.2 When Kaleb’s mother, who is white, questioned the school officers about the events the next day, she was told that the gang raid was meant to address a “problem with the Mexicans” at West High School. As the ACLU’s complaint notes:

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On top of the myriad constitutional violations and common law torts spawned by these events, this raid sent all students of color a clear message: you are suspected gang members, even if all you are doing is going to school. Moreover, the raid signaled to students that even school can be turned into a police station for nonwhite students. These messages are especially harmful at a time when Utah is struggling to increase graduation rates for high school students, especially minority students. Through this lawsuit, the plaintiffs seek to put an end to the practices and policies that led to the raid, to stop the use of the database to store information about minors who have committed no crimes, and to protect the rights of all students.3

Introduction The school-to-prison pipeline is the product of the tendency toward criminalization and mass incarceration. Over the past four decades, the United States has become, by far, the world’s leader in imprisonment rates, now holding 2.4 million beyond bars.4 This trend was and is fueled by political policies, particularly the War on Drugs, and economic interests that profit in manifold ways from a captive surplus labor force that is disproportionately racialized as well. Blacks and other people of color, the poor, and the young comprise the majority of prisoners. In the post–Civil Rights era of color blindness, criminal justice has emerged as the primary mechanism for exerting racialized social control, albeit under the guise of race-neutral policy. The heavy reliance on policing and prison has come to characterize the juvenile justice system as well. Facilitated by media hype over youth violence, gangs, and “super-predators,” the juvenile justice system has become increasingly punitive as well. Nearly all states have made it easier to try juveniles as adults, extend jurisdiction into adulthood, include certain youthful offenses in permanent criminal records, and require placement in juvenile facilities, often for minor infractions. The racial disparities present in the adult criminal justice system are magnified here, as youth of color make up the overwhelming majority of those in the juvenile justice system, from arrest to incarceration. The term prison industrial complex captures the web that creates, maintains, and sustains this large-scale punishment apparatus. This has come to extend beyond the prison per se to include the entire “correctional” system—both adult and juvenile—lawmakers, the police, the courts, community corrections, and the for-profit suppliers of goods and services to

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the same. It is but a small step for these policies to make their way into the schools. The policies that shape the parameters of the school-to-prison pipeline directly reflect the rise of the prison industrial complex. Increasingly, harsh policies that mandate both criminalization and incarceration have drifted into the schools. Zero-tolerance policies, for example, directly mirror the harsh mandatory minimums that characterize the War on Drugs, as does the reliance on policing as the centerpiece of social control. Perhaps, even more insidiously, the prison industrial complex requires the pipeline as a guarantee of future prisoners and profits. Perhaps, too, the economic demands of a late capitalist service sector economy require that a surplus disposable labor pool be created to insure employment for others. And overburdened schools have little recourse but to provide them.

The Prison Industrial Complex: Profiteering from Racialized Control Over the past four decades, the United States has experienced an unprecedented explosion in imprisonment. Since 1970, when some 200,000 were incarcerated nation-wide, the U.S. prison population has undergone a 10fold increase, and currently has 2.4 million locked up on any given day. This translates into an incarceration rate of 716 people for every 100,000 residents, a rate more than five times higher than most of the countries in the world.5 Beyond this, another more than 5 million are under correctional supervision in the community, serving condition of probation and parole, and one in four adults—approximately 65 million people—have a felony conviction on their records that may hinder employment, voting, and access to any number of governmental benefits.6 This vast project in social control similarly requires a massive infrastructure. The prison industrial complex now includes 1,719 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 2,259 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,283 local jails, and 79 Indian Country jails as well as military prisons, immigration detention facilities, civil commitment centers, and prisons in the U.S. territories. Nearly 300 of these are private prisons. Over 30 of these institutions are super-maximum facilities, not including the super-maximum units located in most other prisons.7 The prison industrial complex consumes vast amounts of tax dollars at the expense of education and other social programs. Each year, the United States spends over $230 billion on the criminal justice system, including police, the judiciary, and court systems and corrections. Nearly $80 billion of this is spent directly on corrections,

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with the majority of those expenditures going toward incarceration and executions—the two most expensive sentencing options.8 The stunning expansion of the prison industrial complex is not correlated with increases in crime, but rather, it is the result of draconian legal policies and a punishing political climate that is enabled by media misreporting in crime.9 It is intertwined too with shifting economic realities and renewed efforts to regulate race in the post–Civil Rights era. The War on Drugs is at the center of both.

Race, Class, and the Political Economy of the Prison Industrial Complex This vast and expensive enterprise is increasingly a centerpiece of the U.S. economy, as the correctional system is now a major source of both employment and profits. Once primarily a burden on tax payers, the socalled “prison industrial complex” is now a source of corporate profit, governmental agency funding, cheap neo-slave labor, and employment for economically depressed regions. This “is not a conspiracy, but a confluence of special interests . . . who have turned to prisons as a method of economic development.”10 Brewer and Heitzeg observe: [T]he prison industrial complex is a self-perpetuating machine where the vast profits (e.g. cheap labor, private and public supply and construction contracts, job creation, continued media profits from exaggerated crime reporting and crime/punishment as entertainment) and perceived political benefits (e.g. reduced unemployment rates, “get tough on crime” and public safety rhetoric, funding increases for police, and criminal justice system agencies and professionals) lead to policies that are additionally designed to insure an endless supply of “clients” for the criminal justice system (e.g. enhanced police presence in poor neighborhoods and communities of color; racial profiling; decreased funding for public education combined with zero-tolerance policies and increased rates of expulsion for students of color; increased rates of adult certification for juvenile offenders; mandatory minimum and “three-strikes” sentencing; draconian conditions of incarceration and a reduction of prison services that contribute to the likelihood of “recidivism”; “collateral consequences”—such as felony disenfranchisement, prohibitions on welfare receipt, public housing, gun ownership, voting and political participation, employment—that nearly guarantee continued participation in “crime” and return to the prison industrial complex following initial release.)11

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The prison industrial complex serves as a key employment sector and profit source for an increased array of companies who produce products and services to corrections. A segment of profit for both governmental agencies and the private sector is made from inmate labor, but the primary labor function of the contemporary prison industrial complex is the removal of surplus labor from the ranks of the unemployed. The vast majority of those imprisoned are unemployed at the time of their conviction and undereducated as well. In a postindustrial economy where bluecollar jobs have largely disappeared, full employment for an unskilled labor force is increasingly out of reach. The essential economic function for large segments of the underskilled, then, is not as labor, but rather as fodder for the burgeoning growth of the political economy of the prison industrial complex.12 In perhaps the earliest exposition on the prison industrial complex and its functions for the political economy, Angela Y. Davis notes: Imprisonment has become the response of first resort to far too many of the social problems that burden people who are ensconced in poverty. These problems often are veiled by being conveniently grouped together under the category “crime” and by the automatic attribution of criminal behavior to people of color. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages. Prisons thus perform a feat of magic. Or rather the people who continually vote in new prison bonds and tacitly assent to a proliferating network of prisons and jails have been tricked into believing in the magic of imprisonment. But prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings. And the practice of disappearing vast numbers of people from poor, immigrant, and racially marginalized communities has literally become big business. The seeming effortlessness of magic always conceals an enormous amount of behind-the-scenes work. When prisons disappear human beings in order to convey the illusion of solving social problems, penal infrastructures must be created to accommodate a rapidly swelling population of caged people.13

The emergence of this full-blown state of “hyper-incarceration” in the post–Civil Rights era is also deeply connected to furthering racialized control.14 A wide range of scholars have noted the historical pattern of imputing crime to color, noting the ongoing connections between slavery

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and the criminal justice system. Since the Civil War, criminal justice has been the major mechanism for controlling newly freed Blacks. Black Codes, convict lease, and prison farms allowed for both continued exploitation of captive labor pools and disenfranchisement.15 In the post–Civil Rights era, criminal justice continues to serve this function via mass incarceration and the reinscription of racial caste via the race-neutral but racially charged laws and policies, often referred to collectively as the New Jim Crow.16 Indeed, the rise of the prison industrial complex has expanded by disproportionately targeting communities of color. The trend toward mass incarceration is marred by racial disparity. While 1 in 35 adults is under correctional supervision and 1 in every 100 adults is in prison, 1 in every 36 Latino adults, 1 in every 15 Black men, 1 in every 100 Black women, and 1 in 9 Black men ages 20 to 34 are incarcerated. 17 Approximately 60 percent of all prisoners are racial and ethnic minorities, with African Americans in particular dramatically overrepresented relative to their percentage of the U.S. population. Blacks are 13 percent of the total population, but 40 percent of all prisoners.18 Racial disparities are magnified farther when drug offenses are considered; here, nearly two-thirds of those incarcerated for drug offenses are people of color.19 These disparities are indicative of differential enforcement practices rather than any differences in criminal participation. This is particularly true of drug crimes, which account for the bulk of the increased prison population. Even though Blacks and whites use and sell drugs at comparable rates, African Americans are anywhere from 3 to 10 times more likely to be arrested, and additionally likely to receive harsher sentences than their white counterparts.20 This differential is explained by police practice such as racial profiling, public order policing, and patrol patterns, which heavily target low-income, minority neighborhoods.

The War on Drugs The so-called War on Drugs was declared by President Richard Nixon in 1971, and was formalized with the creation of the Drug Enforcement Administration in 1973.21 In reality, it was a war less on drugs per se and more on certain groups of people and places, as it has almost entirely been waged against people of color, especially Blacks, and in poor, highly segregated inner-city neighborhoods. The War on Drugs was the most significant deployment of criminal justice toward people of color in the post–Civil

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Rights era, and it continues to rely on ostensibly race-neutral policies to produce rampant racial disparity in policing and punishment. The prison explosion of the past 40 years is directly traceable to sentencing structures and policing practices that emerged. A key feature of the War on Drugs is the idea of zero tolerance for any drug infractions—possession, sale, and manufacturing—even in small amounts. The Anti–Drug Abuse Acts of 1986 and 1988 created the sentencing structure that continues to shape the scope and racial dynamic of mass incarceration.22 This legislation provided for mandatory minimum prison terms for possession and/or sale of drugs, leading to both an increase in imprisonment rates overall and a growing proportion of both state and federal prisoners who are nonviolent drug offenders. In addition to mandated prison time, the Anti–Drug Abuse Acts set dramatically different standards for crack versus powder cocaine. Five grams of crack, rather than 500 grams of powder cocaine, triggered a five-year sentence. This 100 to 1 differential was justified by claims that the crack epidemic was ravaging inner-city communities. In reality, this disparate sentencing was the source of mass incarceration for Blacks and Latinos, who comprised 90 percent of the crack arrests and sentences, as compared to whites, who represented 90 percent of the arrests for powder cocaine.23 The racial dynamic of this race-neutral penalty structure was clear early on, but it was not until 2008 that the Federal Sentencing Guidelines were revised to reflect an 18 to 1 crack versus powder sentence differential.24 The sentencing revision was not retroactive, meaning that in addition to continued racial disparity due to no one-to-one ratio, those serving prison time under the old standard have no relief. These disparities were further exacerbated in the 1990s, particularly with the passage of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.25 This federal legislation poured billions into additional prison construction and policing, expanded the federal use of the death penalty to include drug trafficking and gang offenses, barred the Pell Grants for prisoners denying them access to college education, and created a host of collateral consequences that served as barriers to reentry for those released from prison.26 Issues of policing and collateral consequences continue to play a key role in the perpetuation of the prison industrial complex. The War on Drugs popularized Broken Windows theory and public order policing, which further magnifies race and class disparity by targeting urban neighborhoods. Broken Windows theory and the subsequent proliferation of “public ordering/quality of life/order maintenance” policing emerges

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from the seminal 1982 article “Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety.”27 The theory claims that “disorder” leads to community withdrawal, loss of informal social control, and then, to more serious crime. One unattended broken window leads to more “physical disorder,” then to “social disorder” in the form of drug dealing, public drunkenness, panhandlers, the homeless, taggers, public urinators, squeegee men, and more, and finally in “criminal invasions” of neighborhoods that seem abandoned, unkempt, or out of control. Perhaps, most importantly, the theory posits too that policing can prevent this, that a rigorous/repressive approach— sometimes “zero tolerance”—to public order crimes is necessary in order to curtail serious violent and property crimes. Broken Windows has always been theoretically problematic.28 It emerges from the tradition of criminology, which searches vainly for individual and environmental causes of crime while ignoring the vast array of welldocumented structural contributors such as poverty, unemployment, lack of quality education, and racism, While there have been claims that this type of policing reduced crime, there is no evidence to support this. Instead it is clear that public order policing contributed to the explosion in mass imprisonment for drug offenses and crimes associated with poverty. The reality of public order policing has been “harassment” policing, which has targeted communities of color and the poor. The rise of Broken Windows theory and related police practices neatly coincides with the War on Drugs, the War on the Poor, extensive criminalization of poverty/homelessness, Black motherhood, appearance and the use of public space, the escalation of the War on Drugs, and attendant mass incarceration.29 It too provides a convenient “color-blind” cover for warrant-less pretextual stops of “suspicious” people (read Black), mass arrests for minor offenses, and sweeps of entire communities. “Disorder” became the new proxy for race, and public order policing maintains the literal and figurative boundaries of whiteness. While aggressive public order policing fuels the flow of bodies into the prison industrial complex, an expanding web of collateral consequences facilitates the return of those who have been released from prison. Collateral consequences or invisible punishments refer to policies and practices that hamper reentry and subsequently set up ex-prisoners for recidivism.30 These additional collateral consequences further decimate communities of color politically, economically, and socially. The current expansion of criminalization and mass incarceration is accompanied by legislation that further limits the political and economic opportunities of convicted felons and former inmates. Felony disenfranchisement laws prohibit those

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convicted of a felony from voting whether on probation, in prison, or on parole. Nationally, 58 million felons are disenfranchised; 2 percent of the nation on average cannot vote as a result of a felony conviction. Thirteen percent of African American males are disenfranchised; in 7 states, 1 in 4 are permanently barred from voting. Twenty-five states bar felons from ever holding public office, 33 states place a lifetime ban on gun ownership for convicted felons, and all states require driver’s license suspension for convicted drug felons.31 States have also increased the occupational bans for convicted felons, prohibiting them from teaching, childcare work, related work with children, or law enforcement. This is accompanied by eased access to criminal records, an increase in all employers checking criminal backgrounds, and new technology, which facilitates quick checks. Drug felons in particular are permanently barred from receiving public assistance such as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), Medicaid, food stamps, SSI, Section 8 Housing support, or federal assistance for education.32 The War on Drugs has become the primary source of both mass incarceration and racial disparity in the prison industrial complex. Mandatory minimum sentences, public order policing, and a plethora of collateral consequences serve to both fill the prisons and then replenish them. While these policies originated with the War on Drugs, they have since expanded to inform all aspects of the adult criminal justice system. And the policies and practices that shape the adult criminal justice system are not contained there. Similar practices and disparities now mar juvenile justice and, further, offer the impetus and template for the school-to-prison pipeline.

Juvenile Injustice: The Downward Drift of Punitive Policies33 Over the past 40 years, the juvenile justice system has shifted sharply from its original rehabilitative, therapeutic, and reform goals. While the initial Supreme Court rulings of the 1960s—Kent, in re Gault and Winship— sought to offer juveniles some legal protections in what was in fact a legal system, more recent changes have turned the juvenile justice system into a “second-class criminal court that provides youth with neither therapy or justice.”34 Youth of color have always been overrepresented in juvenile justice and, due to the increased element of police discretion in detaining juveniles, at rates that surpass even the racial disparities found in the adult system.

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Youth of color are overrepresented in arrest statistics, especially for both violent and property index crimes. Again, African Americans, while representing 18 percent of the youth population, account for 45 percent of all juvenile arrests.35 Youth of color, particularly African Americans, are more likely to have police contacts and police contacts that result in arrest, to be labeled as gang members and tracked via gang databases. Black youth especially experience compound and cumulative risk: they are more than two times more likely than white youth to be arrested, to be referred to juvenile court, to be formally processed and adjudicated as delinquent, and they are three times more likely than white youth to be sentenced to out-ofhome residential placement. African American and Latino youth are nationally nearly twice as likely as white youth to be referred to the adult criminal justice system. The rates vary by jurisdiction, with youth of color compromising 60 to 80 percent of all waivers in some states, and by offense type, with African American and Latino youth being more than twice as likely as whites to be referred to adult court for drug offenses.36 As with the adult criminal justice system, these racial disparities in arrest, legal processing, and incarceration cannot be attributed to any real racial differences in participation in crime. 37 They reflect instead a racial dynamic that, in interaction with other factors, increases the risk of legal encounters. Since the 1980s, legislators, in a pattern that parallels their response to adult crime and sentencing, have enacted a series of increasing tough policies with respect to juvenile offenders. These include a wide range of gang legislation and new policies that ease the transfer of juveniles into adult court via certification or related net-widening practices.38 Again, it is youth of color that are the primary targets of these measures. In the midst of the War on Drugs and media fixations on youthful violence, nearly all states began to specify offenses related to gang activity and related definitions of “gangs.”39 Most states and cities that have gang legislation use a penalty-enhancement approach, meaning that the offense is defined as legally more serious and subject to harsher sentences if it is deemed to be committed for the benefit of a gang. Legal definitions of what constitute a gang are often vague and subject to police interpretation. Much of the meaning of gang is deeply connected to racial imagery and stereotyping, so the interpretation of gang statues rest as much on the race, class, gender, and age of the person in question rather than the letter of the law.40 The sample gang legislation listed below indicates the extent to which these vague definitions may rely heavily on racial profiling in order to ascertain violations:

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Arizona 13-105. Definitions 7. “Criminal street gang” means an ongoing formal or informal association of persons whose members or associates individually or collectively engage in the commission, attempted commission, facilitation or solicitation of any felony act and who has at least one individual who is a criminal street gang member. 8. “Criminal street gang member” means an individual to whom two of the following seven criteria that indicate criminal street gang membership apply: (a) Self-proclamation. (b) Witness testimony or official statement. (c) Written or electronic correspondence. (d) Paraphernalia or photographs. (e) Tattoos. (f) Clothing or colors. (g) Any other indicia of street gang membership. California 186.22 (e)(f) Participation in Criminal Street Gang; Punishment; Felony Conviction; Sentence Enhancement; Commission on or Near School Grounds; Pattern of Criminal Activity (f) As used in this chapter, “criminal street gang” means any ongoing organization, association, or group of three or more persons, whether formal or informal, having as one of its primary activities the commission of one or more of the criminal acts enumerated in paragraphs (1) to (25), inclusive, of subdivision (e), having a common name or common identifying sign or symbol, and whose members individually or collectively engage in or have engaged in a pattern of criminal gang activity. Minnesota 609.229. Crime Committed for Benefit of a Gang Subdivision 1. Definition As used in this section, “criminal gang” means any ongoing organization, association, or group of three or more persons, whether formal or informal, that: (1) has, as one of its primary activities, the commission of one or more of the offenses listed in section 609.11, subdivision 9; (2) has a common name or common identifying sign or symbol; and (3) includes members who individually or collectively engage in or have engaged in a pattern of criminal activity41

In addition to defining gangs, most states and many cities have specified several offenses as “gang related.” Some of these offenses are serious felonies; others involve juvenile status offenses, petty misdemeanors, and infractions related to schools. A partial list of gang legislation by topic includes: Carjacking, Curfew, Drive-By Shootings, Enhanced Penalties—Sentencing,

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Expert Testimony, Gang Activity and Forfeiture, Gang Databases, Gang Participation, Gang Prevention, Gang Prosecution, Gang Recruitment, Threats, Intimidation, Gang-Related Clothing, Dress Codes, School Uniforms, Gang-Related Definitions, Gangs and Correctional Facilities, Crimes, Eviction, Graffiti and Graffiti Tools, Institutional Vandalism, Juvenile Gatherings, Loitering, Parental Responsibility, Public Nuisance, Truancy, Weapons, Gangs and Schools, and Probation and Parole.42 Beyond the creation of a cavalcade of ambiguous gang legislation, police departments across the nation also began creating gang databases. Youth of color are vastly overrepresented in these databases, which are often complied via simple street interrogations and observations regarding clothing, associates, and neighborhoods rather than arrest data.43 The creation and use of these gang databases is fraught with legal problems. According to Beres and Griffith: There are few safeguards against being falsely identified as a gang member. Lists are secret; access is denied to the public. . . . Individuals have no right to know that they have been placed on a list. Police officers are not required to get approval from a judge or magistrate before entering a name on a database. An individual may be entered on a gang database even if he has never been arrested or suspected of a crime. Once entered into a database, it seldom is possible for individuals to get their names removed. The criteria for placement on a gang list are broad. One set of guidelines, for example, provides that names should be added to the list only if two or more of the following gang criteria are met: • Professes to being a gang member. • Is deemed a gang member by a reliable source, such as a trusted informant, teacher, or parent. • Is called a gang member by an untested informant with corroboration. • Has gang graffiti on his personal property or clothing. • Is observed, by an officer, using gang hand signs. • Hangs around with gang members. • Is arrested with gang members. • Identifies his gang affiliation when brought to county jail.44

Beyond extensive criminalization of gangs and, de facto, youth of color, juvenile justice policy has also literally converged with the adult criminal justice system. Again, in the 1980s, state legislators began to facilitate the ease of transfer of juveniles directly into the adult criminal justice system.

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Today, nearly all states have substantially revised juvenile statues, easing the entry of those under 18 into the adult system.45 The most common mechanism for transferring juveniles to adult criminal court is the judicial waiver. Since the Kent decision of 1966, states have been required to formalize the process by which this transfer occurs. Most states authorize or require juvenile court judges to waive jurisdiction over individual cases involving minors, so as to allow prosecution in adult criminal courts.46 What has changed more recently is the ease of waiver, the lowering of the age at which juveniles may be refereed to adult courts in many states, and the expansion of options that allow for simultaneous juvenile and adult court jurisdiction.47 Many states now have statutes that exclude certain serious, violent, and/ or repeat offenders from the juvenile court’s jurisdiction at all. Referral to adult court is now often mandatory, giving the juvenile court no role except that of making the probable cause determination. In all, the laws of 38 states dictate adult criminal handling of some categories of juvenile offenders, either by way of statutory exclusion, mandatory waiver, or both.48 The consequences are dire as expected. Until recently, juveniles sentenced as adults, regardless of their chronological age, were subject to the same penalties available for adults. This has meant death penalty (not banned for juveniles until 2005) and life without the possibility of parole, which curtailed for lesser offenses is still de facto available in homicide cases.49 The past two decades has also seen several states both lower the age at which a juvenile can be referred to adult court and extend the scope of juvenile justice jurisdiction to later years. Twenty-three states have no lower age limit, meaning that youth as young as eight may be charged, tried, and sentenced as adults. The remaining states specify ages between 10 and 15 and many have recently lowered the age limit.50 One new development in the juvenile court system is blended sentencing, where the jurisdiction of the juvenile court is extended past age 18 and both juvenile and stayed adult criminal court sentences are imposed. More than half of all states have some form of blended sentencing as an option; often, it is accompanied by an inclusion of juvenile convictions in adult criminal history scores.51 This has the effect of widening the net and increasing the adult criminalization of juveniles who do not meet the criteria for waiver, as well as their potential sentence length. Blended sentencing is one mechanism for including juvenile offenses in adult criminal history scores, another practice that has expanded as juvenile justice becomes additionally punitive.

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Finally, the punitive climate that increasingly characterizes juvenile justice has also compromised the confidentiality of their juvenile records. Most states now have limited the confidentiality of juvenile records as well as the instances in which they are sealed or expunged. As a result, juvenile records are often available to law enforcement, school personnel, government agencies, and media. Juveniles, while already incurring harsher penalties at the time, now have records that also may follow them into adulthood, impacting opportunities for schooling, housing, employment, and more. In a review of all state practices on juvenile records, the Juvenile Law Center found: Public access to records of juvenile arrests, court proceedings and dispositions can impede successful transitions to adulthood for many youth, especially when these records remain available long after the youth’s involvement with the juvenile justice system has ended. These records can create obstacles for youth seeking employment, education, housing and other opportunities. The common belief that juvenile records are confidential because of the juvenile justice system’s historic goal of protecting children from the traditional consequences of criminal behavior is false. Many states disclose information about youth involvement with the juvenile justice system and fail to provide opportunities for sealing or expungement. Sealing refers to closing records to the public but keeping them accessible to a limited number of court or law enforcement personnel connected to a child’s case, while expungement involves the physical destruction and erasure of a juvenile record. A growing number of states no longer limit access to records or prohibit the use of juvenile adjudications in subsequent proceedings. . . . While many states have laws that limit the exposure of a juvenile record through sealing or expungement, they are ineffective if they provide access to juvenile records beyond the time of juvenile court involvement, carve out exceptions or include onerous requirements that hamper the ability of young people to take advantage of their protections.52

Consistent with the larger climate created by the War on Drugs, juvenile justice has been transformed in ways that criminalizes youth of color, increases the likelihood of harsh sentences and out-of-home placement, and often, funnels youth directly into the adult criminal justice system. This legal climate is consistent with the punitive approach taken by the adult system, and is made possible too by the media hysteria that inextricably tied youth of color to gangs, crime waves, and drug epidemics. The end result is another pathway into the school-to-prison pipeline as youth who have

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encounters with juvenile justice are more likely to face a retributive climate and potentially the possibility of adult sentencing. Youth who have encounters with juvenile justice, especially those who have been incarcerated, are less likely to return to school and more likely to be imprisoned as adults.53 Even for those youth whose cases result in community supervision, legal encounters create records that increasingly may follow youth into adulthood. Youth of color are increasingly at risk of arrest for a multitude of serious offenses as well as for adult prosecution. Critics of these policy changes charge that this is no mere coincidence.54 The age of mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex calls for the continual replenishment of the ranks of the imprisoned, and it is youth of color who are most often selected to fill that onerous role. Increasingly, this risk comes directly from school.

The School-to-Prison Pipeline: Setting Youth of Color on the Jailhouse Track The school-to-prison pipeline is a product of this punitive climate. Its emergence coincides with the rise of the prison industrial complex, and it both reflects and reinforces our heavy reliance on mass incarceration and the political and economic functions served. The very legislation that makes the pipeline possible is passed as part of other draconian War on Drugs laws. The Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994 (GFSA), the Safe Schools Act of 1994, and a 1998 amendment to the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968—the legislation that paved the way for the proliferation of zero tolerance and police in the schools—were passed during an era marked by more mandatory minimums, the emergence of three strikes and extensive anti-gang laws, punitive overhaul of juvenile justice, and the advent of broken windows policing.55 It is no coincidence that this legislation was part of the same program of “zero tolerance” that heavily targeted communities of color, albeit in colorblind terms. All of this legislation drifts downward to the schools and found immediate expression in widespread educational policy. The prevailing mood of this time was guided by media-fueled fear and the notion that punitive policy and aggressive policing could offer “safety” to communities and schools. The conflation of drugs and gangs and youthful “super-predators” guided these policy changes, so it is unsurprising that the “logic” of zero tolerance made its way to the school.56 Like the

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legislation that shaped mandatory minimums in the Drug War, zero tolerance made no distinction between serious and minor infractions, resulting in suspensions and expulsions for what was once defined as youthful misbehavior. The enforcement of zero-tolerance policies has gone far beyond curtailing guns and drugs and increasingly focuses on lesser infractions such as defiance, truancy, and dress codes. Expanded gang legislation is particularly relevant here as dress codes are preoccupied with “gangrelated” attire. The legal definitions of what constitutes a “gang” let alone “gang-related” attire are typically vague, subject to interpretation, and constitutionally questionable. With few exceptions, enforcement of these prohibitions is heavily tilted toward youth of color, a prime example of ostensibly race-neutral policy producing racialized results and one contributor to the fact that Black students are suspended and expelled at three times the rate of their white peers. Zero-tolerance policies are the educational equivalent of mandatory minimums, and police in schools become the broken windows enforcers of minor disciplinary problems. Belying the claim that police in schools will increase safety, typical cases involve tantrums, pushing other students, writing on school desks, and disobeying an officer. The criminalization of behavior that was once informally handled with the context of school becomes completed by a police presence. Increasingly, students are not just suspended or expelled but arrested at school for these infractions. Hundreds of thousands of students are arrested at school each year, accruing fines and criminal records, all within a juvenile justice system that is increasingly punitive.57 Unsurprisingly, Black and Latino students represent over 70 percent of the students arrested or referred to law enforcement at school, this despite no evidence that they break the law at school at higher rates than whites.58 While zero tolerance and policing in schools reflect the larger criminalizing climate, it simultaneously reinforces hyper-incarceration. These policies both guarantee and shape the pool of future “clients” for the prison industrial complex. The current situation of postindustrial capitalism relies heavily on “corrections” as an employment sector. As Dozinger notes:59 [I]n the criminal justice field, the raw material is prisoners[.] . . . The industry will do what it must to guarantee a steady supply. For the supply of prisoners to grow, criminal justice policies must insure a sufficient number of incarcerated Americans whether crime is rising or the incarceration is necessary.

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The school, in its function as provider of a labor force, plays a key role now in providing disposable labor as future prisoners. Whether by default or design, schools now criminalize students, push them out of school with zero-tolerance policies, push them into legal systems with arrest at school, and push them toward a pathway toward prison. Along the way, students are socialized into accepting the parameters of incarceration with metal detectors, routine stops and unannounced searches, armed patrols, and endless surveillance. The demographics of the pool are shaped too, and the heavy flow of the school-to-prison pipeline from majority Black and brown, majority poor urban schools matches the profile of those who are in prison and under other forms of correctional control. This is the meaning and purpose of the school-to-prison track.

Chapter 5

The Medical Industrial Complex: Race and the Double Standards of Diagnosis Lynchburg, Virginia, April 2015. Kayleb Moon-Robinson, an 11-year-old sixth grader at Linkhorne Middle School in Lynchburg, Virginia, faces multiple charges of arrests at school. Kayleb is diagnosed with autism, but that had little bearing on his treatment by school officials and law enforcement.1 Kayleb was originally arrested for disorderly conduct after he kicked a trash can in frustration after being reprimanded for misbehavior. A few weeks later, he was arrested again, this time for disobeying a new rule that he wait for other students to leave the classroom first. This time, the officer grabbed him, slammed him down, handcuffed him, and took him to juvenile court. There, “the officer filed a second misdemeanor disorderly conduct complaint and also submitted another charge: felony assault on a police officer.”2 Kayleb’s case drew national attention when the Center for American Progress reported it in conjunction with an investigation of school arrest practices nation-wide. Virginia schools arrest and suspend students at three times the national average and, consistent with national trends, disproportionately suspend Black students with disabilities for minor infractions. Despite a 150,000 signature petition to the court to drop the charges, Kayleb’s case is still pending. Lynchburg school officials, however, have agreed to review their policies and state officials have also committed to a review of policies and practices for police in schools.3 But for scores of students like Kayleb, whose record may be permanently marred with a felony, that relief may come too late.

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Introduction While the school-to-prison pipeline emerges in the sociopolitical context of criminalization, it is deeply connected to trends toward medicalization as well. The rise of the prison industrial complex is accompanied by the corresponding rise of the medical industrial complex. The expansion of the medical model as a key definer and controller of certain types of deviance as sickness is similarly a multi-billion-dollar industry. The medical industrial complex (sometimes referred to as the treatment industrial complex) relies heavily on the diagnosis and treatment of various conditions as sickness as opposed to crime. And, as with the prison industrial complex, the medical model of social control has also drifted into the schools. The medical industrial complex particularly expanded with regard to the treatment of substance use disorders. The ascendancy of this approach coincides with the War on Drugs. The medicalization of substance abuse created a safety value for diverting certain drug offenders away from the harsh mandatory minimum sentences associated with criminalization and toward treatment for addiction. As might be expected, the medical model reinforces a race and class dynamic, as it is overwhelmingly white middle and upper class drug users who can afford these expensive services.4 Just as the criminalizing features of the Drug War were transposed onto schools via zero tolerance and policing, medicalization has made its way there too. Several disorders that were once classified as disorders of infancy childhood and adolescence are used to medicalize children in educational settings. This is particularly the case with disorders such as attentiondeficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and intellectual disabilities and specific learning disorders. Analysis of the use of these diagnoses reveals race, class, and gender disparity. White boys, especially those in well-resourced schools, are most likely to receive less-stigmatizing diagnoses such as ADHD, and are medicated and mainstreamed. This diagnosis is often the consequence of “disruptive” behaviors that violate zero-tolerance policies, but instead of the criminalization that students of color face, medicalization is the alternative. The decision as to how to label disruptive students is shaped in great part by the perceptions of teachers and school personnel and implicit biases as to who is a “criminal” and who might benefit from treatment. This dynamic alone explains part of the extreme overrepresentation of students of color in suspension, expulsion, and arrest rates.

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Medical labels fuel the school-to-prison pipeline in other ways. Youth of color are not exempt from medicalization at school; they are just subjected to the most stigmatizing labels. Black students are overrepresented in special education classes, to be served by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), and are more likely than their white counterparts to be labeled with immutable diagnoses such as mental retardation, cognitive impairment, and developmental disabilities. 5 The interaction of disability label and race results in the greatest risk for suspension, expulsion, and arrest at school, in addition to heightened risk for restraint and seclusion.6 The medical industrial complex then contributes to the school-toprison pipeline in two distinct ways: by diverting misbehaving white students toward treatment and by labeling Black students in ways that both limits their educational opportunities and increases their risk for entry into the pipeline.

The Medical Model: Medicalization and Criminalization Unlike systems of formal social control dictated by law, the medical model defines deviance as “illness” as opposed to willful rule-breaking. The deviants here are defined as sick and in need of treatment as opposed to punishment. From its inception, the medical model has overlapped with the criminal legal system. It offers an alternative to punishment of intentional law-breakers by offering treatment for mental illness.7 It continues to offer a diversionary option for those who are defined as ill, and plays a significant role in shaping the race and class disparity that marks both the prison industrial complex and the school-to-prison pipeline. The scope and reach of the medical model of deviance have expanded in the past several decades. Increasingly, more and more behaviors are defined and controlled by medical definitions and treated as illnesses. This process has generally been defined as the medicalization of deviance, and is described by Conrad as follows: The key to medicalization is definition. That is, a problem is defined in medical terms, described using medical language, understood through the adoption of a medical framework, or “treated” with a medical intervention. While much writing, including my own, has been critical of medicalization, it is important to remember that medicalization describes a process. Thus, we can examine the medicalization of epilepsy, a disorder most people would agree is “really”

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medical, as well as we can examine the medicalization of alcoholism, ADHD, menopause, or erectile dysfunction. . . . The main point in considering medicalization is that an entity that is regarded as an illness or disease is not ipso facto a medical problem; rather, it needs to become defined as one. While the medical profession often has first call on most maladies that can be related to the body and to a large degree the psyche some active agents are necessary for most problems to become medicalized[.] . . . Although medicalization occurs primarily with deviance and “normal life events,” it cuts a wide swath through our society and encompasses broad areas of human life. Among other categories, the medicalization of deviance includes alcoholism, mental disorders, opiate addictions, eating disorders, sexual and gender difference, sexual dysfunction, learning disabilities, and child and sexual abuse. It also has spawned numerous new categories, from ADHD to PMS to PTSD to CFS. Behaviors that were once defined as immoral, sinful, or criminal have been given medical meaning, moving them from badness to sickness. Certain common life processes have been medicalized as well, including anxiety and mood, menstruation, birth control, infertility, childbirth, menopause, aging, and death.8

This model emerges and expands with the rise of psychiatry as a discipline, and all definitions of mental illness are controlled by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5). First created and published by the APA in 1952, DSM-5 enumerates the disorders and their symptoms, which should be subject to psychiatric treatment. The APA also controls recommended treatment; the earlier reliance on the public asylum and individual psychoanalysis has given way to psychotropic medications and private treatment centers for a variety of disorders, some serious and others minor. The treatment of mental illness is now a multi-billion-dollar industry, privatized and driven by the widespread use of pharmaceuticals to treat nearly every major affliction. It is a medical industrial complex. Access to this model requires insurance or sufficient wealth to accommodate psychiatrists: $30,000 stays at private treatment facilities and psychotropic medications.9 Issues of race, class, and gender have always played a role in psychiatry. There is a suborbital critique of the profession for its Eurocentric focus, the lack of access of services because of class implications, well-grounded suspicions on the part of communities of color, and implicit biases in differential diagnosis.10 These are valid concerns, and the persistence of these issues continues to shape the client pool for the medical model as well as reinforcing more punitive systems of social control.

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The tendency toward what sociologists call the medicalization of deviance escalates in the post–Civil Rights era and historically coincides with the War on Drugs. The expansion of the model was initially sparked by the addiction treatment industry for substance use disorders, and now extends far beyond.11 Despite no real differences in drug use by race, whites, particularly the middle class, have largely been exempt from the harsh legal consequences. More often than not, white drug users, if apprehended, have their deviance mitigated by the medical model of treatment. Most are diverted toward treatment in the then burgeoning addiction treatment industry for substance use disorders, or spared incarceration by diversion to Drug Courts and community alternatives.12 The rise of the medical industrial complex also marks the end of publically funded mental health services as the reliance on both psychiatric institutions and community mental health centers dissipates. This defunding of public mental health services is consistent with the general tendency toward a political shift from funding public services and toward privatization and punitive approaches.13 As a result, treatment options for the poor contract as the profit aspects of medicalization expand, and contributes to an increased criminalization of the mentally ill who are poor.14 The medical model, then, intersects with the prison industrial complex in three important ways. All of these trajectories widen the race and class gulfs found in imprisonment rates. First of all, racial disparities in Drug War incarceration may be partly explained by the availability of diversionary treatment options for whites. The medical industrial complex provides a diversionary option from drug-related prison for the white and well-off, treating their addiction rather than punishing their drug crime. This has long been the case with private treatment options that require cash payment or insurance coverage; the option to seek treatment in order to avoid legal consequences has disproportionately been available to middle and upper class whites.15 Secondly, the privatization of treatment contributes to an expanded use of treatment as punishment within a criminal justice context. Increasingly, substance treatment is mandated by the criminal justice system as a condition of probation or parole. As a result, it is often difficult to disentangle the use of treatment as part of punishment versus treatment as a diversionary option within criminal justice. But race plays a role in whether or not court-ordered treatment is used as diversion from criminal justice or as a condition of completing a criminal sentence.16 More than 2 million are enrolled in substance use treatment annually; over 70 percent of all referrals come from criminal justice.17 Racial disparities

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in access to treatment disappear when criminal records and socioeconomic status are introduced.18 In other words, Blacks are most likely to be involved in treatment programs that are court ordered as a condition of probation and parole. Unlike their white counterparts for whom medicalization is an alternative to criminalization, the participation of Blacks in substance use treatment programs is most often than not an alternative to criminal penalties but as part of a legal sentence. Finally, the medical model intersects with the prison industrial complex via the criminalization of mental illness for the poor by closing off affordable community health options. Estimates indicate that over half of all federal, state, and local jail inmates have mental health issues, and prison and jail are increasingly relied on to warehouse the mentally ill who are poor. To the extent that Blacks are wildly overrepresented in prison and jail populations, they are overrepresented too in the ranks of the mentally ill who are imprisoned.19 While white prisoners—who are nearly universally poor and unemployed at the time of committeeman offense—are the demographic that has the highest percentage of mental health diagnoses in prison, Blacks and Latinos, when diagnosed, are labeled with the most serious and stigmatized diagnoses such as schizophrenia.20 The emergence of the medical industrial complex has solidified double standards of social control according to race and class. It offers an alternative to the prison industrial complex for those who can afford it, while offering treatment to the poor and people of color only under the rubric of criminalizing punishment. This dichotomy was sharpened in the context of substance use disorders and the War on Drugs, and is a paradigmatic feature of the medical industrial complex. This pattern is reflected in the diagnosis and treatment of youth and in similar gateway effects with regard to the school-to-prison pipeline.

The Medical Industrial Complex and the Labeling of Youth at School Just as elements of the prison industrial complex are now part of educational settings, so too the reach of the medical industrial complex is felt in schools. Psychiatric labels are widely used to regulate student behavior with medication, track them into special education classes, and often push them toward the school-to-prison pipeline. The implications of these labels are also connected to profit motives regarding medication costs, and increased funding through IDEA or the production of higher test

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scores. The impact on academic success varies widely, however, and the types of labels and treatment offered are highly correlated with race and class. Expansion of the medical model was additionally furthered by an explosion in diagnoses of disruptive behavior disorders such as ADHD and other conditions that were originally classified as Disorders Usually First Evident in Infancy Childhood and Adolescence. Until the publication of DSM-5 in 2013, these disorders represented the first and largest diagnostic category, and included a broad range of conditions that varied in severity, longevity, and mutability.21 These labels also carry varying degrees of stigma. Some conditions such as Intellectual Disabilities are perceived as permanent and perpetually limiting. Diagnoses of Conduct Disorder and other disorders that fit into the broad category of Emotional Disturbance are seen as pathways to serious adult conditions such as Anti-Social Personality Disorder. Still others, particularly ADHD are viewed as manageable and treatable with the use of drugs such as Ritalin or Adderall.22 DSM-5 reorganized the categories under which these disorders now fall, and takes account of the possibility of adult diagnoses. ADHD, Intellectual Disabilities, and Communication Disorders are now termed Neurodevelopmental Disorders; these remain diagnoses primarily received as a result of evaluation in school settings. This is also the case with what are now termed Specific Learning Disorders and Disruptive, Impulse-Control, and Conduct Disorders.23 Youthful diagnoses almost always occur in the context of educational settings. Teachers are the primary source of referral for students, and the ensuing labels that they receive have profound implications for their educational pathways. These are partly shaped by the severity of the label under the legal framework that guides services in the schools.

The Legal Context of Medical Labels: Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and Section 504 The medical labeling of youth at school occurs under the legal umbrella of federal legislation that mandates the provision of services and protection of individuals with disabilities. According to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990 (IDEA), if a child has a disability that affects his or her educational performance, then the child may be eligible for federally funded special services. IDEA includes 13 categories of disabilities that are protected under the law.24 While many of these categories reference physical disabilities, students with Emotional Disturbance, Specific Learning Disability, Intellectual Disability, and Speech or Language

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Impairment are eligible for services under IDEA. These services allow for the creation of an individualized education program (IEP) and, depending on the extent of identified need, may include “appropriate special education and related services, such as speech and language services, or psychological services and vocational education; special readers, braillists, typists, and interpreters if necessary; the ability to attend a private school—at no expense to the student’s family—if the student’s educational needs cannot be met through the public school’s special education program.”25 Depending on the severity of the diagnosis, provision of these services may occur in the content of mainstream classrooms or special education programs that serve particular populations. While most IDEA placements in special education are the result of an official psychiatric diagnosis per DSM-5, it is important to note that schools may label students as well with the catch-all designator of Emotional Behavior Disorder (EBD), Emotional Disorder (ED), or Seriously Emotionally Disturbed (SED). These school designations may or may not be based on specific DSM-5 diagnoses. In either case, they are a pathway into special education programs and IDEA services.26 Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 is a civil rights law, whose main purpose is to prevent discrimination against disabled students. Section 504’s eligibility requirements are less strict than IDEA’s, so it potentially covers more children, especially those whose symptoms are less severe.27 But since Section 504 is a civil rights law, and largely serves to protect against discrimination, it does not attempt to define the specific criteria necessary for eligibility, nor does it provide guidelines for creating an IEP. IDEA, on the other hand, does both. As such, the services afforded under Section 504 aren’t as expansive as those guaranteed under IDEA nor Section 504 designations associated with additional funding for services.28 While this legislation is designed to protect students with disabilities, mislabeling or overdiagnosis can have the opposite effect. To the extent that diagnoses may be driven by funding needs, bias, or the desire to improve test scores, the services provided may not always center student needs. In addition, race, class, and gender play a significant role in the determination of both labels and services.

Race, Class, Gender, and Medicalization of Youth Youth are medically labeled and then treated in a variety of ways in schools. They may be officially diagnosed with a DSM-5 mental disorder or they may be generally labeled as emotionally disturbed by school

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officials. Depending on the source and seriousness of the diagnosis, they be medicated and mainstreamed or placed in special education classes that are supported via IDEA funding. The labels applied here carry varying degrees of stigma, and have profound implications for the future educational and potential career paths of students. Even in the context of the medical model, they are highly correlated with race, class, and gender. As might be expected, white and middle class students are diagnosed with disorders that are perceived to be less stigmatized and treatable. The opposite is the case for students of color. ADHD is a widely used diagnosis, one that is most frequently applied in schools. Students with this diagnosis are potentially covered under IDEA, and under Section 504. Most ADHD diagnoses do not result in the placement of students in special education classroom; the primary treatment is medication, with special services such as note-takers and extra testing time also common.29 ADHD is characterized by varying degrees of inattention, impulsiveness, and hyperactivity. The onset of ADHD is usually before age four, although one-third of those affected may continue to exhibit symptoms throughout adulthood.30 DSM-5 indicates that ADHD may be anywhere from three to nine times more common in males than in females. Symptoms may disrupt social interaction at home, school, and work and among peers. According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the following symptoms are common inductors of ADHD:31 Difficulties with attention: • • • • • • • • •

trouble paying attention inattention to details and makes careless mistakes easily distracted losing things such as school supplies forgetting to turn in homework trouble finishing class work and homework trouble listening trouble following multiple adult commands difficulty playing quietly

Hyperactivity: • fidgeting • inability to stay seated

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• running or climbing excessively • always “on the go” Impulsivity: • talks too much and interrupts or intrudes on others • blurts out answers • impatience

As these symptoms illustrate, the line between typical childhood behavior and disorder is thin. There has been a substantial debate as to whether the medical model is unnecessarily disordering behavior that could best be addressed through informal means. Controversy still remains as to whether or not ADHD represents an actual disease or a sociocultural construct. Debate rages too on the use of medication, especially stimulants, as the primary treatment option.32 Nonetheless, the use of ADHD as a diagnosis for school children has increased dramatically in the past decades, coincidental to the proliferation of zero-tolerance policies and highstakes testing. ADHD diagnoses have increased 40 percent over the last decade and more than 50 percent over a 25-year period, with medication use rising at a corresponding rate.33 Currently, nearly one in five high school– age boys in the United States and 15 percent of school-age children overall have received a medical diagnosis of ADHD.34 Race/ethnicity, class, and insurance coverage are key indicators of who receives an ADHD diagnosis and medication. Since ADHD is primarily treated with medication, the diagnosis requires an ability to pay for this on an ongoing basis. While ADHD was largely once a middle class phenomenon, increases in the use of diagnoses expanded with the inclusion of ADHD in IDEA and the subsequent expansion of Medicaid coverage to pay for medication. While class matters less than it once did with regard to ADHD diagnoses, race continues to be highly correlated. Study after study shows racial disparities in the diagnosis and treatment of ADHD, with the indication that teachers were most likely to expect and define ADHD as an issue for white boys. This label, whose symptoms also correlate with potential infractions of zero-tolerance policies, serves to divert disruptive white students from criminalizing penalties and offer them treatment instead. In lieu of an ADHD diagnosis, disruptive behaviors at school may also be regulated via diagnosis of Disruptive Behavior, Impulse Control, and Conduct Disorder. The two major disorders here are Oppositional Defiant

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Disorder and Conduct Disorder.35 Oppositional Defiant Disorder, like ADHD, outlines symptoms that represent minor youthful defiance and, some might argue, typical adolescent behavior. This diagnosis is most often given to white boys and serves as another option for diverting youth from the criminalizing trajectory of zero tolerance toward a therapeutic model. It offers treatment rather than punishment for rule-breaking behavior. According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry:36 In children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), there is an ongoing pattern of uncooperative, defiant, and hostile behavior toward authority figures that seriously interferes with the youngster’s day to day functioning. Symptoms of ODD may include: • • • • • • • • • •

Frequent temper tantrums Excessive arguing with adults Often questioning rules Active defiance and refusal to comply with adult requests and rules Deliberate attempts to annoy or upset people Blaming others for his or her mistakes or misbehavior Often being touchy or easily annoyed by others Frequent anger and resentment Mean and hateful talking when upset Spiteful attitude and revenge seeking

The symptoms are usually seen in multiple settings, but may be more noticeable at home or at school. One to sixteen percent of all school-age children and adolescents have ODD.

Black students, especially males, however, are more likely than their all peers to be diagnosed with DSM-5 disorders that overlap with the juvenile justice system, such as the more serious Conduct Disorder.37 Conduct Disorder is viewed as a precursor to Anti-social Personality Disorder, and its many symptoms involve law-breaking behavior. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry notes:38 Conduct disorder refers to a set of ongoing behavioral and emotional problems displayed by a child or adolescent who typically demonstrates little or no concern for the rights or needs of others. The behavior is clearly outside of what is considered normal or acceptable and is consistently troubling to others. What is most troubling is that many of these teenagers show little

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remorse, guilt or understanding of the damage and pain caused by their behavior[.] . . . The teen with a conduct disorder has moved from being disobedient and disrespectful (behaviors characteristic of oppositional defiant disorder) to violating the rights of others with aggression and illegal activity. The behaviors are repetitive and persistent and occur in multiple settings. Symptoms of conduct disorder are divided into four major categories: • Aggression to people and animals—bullying, threatening, intimidating, fighting, cruelty to people and animals, use of a weapon and theft while confronting a victim • Destruction of property—fire-setting or deliberately destroying others’ property • Lying and theft • Serious violation of rules such as running away or truancy before the age of thirteen and breaking curfew.

It is important to note that this diagnosis often does not mitigate zerotolerance policies, but is most often applied to youth in the context of suspension, expulsion, and arrest. It is often concurrently applied within the context of juvenile justice, and in parallel to the intersection of medical and criminal labels for adults. A diagnosis of Conduct Disorder doesn’t divert from the application of zero tolerance and criminalization, but, instead, accompanies it. Black and Latino/a students are far less likely than their white peers to receive an ADHD or minor disruptive behavior diagnosis; as noted, if they are medicalized in the school context at all, it is with more stigmatizing labels that focus on criminal behavior, emotional disturbances, or intellectual capacity. Most significantly, African American students are more likely than all peers to be diagnosed with learning disorders that focus on intellectual ability or pervasive emotional disorders rather than behavior that can be easily treated. While the bulk of these diagnoses are of males, this tendency holds true for Black girls as well.39 As a result, they are overrepresented in special education classes with lower expectation for academic success. DSM-5 describes intellectual disability as “deficits in adaptive functioning that result in failure to meet developmental and sociocultural standards for personal independence and social responsibility.”40 This diagnosis qualifies individuals for disability services under IDEA and most with the diagnosis are placed in special education courses. So too are those diagnosed with

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autism and specific learning disorders in reading, writing, and math. Black students in particular are overrepresented in intellectual disability and learning diagnoses, and are nearly three times more likely than their white counterparts to be labeled as such.41 This, again, without any evidence of higher prevalence of intellectual disability by race or ethnicity. In addition, Black students are overrepresented among those labeled by schools as emotionally disturbed. This designation may or not be applied in conjunction with an official DSM-5 diagnosis. These students are disproportionately male, Black, Latino, or Native American, and economically disadvantaged, and represent a substantial percentage of students who are placed in special education programs.42 Here, again Black students are nearly three times more likely to be placed in special educations programs for emotional disturbances than all other groups combined.43 As a result of this labeling, Black students are heavily overrepresented in special education programs, especially after being labeled as intellectually disabled or emotionally disturbed. The overrepresentation of Black students in special education has been described by the Association of Black Psychologists as “echoes of Jim Crow”: Special education has been a holding place for Black youth, similar to how prisons have become the holding place for Black men. As Michelle Alexander (2010) has argued that the prison industrial complex is the new Jim Crow, the over-representation of African descended children in special education serves as another manifestation of institutional racism. That is social structures become vehicles for racist or discriminatory practices. Specifically, the American public school system has such a disproportionate number of African Americans in special education that it has come to resemble the era of racial segregation where Blacks were relegated to separate but (un)equal schools. Although the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision of 1954 declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, more subtle and sophisticated forms of racial discrimination have persisted within this country’s educational system. African American students continue to be denied equal educational opportunities through their misplacement into special education. Such misplacements are a byproduct of culturally biased referral, testing, and placement processes, which perpetuate the ideology that Blacks are innately inferior and chip away at the self-concept of African American children. In essence, educational policies and practices that contribute to disproportionality in special education have created a new, 21st century manifestation of segregated schooling.44

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The result is an education that occurs in segregated settings, is geared toward behavioral management rather than academic achievement, and lowers teacher expectations. This may result too in a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts, making it difficult to escape the stigma of such labels, even when they may be misapplied. Again, from the Association of Black Psychologists: Special education classes tend to be in the most restrictive environments, which retard academic achievement, stigmatizes students, and limits access to services. . . . Special education programs often lack a pedagogy that challenges and develops students’ analytical and critical thinking skills. These children are often held to lower standards due to low teacher expectations. In many ways, these children are conditioned to underachieve—to jump no higher than the glass ceilings of their classrooms. Their educational and social development is stifled as their access to general education curriculum is limited. Low teacher expectations yield low quality instruction. Low quality instruction yields low quality education. Low quality education is detrimental to children in an era in which human capital determines personal productivity and the forward movement of a people.45

In addition, students receiving special education services under IDEA are increasingly likely to be subjected to seclusion and/or use of force measures, such as physical restraints at school. This is particularly true of Black students served by IDEA. Black students represent 19 percent of students with disabilities served by IDEA, but 36 percent of these students who are restrained at school through the use of mechanical devices such as restraint chairs.46 This is often as a prelude to or in conjunction with their suspension, expulsion or arrest, and entrance into the school-to-prison pipeline. Further, it is these students, as documented by manifold stories of police use of force at schools, who are most at risk for being harshly restrained by police. The pervasive use of the most stigmatizing labels against youth of color, especially Blacks, has profound and long-range consequences. Students with disabilities represent a quarter of students arrested and referred to law enforcement, even though they are only 12 percent of the overall student population. For students receiving IDEA and special education services, one in every four Black boys and two in every five Black girls experience suspension and/or expulsion. Medical labels and placement into special education classrooms is a key entry point into the

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school-to-prison pipeline.47 This point is made by the Association of Black Psychologists: [T]he disproportionate placement of African American (and Latino and Native American) students in special education programs reverberates throughout the lifespan: higher incarceration rates, lower college attendance, blunted employment opportunities, lower socio-economic wellbeing, more dire health statistics and lower life expectancies. . . . Given that culturally and linguistically diverse students, particularly Black children, are less likely to make academic progress and exit special education placements than their White counterparts, they are more likely to suffer from these long term consequences and become locked into a disempowering life context. With this understanding, the magnitude of the crisis becomes clear. The overrepresentation of African Americans in special education is not merely an educational dilemma. It is a civil rights violation and a major culprit in the—school to prison pipeline.48

The differential diagnoses and treatment of youth in schools is yet another occurrence of allegedly race-neutral practices that produce racialized results. The growing presence of the medical model in the schools creates a two-tiered system. Here, middle class white students are diverted from the punishing school-to-prison pipeline via therapeutic treatment options, and students of color and the poor, if medicalized at all, are given serious deficit-laden labels, which actually increases their risk of suspension, expulsion, and arrest.

Medicalization and the School-to-Prison Pipeline The expansion of the medical industrial complex into schools has direct implications, then, for the contours of the school-to-prison pipeline. The extensive labeling of students in the context of education is a double-edged sword. In the era of criminalized education, medical labels mitigate the rule-breaking behavior of some students, often exempting them from the harsh consequences of zero-tolerance policies. Simultaneously, the application of certain serious and stigmatized labels may actually increase the risk of criminalization for select students. And, consistent with social control in the post–Civil Rights era of color blindness, seemingly race-neutral diagnoses are hardly so, as race and race as it intersects with class are significantly correlated with outcomes.

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Just as the medical industrial complex serves as a safety value for the rampant criminalization and harsh penalties associated with the War on Drugs, it similarly serves this function of diverting students from the school-to-prison pipeline. As the proliferation of zero-tolerance policies in schools potentially criminalizes almost any misconduct, medical labels offer a degree of protection from punishments instead, by offering treatment for comparable behaviors. The race, class, and gender dynamic of who is criminalized and who is medicalized at school similarly parallels that of the adult system and the Drug War. This is particularly the case with the extensive use of the ADHD diagnosis for white middle/upper class boys. Despite mounting concern about overdiagnosis and overmedication of ADHD, this medical label is arguably preferable to suspension/expulsion for comparable disruptive behaviors.49 This diagnosis serves as a barrier to the criminalization experienced by students of color at school, who are instead suspended, expelled, and/or arrested at school at rates that surpass that of all peers.50 A recent study verifies this double standard of social control. The study examined more than 60,000 schools in 6,000 school districts using data from the U.S. Department of Education Civil Rights Data Collection and National Center for Education Statistics.51 Schools and districts with high percentages of Black students had the highest rates of suspension, expulsion, and arrest. This was further compounded by high rates of socioeconomic disadvantage. Disadvantaged districts are defined as low high school graduation rates, high unemployment, more single-motherheaded households, low median income, and a high percentage of adults employed in low-paid sales and retail jobs. Conversely, whiter and welloff schools and districts had the lowest rates of criminalization and the highest rates of Section 504 use, indicating that medicalization, especially via ADHD diagnoses, serves as an alternative to criminalization via the heavy enforcement of zero-tolerance policies.52 Further, the study revealed that disadvantaged schools and districts with high percentages of Black students had low rates of Section 504 use but higher rates of IDEA students. This is consistent with the tendency to label Black students as intellectually disabled or emotionally disturbed, labels that often results in separate special education courses funded by IDEA.53 In this instance, medicalization does not offer a diversion from the criminalizing tendencies of zero tolerance, but rather increases the risk. Black students with disability labels are the most likely of any demographic to face suspension, explosion, and arrest at school, and further to be subject to segregation, isolation, and restraint in the school setting.

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A variety of other studies suggest that both medicalization and criminalization represent responses to high-stakes testing and the related connection to scare school resources. Increases in both ADHD diagnoses and medication further correlate with the pressure for test score accountability that translates into funding.54 To that point, states with high rates of ADHD diagnoses correlate closely with states with laws that penalize schools when students fail.55 This diagnosis offers assistance to students that may boost overall score. Suspension and/or expulsion is another method of “improving” test scores by removing the students who might drag the average down. Both approaches can improve school scores, but while medicalization operates under the premise that students can improve, criminalization considers students expendable. Who to assist and who to push toward the school-to-prison pipeline? Race and class matter here, and although medical labels and zero-tolerance policies are facially race neutral, racialized results are achieved via the disparate application of labels. Students act out at school. Some students are diagnosed via DSM-5 and deemed treatable; others are criminalized, and the decisions are driven not by behavior, but by the implicit biases of medical professionals, teachers, and school personnel. These double standards of control are consistent with the larger context of for-profit medicalization and criminalization in the post–Civil Rights era of color blindness. Disproportionately, whites are medicalized, while Blacks and other people of color criminalized, all under the guise of raceneutral legal, social, and educational policies. So while white deviance is medicated in the hopes that this will further academic success, students of color are funneled out of schools via a very deliberate pipeline, and sent on a pathway toward prison.

PART 3 School-to-Prison Pipeline: Punitive Policies and Transformative Alternatives

Chapter 6

Criminalized Education: Schoolhouse as Jailhouse Austin, Texas, November 2013. “Noe Nin˜o de Rivera spent nearly two months in a medically induced coma after a Texas school resource officer shocked him with a Taser in November 2013. Nin˜o de Rivera, who was 17 at the time, had been trying to break up a fight between other students, his attorney said, though the officer claimed he had been trying to diffuse the violence and the teen interfered. The shock from the Taser knocked Nin˜o de Rivera to the ground. He hit his head and sustained a severe brain injury. The incident changed his life and deeply affected his family members.”1 In May 2014, a grand jury refused to indict the two officers involved in the tasing, citing lack of evidence that excessive force was used. A federal investigation by the Department of Justice reached a similar result. The Rivera family sued Bastrop County, where Deer Creek High School is located, and reached an outof-court settlement. The settlement was for $775,000, less than the medical expenses that Rivera has already incurred. The school admitted no wrong-doing.2 Rivera was one of an unknown number of students who are tased and subjected to other “nonlethal” uses of force at schools across the nation. Widespread variation exists at the state level too, as policies and practices are largely district-driven. Despite the growing number of officers in schools, there is no national policy on use of force protocols in the schools nor are national data maintained on the prevalence of these incidents.3

Introduction The school-to-prison pipeline is made possible by a larger sociopolitical climate of public education: double segregation, dwindling resources and high-stakes testing, extensive industrialized profit-driven systems of social control, and racialized results in an era of ostensible color blindness. This landscape shapes the contours of the pipeline and calls it into being,

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but the immediate push of youth toward prison is made possible by the proliferation of zero-tolerance policies and police in the schools. The criminalization of school misbehavior is the result of policies that purport to increase “safety” but instead magnify risk for many youth, particularly those in urban schools where the impact of a culture of punishment and policing is most profound. Minor misconduct is criminalized, resulting in suspension, expulsion, and often arrest for the youth involved. And the youth who are directly and indirectly pushed toward the pipeline are overwhelming students of color, particularly Black; children who are poor in under-resourced schools; and those who are labeled as having a disability. While males are the majority of those caught up in this dynamic, increasingly, girls of color are at comparable risk. The intolerance of minor, typical misbehavior starts as early as preschool, with these students subjected to expulsion and arrest early on, in what is a double denial of the right to education and the right to childhood.4 The segregated warehousing of youth of color in poverty schools that resemble prisons more than places of learning raises legal questions too. The presence of police and all the accoutrements of criminalizing control results in the routinization of surveillance without consent, search without probable cause, use of force in nonthreatening situations, and arrest for activities that are dubiously defined as crime. The result is the socialization of children into a culture of excessive control and the unwarranted sweep of youth into juvenile and/or adult legal systems with no regard for their legal rights. The criminalizing of education via zero-tolerance policies and policing has turned certain schools into pathways toward prison while simultaneously failing to make schools safer.5 Indeed, it can be argued that such policies make schools significantly less safe for many students as they are deemed disposable fodder and sacrificed for the prison industrial complex. Students are pushed out by suspension, expulsion, and arrest and sent on a spiral toward further and deeper involvement with the criminal legal system. They accumulate records that may follow them into adulthood, a decreased chance of school completion with each additional suspension, and escalated risk of future incarceration.

Criminalizing Misconduct: Zero Tolerance and Policing at School6 The policies and practices that immediately impel the school-to-prison pipeline are a direct reflection of these shifts in the political economy, divestment in social programming, and education and reinvestment in

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policing, prisons, and corrections. Criminalized education is a product of these larger social trends toward mass incarceration, most directly associated with the War on Drugs.7 This punishing climate was fueled by media hysteria over gangs, drugs, and youth violence that relied too on a conflation of people of color with crime. The result was a series of federal, state, and local sentencing revisions that mandated minimum prison terms for nonviolent offenses, introduced police practices that aggressively focused on low-level offenses, and produced changes in the juvenile justice system that abandoned rehabilitation in favor of punitive approaches. As a result, the United States experienced a dramatic increase in imprisonment and expansion of the correctional apparatus, and now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world.8 The legislation that created zero-tolerance policies and an escalated police presence in schools—the Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994 (GFSA), the Safe Schools Act of 1994, and related amendments—is enacted during the peak of years of criminal justice expansion and, like all related legislation of the time, were promoted with the promise of enhanced public safety. The GFSA in particular tied school funding to a demonstrated “zero tolerance” approach to weapons at school and mandated a one-year expulsion for this offense. While it was politically impossible to argue with the logic of the original GFSA, its evolution into a broad range of criminalized school misconduct is at the epicenter of the school-to-prison pipeline.9 As states and school districts enacted the GFSA, zero-tolerance policies were expanded to include not only all sorts of “weapons” but also alcohol/drugs, threatening behavior, fighting on school premises, and minor “misconduct” such as tardiness, “defiance”/insubordination, and disorderly conduct.10 These policies pervade all levels of K–12 education and have increasingly been adopted by preschool programs as well as privatized charters.11 Although districts vary widely, most do not distinguish between serious and minor misconduct, and as a result, increasing numbers of children are labeled, suspended, and/or expelled for what was once considered to be misbehavior that could easily be handled within the schools. Ironically, national data reveal that, despite the initial emphasis on guns and other weapons, only 5 percent of serious disciplinary actions nationally in recent years involve possession of a weapon. In contrast, the vast majority of suspensions and expulsions are for minor infractions, with insubordination accounting for 43 percent of expulsions, and out-ofschool suspensions lasting a week or longer.12 Typical cases of suspension and expulsion include:

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• A 17-year-old junior shot a paper clip with a rubber band at a classmate, missed, and broke the skin of a cafeteria worker. The student was expelled from school. • A nine-year old on the way to school found a manicure kit with a one-inch knife. The student was suspended for one day. • Two 10-year-old boys from Arlington, Virginia, were suspended for three days for putting soapy water in a teacher’s drink. The boys were charged with a felony that carried a maximum sentence of 20 years, and were formally processed through the juvenile justice system before the case was dismissed months later. • An eight-year-old was suspended from her third-grade class for two days for bringing a pair of cuticle scissors to open the wrapper on her school breakfast. • In Palm Beach, Florida, a 14-year-old disabled student was referred to the principal’s office for allegedly stealing $2 from another student. The principal referred the child to the police, where he was charged with strong-armed robbery and held for six weeks in an adult jail for this, his first arrest. When the local media criticized the prosecutor’s decision to file adult felony charges, he responded, “depicting this forcible felony, this strong-arm robbery, in terms as though it were no more than a $2 shoplifting fosters and promotes violence in our schools.” Charges were dropped by the prosecution when a 60 Minutes II crew showed up at the boy’s hearing. • A Pennsylvania kindergartener tells her friends she’s going to shoot them with a Hello Kitty toy that makes soap bubbles. The kindergartener was initially suspended for two days, and the incident was reclassified as a “threat to harm others.” • In Denton County, Texas, a 13-year-old was asked to write a “scary” Halloween story for a class assignment. When the child wrote a story that talked about shooting up a school, he both received a passing grade by his teacher and was referred to the school principal’s office. The school officials called the police, and the child spent six days in jail before the courts confirmed that no crime had been committed. • In Massachusetts, a five-year-old boy attending an after-school program makes a gun out of Legos, points it at other students, and mimics the sound of gunfire. He was expelled.13

Removing students from schools for these sorts of violations does not make schools “safer.” A variety of data sources indicate that youth violence in general is at the lowest rate in decades and school violence in particular, while always relatively rare, has held at a low and steady rate since 1985.14 Research further shows no correlation between zero-tolerance policies,

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high rates of suspension/expulsion, and improvement in school discipline and climate. In fact, some evidence suggests that harsh disciplinary climates may actually contribute to continued disruption as schools fail to develop protocols designed to enhance positive behavioral changes.15 Evidence also shows that continued reliance on suspension or expulsion as a means of classroom and climate management also erodes trust between students and teachers. Schools are not safer because of zero tolerance, and in fact segments of the student body are put at increased risk by the proliferation of these policies. While turning schools into “secure zero tolerance environments” lowers morale and makes learning more difficult for all students, schools that have a high percentage of minority and lowincome students bear the brunt.16 In a review of the available literature on zero-tolerance policies, the American Psychological Association reached this conclusion: Although it seems intuitive that removing disruptive students from school will make schools better places for those students who remain, or that severe punishment will improve the behavior of the punished student or of those who witness that punishment, the available evidence consistently flies in the face of these beliefs. Zero tolerance has not been shown to improve school climate or school safety. Its application in suspension and expulsion has not proven an effective means of improving student behavior. It has not resolved, and indeed may have exacerbated, minority overrepresentation in school punishments. Zero tolerance policies as applied appear to run counter to our best knowledge of child development. By changing the relationship between education and juvenile justice, zero tolerance may shift the locus of discipline from relatively inexpensive actions in the school setting to the highly costly processes of arrest and incarceration. In so doing, zero tolerance policies have created unintended consequences for students, families, and communities.17

The primary impact of zero-tolerance policies is a dramatic increase in suspensions and expulsions. More than 3.4 million students are suspended each year (with more than 1.5 million suspended at least twice) and over 130,000 expelled.18 This number largely reflects K–12 schools, with the majority of suspensions/expulsions occurring in the middle and high schools years, but recent data now include students in pre-K programs, where 6 percent of students have been expelled.19 Suspension/expulsion rates have nearly doubled since 1974, escalating in the mid-1990s as zero-tolerance policies began to be widely adopted.20 Suspension and

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expulsion rates increased most dramatically immediately following the passage of the No Child Left Behind legislation in 2001. The mandated attention related to testing that was tied to school funding added pressure to push-out low-performing students.21 As might be expected, the highest rates of suspension occur in large districts that have a substantial number of schools that are doubly segregated by race and class, that is, majority students of color and poor. While suspension, expulsion, and push-out have long been described as indirect contributors to the school-to-prison pipeline, the increased police presence at schools means more students are at risk of being arrested at school and direct funneling into legal systems. The idea of police in the schools (sometimes referred to as Security Resource Officers, or SROs) dates back to the 1950s as part of an effort to connect police to community contexts. Until recently, however, the practice was rare with only 1 percent of schools reporting a police presence in 1975.22 The practice is now routine; in fact, SROs represent the fastest growing sector in police work.23 This is made possible by legislation that merged in the same era as zero tolerance. The Safe Schools Act of 1994 and a 1998 amendment to the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 provided funding for in-school police forces or SROs. 24 This was further buttressed in 1999, as the U.S. Department of Justice “COPS in Schools” grant program dramatically increased the use of SROs. The COPS in School program was funded in part as a response to the highly publicized Columbine shootings and included an expansion of multiple security measures including more police, metal detectors, security cameras, increased locker and person searches, canine units, widespread availability and police officer use of nonlethal weapons such as Tasers and pepper sprays, and in some cases, available SWAT teams.25 This, combined with the prevalence of zerotolerance policies, brought the practice of broken windows policing, that is, the heavy targeting of low-level offenses, from the streets into the schools. As Kathleen Nolan observes, the result is a further blurring of the schools and the streets: Although a variety of policies and practices were part of the culture of control . . . the most central was the systematic use of order-maintenancestyle policing. This included law-enforcement officials’ patrolling of the hallways, the use of criminal-procedural-level strategies, and the pervasive threats of summonses and arrest, which together led to three essential consequences. First, the heavy policing of students on a daily basis and an

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official policy of police intervention for minor school infractions led to the criminalization of misbehavior. In fact, frequently the police intervention itself triggered the behavior that was ultimately considered criminal. Second, disciplinary incidents that could have been considered violations of the law but had once been handled internally by educators, such as fighting, came to be defined as serious crimes and were often handled through police intervention, summonses, and the arrests of students. Third, as school discipline merged with an ideology of street policing, the boundaries between onceseparate domains—the school, the street, and institutions of the criminaljustice system—became blurred.26

Although enhanced security measures were largely inspired by the school shootings in predominately white suburban schools, they have been most readily adopted and enforced in urban schools. While almost half of the nation’s public schools have some degree of policing, nearly 70 percent of under-resourced, highly segregated urban schools report a police presence.27 New York City schools, for example, employ over 5,000 school safety agents and nearly 200 armed police officers, effectively making the school district the fifth largest police district in the country.28 In addition to differences in the volume of police/security between suburban and urban schools, there is a qualitative difference too in the purposes of police. In suburban schools, there is the sense that cameras are looking out and that police are there to protect students form external threats. The opposite is the case in urban schools that are majority Black, brown, and poor; here students themselves are the perceived threat and target of broken windows policing, surveillance use of force, and arrest.29 Police in schools easily translates into more arrests, and these arrests are usually not for serious criminal violations. Studies reveal that a police presence significantly increases both arrests and the criminalization of minor misconduct; one three-year study of numerous schools in the same district, for example, found that the schools with police had nearly five times the number of arrests for disorderly conduct as schools without a police presence.30 Each year, hundreds of thousands are ticketed and/or arrested at school for minor infraction, this at a time when juvenile justice is increasingly punitive and legalistic. Research indicates that as many as two-thirds may be for “offenses” such as talking back to teachers, truancy, or disorderly conduct.31 Many of these arrests are also accompanied by the handcuffing of very young children and some use of force, including the use of Tasers, pepper spray, and other “nonlethal” weapons. National data regarding the use of chemical spray and electroshock weapons in schools are hard to come by,

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and state-level information on the subject is inconsistent.32 Consider these typical cases as well: • A five-year-old boy in Queens, New York, was arrested, handcuffed, and taken to a psychiatric hospital for having a tantrum and knocking papers off the principal’s desk. • In St. Petersburg, Florida, a five-year-old girl was handcuffed, arrested, and taken into custody for having a tantrum and disrupting a classroom. • Two 5-year-olds in Kentucky, both diagnosed with severe ADHD, were handcuffed by a school police officer for disruptive behavior. Both were so small that the handcuffs had to be placed around their biceps as opposed to their wrists. • An 11-year-old girl in Orlando, Florida, was tasered by a police officer, arrested, and faces charges of battery on a security resource officer, disrupting a school function and resisting with violence. She had pushed another student. • A 13-year old in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was arrested at a middle school for burping in gym class. The tension between him and school officials led to several more run-ins, she said, including a strip search after he was accused of selling Marijuana when school officials questioned why he had $200 in cash. • An honors student in Houston, Texas, was forced to spend a night in jail when she missed class to go to work to support her family. • A 13-year-old from New York was handcuffed and removed from school for writing the word “okay” on her school desk. • In Ponchatoula, Louisiana, a 12-year-old who had been diagnosed with a hyperactive disorder warned the kids in the lunch line not to eat all the potatoes, or “I’m going to get you.” The student, turned in by the lunch monitor, was suspended for two days. He was then referred to police by the principal, and the police charged the boy with making “terroristic threats.” He was incarcerated for two weeks while awaiting trial.33

The criminalization of education raises serious questions about the ethics and efficacy of mass suspensions, expulsions, and arrests in the context of what is supposed to be educational opportunity. Students, who are expecting an educational environment, are increasingly thrust into a quasi-correctional morass where legal consequences are brought to bear without clear legal notice. Zero-tolerance policies and police in the schools raise a myriad of legal issues related to statutory vagueness, inconsistent application, and lack of due process for searches/seizures and arrests that occur on school property.34 These policies present clear constitutional questions with regard to both definition and enforcement.

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Zero-tolerance mandates have come under attack for both statutory vagueness and failure to allow local school administrators discretion in determining application of these policies. Many state laws fail to clearly distinguish between serious and trivial policy violations. For example, many state laws do not define “dangerous weapon,” but then require expulsion under the federal GFSA. It is this lack of clarity that has allowed for expulsion of students with art scissors and nail clippers. Similar vagueness pervades other aspects of zero tolerance, including the failure to define “dangerous drugs” and threatening behavior.35 Statutory vagueness makes it impossible for students to know exactly what is being prohibited, and lack of clearly defined school rules and procedures allows officials tremendous discretion to suspend and expel students for minor infractions. This vagueness plagues due process expectations as well. Again, many states have no stated requirements or clearly published set of expectations for students and parents. Not only is there no clarity as to exactly what is prohibited, there are also no identified procedure that enumerates students’ rights, procedural expectations, or processes to allow for appeal or reinstatement. This is clear violation of even the rudimentary due process rights accorded to students under the Supreme Court decision of Goss v. Lopez (419 U.S. 565 1975), which held that students may not be suspended without a hearing.36 Under many state laws, students may currently be suspended and/or expelled without hearings or, in fact, without any written policy guidelines as to recourse, appeal, or request for reinstatement. The due process concerns for students are magnified by the shrinking boundaries between school and legal systems. The requirement that school official report certain infractions to law enforcement and the increased presence of police at schools may lead to arrest without the due process protections that students may expect outside school.37 Evidence used to legally incriminate students may be obtained in violation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendment prohibitions against unreasonable search/seizure and self-incrimination; student expectations of schools are different than their expectations of police encounters on the street. And zero-tolerance policies have led to increased student concerns over perceived rights violations at school, with African American students the most likely of any group to report discrimination in disciplinary procedures.38 This result is unsurprising, given that Black and Latino students represent over 70 percent of the students arrested or referred to law enforcement at school.39 In the past decade, a growing number of legal challenges have been raised to zero-tolerance policies and police practices in schools. The bulk

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of their suits involves policies related to drugs and weapons and raise questions regarding vagueness, interrogations in lieu of Miranda, intrusive searches and seizures, and unreasonable use of force. The vast majority of these cases are brought by students from wealthier, majority white schools.40 One such case recently made it to the U.S. Supreme Court. In Safford Unified School District #1 et al. v. Redding, the court ruled that a strip search of a 13-year-old Savanah Redding (who was accused of bringing prescriptive ibuprofen to school) was, in fact, unreasonable. The decision, which barred some school strip searches for drugs, did not offer schools much guidance or students much hope for Fourth Amendment protection. The narrow ruling upheld the school’s right to search Redding’s backpack and outer garments, and were told only to take account of the extent of the danger of the contraband in question and whether there is good reason to think it is hidden in an intimate place.41 In recent years, the courts have also had to grapple with a number of cases that address police use of force in schools. These cases have addressed the use of handcuffs on preschool and elementary school children, the tasering of students, excessive restraints, and the use of chemical agents such as pepper spray. The rulings have largely been mixed with large regional variation in result. Recently, a federal judge ruled that Birmingham, Alabama’s, use of pepper spray in schools was unconstitutional. The ruling came in a lawsuit filed in 2010 by the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of eight high school students, all of whom had been pepper-sprayed by school resource officers.42 In the case of all eight students, officers used the chemical Freeze þP pepper spray, described by its manufacturer as “the most intense incapacitating agent available today.”43 Seven of the eight cases involved minor misconduct. The victory in Birmingham, however, does not translate to other school districts, and attorneys for the district furthered an argument all too common in schools across the nation: officers have greater latitude to use force against students than against the general public because of the need to maintain a safe environment at school.44 This pervasive attitude and the fact that legal recourse is disproportionately available to white middle class suburban students offers slim hope for more extensive legal relief through the courts. For the foreseeable future, then, students who are the most at risk of being pushed out of school and into the prison pipeline can expect few legal protections or due process guarantees. Beyond the increased suspension/expulsion/arrest rates and constitutional dilemmas presented by criminalized education lies the issue of racial

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discrimination. The application of the supposedly color-blind zerotolerance policies and police practices is racially biased. These practices disproportionately target students of color, the poor, and students who have IDEA designations, making the school-to-prison pipeline a major civil rights issue in the post–Civil Rights era of color-blind racism.

Disparate Impact: Race, Class, Gender, Age, and Ability While the school-to-prison pipeline is associated with multiple injustices, racial discrimination is at the center. Suspensions, expulsions, and arrests at school are not equally distributed, but targeted. Criminalized education disproportionately impacts youth of color, especially African Americans, the poor, and students with disabilities who are suspended, expelled, and arrested at the highest rates, despite comparable rates of infraction across demographic groups. Differential social control strategies as in medicalization versus criminalization, not behavioral differences, account for the disparities. 45 The disparities are magnified at the intersections of these variables and in conjunction with geography, as the most punitive districts are those that are majority students of color and majority poor. The U.S. Department of Education, Civil Rights Division, documents the racialized impact of these policies. Race is the most significant variable in suspension, expulsion, and arrest at school, and the effects are magnified in interaction with gender and disability. Males account for more than two-thirds of all suspension and almost 75 percent of all expulsions. Black, Latino, and, where counted, American Indian students are overrepresented relative to their enrollment percentages in suspension, expulsion, and arrest statistics and at rates that far surpass that of their white and Asian American peers.46 Black students, however, are the most significantly overrepresented in all disciplinary categories. Students with disabilities, who are heavily overrepresented by Black students, are at twice the risk for suspension/expulsion as their non-IDEA peers; one in four Black males with a disability is suspended/expelled.47 In addition, these students are most likely to face seclusion and physical restraint at school.48 These patterns persist across grade level, remaining consistent from preschool through grade 12. They persist too across school districts, and despite wide variation between high and low rates of suspension, expulsion, and arrest, Black students and students with disabilities consistently are removed from school at higher rates than their peers.

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The most recent data indicate the racial gap is widening as nationally Black students are three and a half times more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white peers who are much more likely to be diverted from punishment via de-stigmatized medical labels.49 In some districts, Black students are more than six times more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white peers. One in five Black boys and more than 1 in 10 Black girls received an out-of-school suspension, with the suspension and expulsion rates for Black girls surpassing that of boys of other races.50 These trends start early, as preschools now play a role in suspensions and expulsions. Black children represent 18 percent of preschool enrollment, but 42 percent of the preschool children suspended once and 48 percent of the preschool children suspended more than once.51 The racial gap continues throughout elementary, middle, and high school. Black students made up only 18 percent of students, but they accounted for 35 percent of those suspended once, 46 percent of those suspended more than once, and 39 percent of all expulsions. Black students also account for 42 percent of all referrals to law enforcement and 35 percent of those actually arrested at school.52 Latinos are also slightly overrepresented in these statistics relative to their percentage of the school populations, and these numbers, in combination with those of Black students, result in a majority of punitive school discipline cases. In districts that reported expulsions under zero-tolerance policies, Black and Latino students represent 45 percent of the student body, but 56 percent of those expelled under such policies.53 In addition, Black and Latino students together represent over 70 percent of the students arrested or referred to law enforcement at school.54 Black males are more likely than any other demographic to be harshly punished, with Black males with disabilities representing the segment of students most at risk for suspension, expulsion, restraint at school, and arrest. While less researched, the suspension, expulsion, and arrest rates for Black girls are also stunningly high, and often surpass the rates for their male peers in other racial groups. Black female students with disability labels are second only to the rates for Black males.55 The high rates of harsh discipline for Black males is largely understood via the extensive literature on criminalizing stereotypes of Black masculinity and racial threat.56 The situation with Black girls, however, may best be analyzed in light of white middle class notions of femininity and the extent to which Black girls are seen to be in defiance of these norms.57 Monique W. Morris observes:

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While the behaviors for which Black males are subject to punitive schoolbased responses tend to be associated with perceived threats to public safety (e.g. fighting, weapons, perceived hostility, etc.), the behaviors for which Black females routinely experience disciplinary response are related to their nonconformity with notions of white-middle class femininity, for example, by their dress, their profanity, or by having tantrums in the classroom . . . it can and should be asked whether the racial threat is applicable for Black females in other, less visible cases, as it is for so many Black males; and whether it manifests as a unique response to the implicit notions about Black femininity that undermine equal treatment in the classroom and beyond.58

Indeed, Black girls not only face higher rates of suspension and expulsion than nearly all other groups but are also subject to harsh disciplinary treatment and arrest at exceedingly young ages. Some of the most egregious suspension stories to capture national attention have involved the handcuffing and arrest of pre-K and elementary school Black girls for what is usually considered typical childlike behaviors. This tendency toward harsh treatment continues through the school years and often includes not only arrest but also use of force measures such as Tasers and pepper spray that are most often reserved for males. The overrepresentation of Black girls in all these statistics reveals that controlling Blackness is at the heart of zero-tolerance and policing policies in the schools. Despite the proliferation of these policies that immediately impel the school-to-prison pipeline, they are not meant for everyone. The criminalization of education is felt most heavily in urban schools that are doubly segregated and disadvantaged by both race and class, and against vulnerable populations that are deemed socially disposable. Conversely, disruptive white students, especially those in middle class and affluent suburban schools, are likely to be diverted from criminalization via the application of medical labels.59 The differential enforcement of these rules against Black children in the harshest possible ways shapes the pool of students pushed out of the schools and toward the prison in multiple ways, by default or design

Pathways to the Pipeline: Push-Out, Drop-Out, and Entry into Legal Systems Criminalized education is ultimately denial of education. Suspensions, expulsions, and arrests at school have multiple long-term negative consequences for the students most heavily subjected to these policies. And despite

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their facial race neutrality, the enforcement of these policies are anything but neutrality; they are marred by dramatic racial disparity that targets Black youth in particular. Beyond their immediate impact, the effects of these policies can be seen in future educational and legal outcomes. This racial overrepresentation then manifests itself in higher drop-out rates for students of color, longer rates of educational attainment, and the racialized dynamic of both the juvenile and adult legal systems.60 While racial gaps in graduation rates have declined in recent years, Black and Latino/as still are far behind their white peers in timely graduation; nationally, only 52 percent of Black males and 58 percent of Latino males graduate from high school in four years, while 78 percent of white, non-Latino males graduate in four years.61 The perpetual push-out associated with zero-tolerance polices plays a major role here and is the most significant factor in indirectly feeding the school-to-prison pipeline. Suspension and expulsion are predictive of being held behind from grade-level progression and also drop-out rates. Pushing students out of school via zero-tolerance policies leads to increased likelihood of them dropping out and also decreases their likelihood of employment and meaningful economic opportunity; all of these factors are highly correlated with an increased chance of future incarceration. The negative consequences are clear: Some of the most rigorous research conducted on the subject of zero tolerance shows that out-of-school suspension can severely disrupt a student’s academic progress in ways that have lasting negative consequences. For similar students attending similar schools, a single suspension or expulsion doubles the risk that a student will repeat a grade. Being retained a grade, especially while in middle or high school, is one of the strongest predictors of dropping out. In one national longitudinal study, youth with a prior suspension were 68 percent more likely to drop out of school. . . . The long-term effects of failing to complete high school are well documented. Individuals without a high school education have much less earning power and are more likely to be unemployed[.] . . . [M]edian earnings among workers nationally was $815 per week, while those without a high school degree earned just $471 per week. And unemployment rates were roughly double: 6.8 percent nationally and 12.4 percent among people who had not completed high school.62

The increased police presence at school provides a direct pathway into the pipeline as students are increasingly referred to police or arrested at

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school, often for minor misbehavior. These arrests come with long-range consequences that include fines, probation, possible detention, and accrued criminal records, which in the context of a now punitive juvenile justice system may follow youth into adulthood. The criminalization of youthful misbehavior at school may attenuate future opportunity as these records may result in bars to obtaining driver’s licenses, housing, and employment, or the ability enlistment in the military or enrollment in college.63 For youth who are placed in detention, there is an additional risk factor for future incarceration. Recent research indicates that juvenile incarceration decreases the chances of high school graduation by as much as 39 percentage points and increases the chances of incarceration as an adult by as much as 41 percentage points, as compared to the average public school student in the same area.64 The notion that school is a conduit, not to opportunity but to prison, is disturbing enough, but an intolerable one given the racial dynamics of criminalized education. Zero tolerance and a police/security presence at school are ostensibly race-neutral policies designed to insure school safety, but, like much policy in the post–Civil Rights era of color blindness, they mask racist impact, and perhaps, intent. While middle class and white suburban districts use police as protection and medical labels as diversion, the pipeline flows from schools that are doubly segregated as majority poor and majority students of color. Here students of color, especially those who are Black, are heavily policed and punished, denied both childhood and future opportunity. They are relegated to schools that have inadequate funding for teachers or educational materials, but limitless monies for carceral state-of-the-art policing; they are encouraged to explore, creatively engage in, and plan for a bright, productive future. These students are instead prepared, as early as preschool, for control and surveillance, handcuffs and pepper sprays, restraint, isolation, denial of rights, and detention. In a late capitalist postindustrial economy that has turned to a prison industrial complex as both repository for disposable surplus labor and employment sector for a declining middle class, these youth are being prepared for their future roles as prisoners.65 The selection process is not based on merit or potential or actual participation in rule-breaking behavior, but instead on race, class, and geography, drawing from a demographic pool that exactly mirrors that of current prison population. In this regard, the school-to-prison pipeline and the prison industrial complex it is designed to feed represent the greatest possible denial of civil rights.

Chapter 7

Education Not Incarceration: Ending the School-to-Prison Pipeline Meridian, Mississippi, 2012–2013. “Cedrico Green can’t exactly remember how many times he went back and forth to juvenile. When asked to venture a guess he says, ‘Maybe 30.’ He was put on probation by a youth court judge for getting into a fight when he was in eighth grade. Thereafter, any of Green’s school-based infractions, from being a few minutes late for class to breaking the school dress code by wearing the wrong color socks, counted as violations of his probation and led to his immediate suspension and incarceration in the local juvenile detention center. . . . All that back and forth out of school and in juvenile took a real toll on Green’s education, and he was held back from the eighth grade. But Green wasn’t alone.”1 The Department of Justice began investigating evidence of a pervasive school-to-prison pipeline in Meridian in 2011 and released their findings in August 2012. In their press release the DOJ reported: The Justice Department released a letter of findings today determining that the Lauderdale County Youth Court, the Meridian Police Department (MPD), and the Mississippi Division of Youth Services (DYS) are violating the constitutional rights of juveniles in Meridian, Miss. The department’s investigation found reasonable cause to believe that these agencies have violated the constitutional due process rights of children in the city of Meridian and the county of Lauderdale under the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution[.] . . . The department’s investigation showed that the agencies have helped to operate a school-to-prison pipeline whereby children arrested in local schools become entangled in a cycle of incarceration without substantive and procedural protections required by the U.S. Constitution. The department’s findings show that children in Lauderdale County have been routinely and

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repeatedly incarcerated for allegedly committing school disciplinary infractions and are punished disproportionately, without constitutionally required procedural safeguards. Children have also been arrested at school for offenses as minor as defiance. Furthermore, children on probation are routinely arrested and incarcerated for allegedly violating their probation by committing minor school infractions, such as dress code violations, which result in suspensions. The department’s investigation showed that students most affected by this system are African-American children and children with disabilities.

In its investigation, the Justice Department found a pattern or practice of unconstitutional conduct in several areas, including: • Failure by MPD to adequately assess probable cause that an unlawful offense has been committed prior to arresting children at local schools; • Failure by the Lauderdale County Youth Court to provide children with proper procedural due process, including by making untimely and inadequate probable cause determinations; • Failure by the Lauderdale County Youth Court and the Mississippi DYS to provide children procedural due process rights in the probationary process, especially with regard to alleged probation violations; and • Failure by all entities to ensure substantive due process for children on probation by incarcerating children for school disciplinary offenses without any procedural safeguards.2

In October 2012, the DOJ filed a lawsuit based on these findings against the city of Meridian, Mississippi; Lauderdale County, Mississippi; judges of the Lauderdale County Youth Court; and the state of Mississippi alleging that the defendants systematically violate the due process rights of juveniles. The lawsuit contended that the practices of the defendants violated the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.3 In March, the Justice Department reached agreement with the Meridian Public School District to decrease excessive suspensions and expulsions of mostly young Black students for trivial infractions. The consent decree nullifies most police interventions in the school for minor infractions that can be handled as disciplinary rather than law enforcement measures. This includes disorderly conduct, school disturbances and disruptions, loitering, trespassing, profanity, dress code violations, and fighting that doesn’t include physical injury or weapons.4 In addition, the school district is barred from sharing student information with law enforcement unless ordered, and discipline data must be collected and tracked with attention to remedying racial disparity.

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Introduction Ending the school-to-prison pipeline is no small endeavor. It is created via a confluence, a collision really, of shifting economic and political realities in late capitalist United States, a macrolevel sociopolitical climate and attendant policies that tend toward punishment and hyper-incarceration, an educational system that is under-resourced, externally pressured to produce “success” on test scores, and doubly segregated by race and class, and most immediately, by the proliferation of zero tolerance and policing in the schools and the resultant suspensions, expulsions, and arrests associated with criminalized education. The matter is complicated too by the layers of jurisdictional control—federal, state, and local/district level— over public education and the encroachment of private profit interests into the management and delivery of school curriculum, classroom instruction, and social control. Most immediately, efforts to end the school-to-prison pipeline must address issues of education: disciplinary policy, a police presence, and the correlation between funding, highstakes testing, teacher preparedness, and persistent segregation. Intensified recent attention to the pipeline, especially in light of seismic shifts in federal policy, has produced some changes, but overall, mixed results. Zero-tolerance policies and mandated suspensions and expulsions are giving way in many jurisdictions to alternative approaches, but the issue of police in school remains largely intractable, and the full range of systemic crises facing schools have yet to be addressed. The school-to-prison pipeline is also steeped—not just in a zerotolerance punishing philosophy—but in racism, albeit racism couched in post–Civil Rights era color-blind policies and practices. The seemingly race-neutral policies that impel the pipeline provide cover for deeply racialized double standards of social control, where students of color, especially Black students of all genders, are harshly labeled and criminalized, while the comparable deviance of their white peers is often mitigated with medicalized therapeutic labels. This result is rooted in long-standing racist archetypes that are furthered via media, cemented in criminal and juvenile justice policy, and realized in everyday interactions with teachers, school personnel, and police. The pipeline, then, reinforces and reinscribes a racism that must too be dismantled root and branch, and which cannot via more race-neutral policy shift alone. Finally, while the school-to-prison pipeline starts with the school, it is intended toward the prison. Ending the pipeline must eventually address

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the insatiable demands for more “clients” that a political economy based on mass imprisonment has created. Even with the elimination of zero-tolerance policies and police in schools, it is difficult to image sustained success in interrupting the school-to-prison pipeline without addressing the long reach of the monster it feeds. Until there is a larger lessened societal reliance on racialized punishment for profit, interventions at the level of education policy and practice alone may be insufficient. The school-to-prison pipeline is not just a product of an educational system under siege, but of a society heavily invested in the punishing state. This too must change.

Federal Action The initial impetus for the school-to-prison pipeline emerged from the federal legislation such as the Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994, the Safe Schools Act of 1994, and a 1998 amendment to the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968. Given the reality of how this federal framework essentially created the pipeline, significant efforts to undo it must start here. Recently, for the first time in 20 years, the federal government is rethinking both messaging and policy around school discipline and challenging the efficacy of the current situation of mass suspension, expulsion, and arrest at school. In December 2012 the first ever congressional hearings on the schoolto-prison pipeline were held, called by Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on constitution, civil rights, and human rights.5 The hearing featured expert testimony and statements from hundreds of organizations and youth advocates, which detailed both the scope of the problem and solutions including calls for decreased funding incentives for police; increased funding for counseling, support staff, and educational resources; mandatory nation-wide data collection on suspension, expulsion, and arrests at school; and support for evidenced-based solutions to end the persistent racial disparities that shape the contours of the pipeline.6 The recommendations from the Advancement Project capture this: Congress can encourage the use of best practices including data-driven reform to dismantle the School-to-Prison Pipeline. Therefore, we recommend that Congress take the following steps: • Require the annual collection and reporting of discipline and school climate data for all public schools, including public charter schools, and

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increase oversight and accountability. The law should require that all schools report on in-school suspensions, out-of-school suspensions, expulsions, school-based arrests, referrals to law enforcement agencies, and referrals to alternative schools. The data should be disaggregated by race, gender, special education status, socioeconomic status, and English language proficiency. Include school discipline and arrest rates, rates of disparity in school discipline, and school climate data (such as teacher, parent, and student surveys, attendance rates, graduation rates, etc.), as part of the measure of a school’s performance. Use unusually high school discipline rates, data indicating a negative school culture, and/or pronounced disparity rates to trigger assistance and support for schools that are struggling. The law’s current accountability framework places punitive sanctions on schools who fail to meet benchmarks. Instead, the law should provide assistance—both financial and technical—to schools who are struggling with high rates of suspension, expulsion, and school-based arrest. Facilitate the re-enrollment, and proper education of students returning to school from suspension, expulsion, alternative placements, or juvenile justice system involvement. Provide incentives and funding for school districts and states that limit the use of out-of-school suspensions, expulsions, and arrests. For example, in the Race to the Top—District grant competition the Department of Education required that recipients of these funds develop a plan to address race and disability disparities in school discipline. This program— or others like it—can be expanded and strengthened to require recipients to report all data to the Department of Education, implement plans to reduce overall suspension and arrests rates, and use alternatives to exclusionary discipline policies. Provide incentives and funding for the implementation of evidencebased programs and curriculum that eliminate racial disparities in school discipline and reduce the rates of suspensions, expulsions, and arrests for all students. Increase the availability of federal funding for school staff that can address the root causes of low student engagement, such as schoolbased social workers, psychologists, nurses, and counselors. Provide greater support for research on interventions that appropriately respond to student behavior without excluding them from school.7

These recommendations are also echoed in calls for less reliance on testing, increased funding, and more attention to school climate in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

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This would acknowledge and remedy the tendency toward push-out that was furthered by No Child Left Behind (NCLB).8 The ESEA reauthorization, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), signed into law in December 2015, failed to address these recommendations. While the Act has yet to be fully implemented, there are legitimate concerns that any attention to school climate is largely a voluntary matter for the states, and that federal involvement in civil right protections may be significantly curtailed. As the Dignity in Schools Campaign notes: The final ESEA agreement fails to hold schools, districts, and states with persistently high discipline disparities accountable for implementing reforms to remedy such disparities. National data show that many public schools target students of color and students with disabilities for exclusionary and punitive discipline, including arrests and expulsions, despite research showing that they do not misbehave more than their peers. This results in high discipline disparities along racial and disability status lines. Students subjected to these discipline practices have compromised educational and life outcomes, including poor school performance, higher dropout rates, and increased likelihood of involvement with the juvenile justice system. The ESEA agreement does little to address these disparities. It allows schools to choose from a range of options to measure accountability, including school climate. But, without a mechanism requiring or incentivizing schools with discipline disparities to act to eliminate disparities, the bill does little to reform discipline and improve school climate.9

In addition, there are calls for an overhaul of the Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994, the Safe Schools Act of 1994, and a 1998 amendment to the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, and for legislation that mandates funding for Positive Behavioral Support (PBS) initiatives, and an end to corporal punishment and the use of restraints and seclusion for IDEA students.10 To date, there has been no federal legislative action on any recommendation that flowed from the hearing, raising questions about the willingness of legislators to commit to taking the political risks required to undo the policies that so easily emerged from an era of “law and order.” Nationally, the most meaningful action against the school-to-prison pipeline has come from federal litigation, school climate data collection, and strong policy shifts away from zero tolerance. The U.S. Department of Education and the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice have committed to addressing disparities in school suspensions

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and expulsions as a civil rights matter with attention to Title IX and IDEA implications. In 2011, the launch of the Supportive School Discipline Initiative (SSDI) was announced; this collaborative project between the Departments of Justice and Education is committed to supporting good discipline practices to foster safe and productive learning environments in all classrooms.11 One of the first major joint efforts involved filing suit against the State of Mississippi for operating a school-to-prison pipeline in Meridian.12 Since then, federal agency actions toward dismantling the pipeline have expanded toward additional litigation efforts and beyond. In January 2014, the Department of Education and the Department of Justice issued new guidelines on School Climate and Discipline that, for the first time in 20 years, advocated a move away from zero-tolerance policies and mandated suspension/expulsion as a last resort.13 This announcement was coupled with the creation of a Civil Rights Data Collection effort that provides national data on both the discipline and opportunity gaps in education.14 The guidelines in brief are as follows and include recommended action steps that emphasize collaboration, prevention, and restorative justice measures: Principle 1: Climate and Prevention: Schools that foster positive school climates can help to engage all students in learning by preventing problem behaviors and intervening effectively to support struggling and at-risk students. Action Steps (1) Engage in deliberate efforts to create positive school climates. (2) Prioritize the use of evidence-based prevention strategies, such as tiered supports, to promote positive student behavior. (3) Promote social and emotional learning to complement academic skills and encourage positive behavior. (4) Provide regular training and supports to all school personnel—including teachers, principals, support staff, and school-based law enforcement officers—on how to engage students and support positive behavior. (5) Collaborate with local mental health, child welfare, law enforcement, and juvenile justice agencies and other stakeholders to align resources, prevention strategies, and intervention services. (6) Ensure that any school-based law enforcement officers’ roles focus on improving school safety and reducing inappropriate referrals to law enforcement.

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Principle 2: Expectations and Consequences: Schools that have discipline policies or codes of conduct with clear, appropriate, and consistently applied expectations and consequences will help students improve behavior, increase engagement, and boost achievement. Action Steps (1) Set high expectations for behavior and adopt an instructional approach to school discipline. (2) Involve families, students, and school personnel in the development and implementation of discipline policies or codes of conduct, and communicate those policies regularly and clearly. (3) Ensure that clear, developmentally appropriate, and proportional consequences apply for misbehavior. (4) Create policies that include appropriate procedures for students with disabilities and due process for all students. (5) Remove students from the classroom only as a last resort, ensure that any alternative settings provide students with academic instruction, and return students to their regular class as soon as possible Principle 3: Equity and Continuous Improvement: Schools that build staff capacity and continuously evaluate the school’s discipline policies and practices are more likely to ensure fairness and equity. Action Steps (1) Train all school staff to apply school discipline policies and practices in a fair and equitable manner so as not to disproportionately impact students of color, students with disabilities, or at-risk students. (2) Use proactive, data-driven, and continuous efforts, including gathering feedback from families, students, teachers, and school personnel to prevent, identify, reduce, and eliminate discriminatory discipline and unintended consequences15

These guidelines are only in the earliest stages of implementation, but they clearly reinforce the efforts already under way in many districts to rethink zero-tolerance policies and reduce suspensions and expulsions. The significance of this federal policy shift on school discipline after 20 years of mandated zero tolerance cannot be overstated. Neither can the national data, which make transparent, in plain aggregate undeniable numbers, the differential impact of zero tolerance and policing in schools that advocates had long decried. It creates an opportunity to open a

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dialogue about the multitude of educational and societal issues that gave rise to the school-to-prison pipeline. But a word of caution too. Rightful concern remains over lack of clear federal guidance on the continued presence of police in schools, and in fact, some pressure for increased funding following the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.16 It is one matter to challenge zero-tolerance policies and their disparate impact, and quite another to call for a reduction or removal of police from schools, especially in light of the public’s equation of a police presence with “safety.”17 Further, there is no guarantee whether the commitment to ending zero tolerance will be long lasting. The heads of Department of Education and the Department of Justice, as with all federal agencies, are political appointees whose policies reflect that of the current executive branch. These policies, unlike legislation, may easily be undone under a new administration. It is possible then, in lieu of accompanying federal legislation, that the current direction away from zero tolerance and suspension/expulsion and arrest may be short lived.

State-Level Interventions While federal legislation provided the framework for zero tolerance an increased police presence, it is state legislatures that interpreted and implemented these policies in various ways. State-level expansion of the original parameters of the Gun-Free School Act of 1994, for example, played a major role in the proliferation of zero-tolerance policies that did not distinguish between serious and minor infractions and failed to offer systems of graduated punishments.18 State law varies widely here with regard to the extent of oversight of school districts, the degree of data collection on school discipline, and state-wide input into disciplinary policy. In general, however, the federal shift away from zero tolerance has led to a call to the states to reassess state policies and practices in order to reduce suspension, expulsion, and arrest rates. A national initiative on Solutions Not Suspensions has made the following recommendations to the states regarding stopping suspensions and creating alternatives, data collection, and transparency and offering support for teachers and other school personnel: State policymakers should promote new alternatives to school discipline aligned with restorative justice practices and positive forms of school discipline. These types of discipline interventions can give students the tools to reflect and learn from their mistakes, and develop new self-regulation tools

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to prevent incidents from happening again in the future. Benefits can extend beyond the school setting, helping youths to nurture positive relationships with peers, family and significant others. Additionally, policymakers can improve the way in which the state takes responsibility for improving school discipline policies. This can include providing discipline guidance to school districts, establishing processes for preventing out-of-school suspensions or ensuring that key stakeholders—including parents, community members, teachers and principals—have a say in developing locally relevant discipline policies. States need an accurate picture of discipline data disaggregated by school, race, gender, ethnicity, and disability in order to identify and monitor whether discipline policies are adversely impacting certain subgroups of students or to determine if particular schools and districts are making progress in addressing disciplinary challenges. Data should be collected accurately and shared with the public in a meaningful way that supports community conversations around preventing school suspensions and allows teachers and principals to share promising practices. States should collect the type of data that it deems necessary to advance positive disciplinary reforms. State leaders should develop policies that guarantee educators and school leaders have the knowledge, skills and expertise to encourage whole-school prevention of suspensions and to promote learning models where students can cultivate positive relationships with their peers. Strengthening school capacity to promote positive forms of discipline requires ongoing training and support, targeted resources and intentionality around building capable professionals and schools.19

In recent years, a handful of states have passed legislation that include revised codes of conduct (some developed with parental and student input), graduated categories of inappropriate or undesirable behaviors that are aligned with categories of consequences, an emphasis on reduced suspension and increased use of alternatives such as Positive Behavior Intervention and Support (PBIS) programs and restorative justice alternatives, and mandated data collection that tracks suspensions, expulsions, and arrests by race, gender, grade level, and disability status.20 While these are important steps forward, the efforts may be piecemeal. To date, Colorado is the only state to comprehensively address all recommendations.21 It should be noted that in many states, the legislature has recommended, not required, changes and has left disciplinary codes and their enforcement to the school districts and individual schools.22 While zero-tolerance policies have come under increased scrutiny, the role of police in schools remains largely unchallenged. In fact, following

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the post–Newtown school shooting, many states are asking for still more funding for police and security. In fact, 20 states proposed or passed dramatic funding increases for police in 2013, especially those states where funding for basic educational services is exceedingly low. Such legislation, including bills that allow school personnel to conceal and carry at school, has been backed by the National Rifle Association and the National Association of School Resource Officers.23 The ongoing debate over police officers in school occasionally flares again in light of highly publicized use of force cases or successful litigation brought on behalf of students who have been tased, pepper-sprayed, seriously injured, or wrongfully arrested at school. 24 Typically, these cases have not resulted in any meaningful reforms; the police presence in schools continues to grow, without mandated data collection, consistent training protocols, or consequence.25 Issues with police in schools, a major contributor to the school-to-prison pipeline, have been unaddressed at the state level. Beyond zero tolerance and policing, states have control over standards for teachers and school personnel, who additionally play a central role in shaping the school-to-prison pipeline. Diversification of the teaching ranks and extensive pre-classroom teacher training also remain largely unaddressed. To the extent that teacher licensure and training protocol is a matter for states, it is their responsibility too to mandate this necessary step. The impact biases of teachers and the sociocultural distance between them and their students is a significant factor in mislabeling of children of color and their excessive overrepresentation in suspension, expulsion, and arrest rates. Certainly, efforts to recruit and retain more teachers of color is required. Certainly, too, white teachers must be better equipped, upon entering the classroom, to meaningfully interact with all students in an equitable way. The American Association of Black Psychologists recommends: Teacher education programs need to address the racial imbalance between students and teachers, particularly in urban schools where the population is primarily comprised of students of color and many White, middle class, female teachers. Further, student teachers and educators in general, and in special education, must learn culturally responsive pedagogy and be equipped to create a learning environment that is conducive to achievement for African American students, particularly males. Student teachers must understand why many Black youth equate being smart with acting White; code-switching (in terms of communication styles); the impact of neighborhood disadvantage on learning and behavior; the significance of music,

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respect, and self-defense in many Black youth subcultures; how to teach so that African-descended children see themselves in the curriculum; and how to create lesson plans for different learning styles. Moreover, given that one of the major contributing factors to disproportionality is poor classroom management, teacher education programs must do more to adequately prepare educators to understand and appropriately respond to the challenging behaviors of students, particularly those of African descended students. This is especially important given that the majority of the educators for Black male students (who are placed in special education at the highest rates) are White, middle-class, female teachers. Teacher education programs must critically examine the ways in which this cultural dissimilarity affects the interpretation, management, and emotional reactions (e.g., fear, hostility) to challenging behaviors that might be culturally-based. Teacher education programs should confront this dynamic through research and literature that explore relative differences in how White teachers respond to Black students.26

While states are beginning to legislatively address the pervasive impact of zero-tolerance policies, the efforts are limited in both scope and reach. Thus far, the focus has been on discipline per se with little attention to reducing or regulating police or to more systemic efforts to increase funding, offer incentives to recruit teachers of color, or expand teacher education. There is frequently limited funding to support alternative approaches to discipline and limited attention to comprehensive data collection and assessment. Further, much state legislation fails to address the issue of race, class, and ability disparity head on, and instead attempts to redress racial gulfs in school discipline with more race-neutral legislation.27

School District and School-Level Policy Although there is widespread variation across districts, it is at the local level that most challenges to the school-to-prison pipeline occur. While some initiatives began much earlier, more districts are actively engaged in addressing suspensions and expulsions in light of the New Department of Education ad Department of Justice Guidelines. Some of the efforts are voluntary; others are sparked by federal investigations into civil rights violations evidenced by wide racial differentials in rates of suspension and expulsion.28 Actions at the district level have included revised disciplinary codes, development of graduated punishment schemes, moratoriums on out-of-school suspensions, especially for K–middle school students,

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and adoption of policies that emphasize positive reinforcement and conflict resolution. One alternative model that has documented success, especially with special education students, is Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports (PBIS).29 This model has been adopted by more than 6,000 schools and often is part of a school-wide program. PBIS focuses on the development and reinforcement of positive behaviors, as opposed to punitive approaches, such as zero tolerance, which tell students what not to do.30 Respect for others and the school space is central to PBIS. A variety of studies have found that schools that use PBIS tend to be less reactive and exclusionary in the use of discipline and tend to have more engaging and productive learning environments. As a result, students exposed to PBIS have better educational outcomes and more pro-social behavior and are subject to fewer disciplinary referrals.31 Restorative justice is one of the most promising alternatives to zero tolerance. The growing use of this method by grassroots organization and both adult and juvenile justice systems has now expanded to schools. The model rejects the usual search for blame and punishment and offers all parties a chance to mediate the conflict and repair the harm. As Nakagawa notes: Unlike our current system, the central goal in restorative justice among grassroots practitioners is not avenging the past, but creating a better future for all involved. Rather than focusing on what rules were broken, a restorative justice system looks at what harm was done, and focuses on how to best repair that harm by giving the victim of the crime and the community in which the crime was committed a voice and a role in the process of achieving justice. Restorative justice is also committed to achieving the best outcome for both sides—it helps offenders to accept responsibility and do their part in achieving a just outcome.32

The pioneering work of Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth (RJOY) in the public schools there offers a template for the expansion of this model, now used in a number of schools in Chicago, Philadelphia, Portland, and Denver, and recently adopted in schools state-wide in Colorado.33 The program was piloted in a few schools in 2007 and was so successful that it was adopted city-wide in 2010. Suspensions and expulsions have declined by more than 76 percent, racial disparities in discipline have disappeared, and the overall climate is one of supportive engagement.34 Davis observes:

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Young high school students in Oakland with failing grades and multiple incarcerations who were not expected to graduate not only graduate but achieve 3.0-plus GPAs. Some have become class valedictorians. Girls who have been long-time enemies become friends after sitting in a peacemaking circle. Instead of fighting, students come into the restorative justice room and ask for a talking piece and circle. Youth and adults who walk into a circle feeling anger toward one another end up embracing. Youth report they are doing circles at home with their families. High school graduates are returning to their schools to ask for circles to address conflict outside the school[.] . . . Today hundreds of Oakland students are learning a new habit. Instead of resorting to violence, they are being empowered to engage in restorative processes that bring together persons harmed with persons responsible for harm in a safe and respectful space, promoting dialogue, accountability, a deeper sense of community, and healing.35

Other schools have implemented programs that go further. Restorative justice has been critiqued as not going far enough in acknowledging the larger structural forces that shapes conflicts and for failing to realize restoration of past relations is not enough.36 As an alternative, transformative justice brings the larger social context of oppression to bear, and calls on participants to analyze not just their own behaviors, but the social context that surrounds them. According to Nakagawa: [T]ransformative justice resists co-optation in that it begins with the assumption that we must move forward rather than attempt to restore what was there before. For the victim, it means embracing the possibility of transforming the world positively from their pain, and incorporating that experience in their healing process. Perpetrators are similarly challenged to transform themselves and engage the world—the belief is that most perpetrators commit crimes because they have been marginalized and disempowered, and often suffer from rage and alienation. Rather than attempt to restore this state, transformative justice looks to the future, and acknowledges and incorporates an understanding of the social problems that lead to crime, avoiding simple solutions that neglect the needs of the community. Transformative justice also puts an understanding of the structural racism and classism of our existing criminal justice system at the center of the theory. It assumes that a central function of the current system is to enforce class and race inequities and that the system must be fundamentally transformed before it can be an agent of justice.37

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This model is favored by grassroots activists and has been used in select schools not just to address immediate behavioral problems but to call into question the dynamics of school discipline. The strategies employed here include peace circles, critical curriculum that addresses historical trauma and current inequality, and often larger action plans designed to transform both individual actions and the larger systems that oppress.38 Given the race and class disparities that mark school discipline, this is an exciting and immediately relevant model, but one that requires sustained and extensive collaboration with schools and communities. As of now, there has been no district-wide adoption of this approach. While some districts have had some success eliminating zero-tolerance policies and reducing suspensions, reducing arrests with a persistent police presence in schools has served to be more challenging. Required training, data collection, use of force protocols, and protections of student’s civil liberties has been sporadic and highly discretionary.39 Successful efforts often require a comprehensive approach that involves coordination across various agencies. One ground-breaking example is from Clayton County Georgia, where Judge Steven Teske, a juvenile court judge, began to notice his courtroom clogged with minor cases referred from school police officers, increasing from less than 100 prior to the establishment of SROs to nearly 1,500 after their arrival.40 Judge Teske consulted with parents, law enforcement officers, community leaders, and school officials and formed a collaborative task force to address the issue and develop a strategy to reduce court referrals. The results have been dramatic: In 2004, a cooperative agreement was developed. It ensures that “misdemeanor delinquent acts,” like fighting, disrupting the public school, disorderly conduct, most obstruction of police, and most criminal trespass, do not result in the filing of a complaint unless the student commits a third or subsequent similar offense during the school year, and the principal conducts a review of the student’s behavior plan. Youth first receive warnings and after a second offense, they are referred to mediation or school conflict training programs. Elementary students cannot be referred to law enforcement for “misdemeanor delinquent acts” at all. The presence of dangerous weapons on campuses has decreased by 70%. Police officers’ relationships with students have improved, allowing students to converse more comfortably with the officers and be more willing to provide critical information on serious school crimes when necessary.

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87% decrease in fighting offenses and a 36% decrease among other “Focus Acts,” which includes disorderly conduct, obstruction of an officer, and disrupting a public school. 86% and 64% decrease in referrals for fighting and disruption of public school offenses, respectively, specifically for African American youth. Graduation rates have increased by 20% since the protocol was implemented. Before the agreement was even signed, the collaborative group mandated cross-training be provided to law enforcement, counselors, school staff, and juvenile intake officials to ensure understanding of how to use the agreement.41

Several other jurisdictions, including in Alabama, Connecticut, and North Carolina, have adopted this model and have replicated the results. Collaborative efforts and a multi-agency integrated plan can dramatically reduce arrests, court referrals, and the attendant racial disparities.42

Beyond Reform, Beyond the Schools The school-to-prison pipeline has finally been recognized as a civil rights issue. Students of color, the poor, and students with disabilities—and especially those at the intersections of these statuses—are being denied the right to an education via differential labeling, suspension, expulsion, and arrest at school. In addition to the denial of education, they are being denied the right to a childhood and a meaningful adulthood too, as minor youthful misbehavior is criminalized and their futures now entangled with a pervasive and punitive legal system. Various initiatives at the federal, state, and local school districts have emerged to address this pipeline and the policies that most immediately create it. Most involve various reforms of zero-tolerance disciplinary policies and efforts to reduce suspensions and expulsions. There is some success here, and some mixed results. Data collection and assessment across states and districts is spotty; moratoriums on suspension often are limited to elementary and middle school students only; alternatives to zero tolerance may not be fully funded, while federal monies continue to pour in for SROs.43 The role of police in schools is largely unattended too; there is limited data collected, wide variation across states and districts in SRO training, use of force expectations or attention to the legal rights of students, and little political will to remove them, especially in light of persistent clamoring for “safety.”44 Since zero-tolerance policies, coupled with a

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police presence, jointly fuel the pipeline, it is difficult to imagine ending the school-to-prison pipeline without the removal of police from schools. It is difficult to imagine too that the pipeline can be ended without comprehensive, nationally mandated and funded initiatives that address the larger plight of public education. Schools are underfunded, and teachers are undertrained and heavily constrained in ways that are the antithesis of the ideal of public education. As Giroux observes: Schools are not prisons, teachers are not a security detail and students are not criminals. Schools should model the United States’ investment in children and to do so they need to view young people as a resource rather than as a threat. If public schools are going to improve they have to be appropriately funded. That means, raising corporate taxes, cutting the defense budget, and allocating funds that contribute to the public good. It also means closing down and defunding those financial and military institutions that produce misery and destroy human lives, especially the lives of children. Educators should be given the power, autonomy and resources to be able to work closely with children in order to provide them with the conditions for meaningful learning while providing safe spaces for them to be nourished ethically, intellectually and spiritually. Schools are a public good and should be defined as such. How the United States invests in schools will shape an entire generation of young people. The lesson these youth should not be learning is that they can’t be trusted and should be treated as criminals. That view of schooling is one we associate with totalitarian states, not with a genuine democratic society.45

The school-to-prison pipeline flourishes in schools that are already underresourced and additionally pressured via the high-stakes testing pressures that resulted from NCLB. Unless real investment is made in teacher education and training, school resources are increased, and future ESEA reauthorization offers a substantial move away from standardized testing and the encroachment of for-profit interests, these schools will be left to juggle new pressures as calls for reduced suspensions continue. Already overworked, underpaid and inexperienced teachers will be asked to add initiatives such as PBIS to their repertoire now, as another “unfunded mandate” much like NCLB. The result may well be a shift from criminalizing some students to medicalizing them in new ways. This possibility has already emerged as Compton United School Districts in Los Angeles recently filed a lawsuit, arguing that “complex trauma” should qualify as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act.46 While the students named in the lawsuit

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certainly may need services, it is unclear what the larger impact may be for all students who may be de facto medicalized due to a combination of race, place, and socioeconomic status. And given the connections between IDEA placement and suspension, this may just be a slower side-road to the school-to-prison pipeline, one now burdened with additional stigmatizing labels. The solution is not to simply replace criminal labels with medicalized ones, slow down the pipeline, or advocate for reforms that serve for-profit interests, but to address the issue at the root.47 The school-to-prison pipeline flows most heavily from schools that are doubly segregated by race and class, and target youth of color, especially African Americans, wherever it operate. It is a racialized phenomenon, a product of post–Civil Rights era of “race-neutral” policies that provide a color-blind cloak for double standards of social control. White and more affluent students have their minor misbehaviors mitigated by diversion into the medical model, where they receive less-stigmatizing labels and treatment. Black and other students of color are criminalized at school, and when medicalized, given stigmatizing deficit labels that lead to IDEA designations and special education. These medical labels are not a diversion from the pipeline, but to the contrary, escalate the likelihood of suspension, expulsion, and arrest at school. This easy criminalization is made possible by mediated stereotypes that persist in equating crime with color, to the extent that Black children in particular are denied childhood innocence, feared, and punished.48 The school-to-prison pipeline is meant for youth of color, and however many color-blind cover stories are spun, the data reveal that the supposed race-neutrality is a lie. The school-to-prison pipeline is a feeder for the prison industrial complex and any efforts to disrupt it must consider this. The pipeline is the product of our reliance on racialized mass incarceration, now the centerpiece of our political economy, where disposable labor in a late capitalist service sector economy is criminalized and caged in order to create jobs and profit opportunities for others. Educational institutions, in their function as workforce preparation, serve to track select students along career pathways, and for children of color in poor urban schools that pathway is prison. They are prepared for this future by penal atmospheres, replete with a police presence and punitive disciplinary policies. They are prepared for this future because the prison industrial complex will always demand new “clients,” and piecemeal reforms will not refuse this gaping need.

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Dismantling the pipeline necessitates a rethinking of the punishing state and privatizing ethos that has permeated all aspects of life. It requires a shift toward reinvestment in institutions that serve, rather than deplete, the public good. It requires an interrogation of the carceral state in all its manifestations, including, perhaps especially, the school-to-prison pipeline. As Angela Davis notes: I would like to see us engage in a national conversation on true alternatives to incarceration. I’m not speaking about house arrest and probation and parole and so forth. I’m talking about ways of addressing social problems that are entirely disconnected from law enforcement. And that would mean an emphasis on education. As Frederick Douglass pointed out, education is indeed the way to liberation. Frederick Douglass taught himself how to read and write, because he recognized that there could be no liberation without education. Now there seems to be a greater emphasis on incarceration than education. So we have to say, “Education, not incarceration.” And then, of course, healthcare, physical healthcare, mental healthcare . . . So, in a sense, you might say that the abolitionist movement, the prison abolitionist movement, is a movement for a better world, for a different society, for a world that doesn’t need to depend on prisons, because the kinds of institutions that provide—that serve people’s needs will be available.49

In the end, dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline will require us to attend to both the school and the prison, to confront the cloud of colorblind racism that shrouds them each. Ending the pipeline requires us to answer this call: “The most difficult and urgent challenge of today is that of creatively exploring new terrains of justice, where the prison no longer serves as our major anchor.”50

Notes Introduction 1. Eugene V. Debs, “Statement to the court upon being convicted of violation of the Sedition Act,” September 18, 1918, John Metz for the Illinois Socialist Party Debs Archive and David Walters for the Marxists Internet Archive Debs Archive 2001. Retrieved October 1, 2015, from: https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/ works/1918/court.htm

Chapter 1 1. Eugene Kane, “Chicken nugget arrest is half baked: Teen accused of theft, faces charge for alleged taking of $2.60 meal at school,” Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel (July 17, 2010). Retrieved from: http://www.jsonline.com/news/ milwaukee/98681399.html 2. Tim Kertscher, “Theft charge dropped over chicken nugget meal: Shorewood High student was arrested, ticketed over alleged stealing of $2.60 meal,” Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel (July 19, 2010). Retrieved from http:// www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/98767699.html 3. Kane, “Chicken nugget arrest is half baked.” 4. Peter W. Cookson Jr., “Public education’s higher purpose,” Black Voices, Huffington Post, September 3, 2014. 5. Jennings Wagoner, Jefferson and Education (Charlottesville, VA: Thomas Jefferson Foundation, 2004). 6. Henry A. Giroux, America’s Education Deficit and the War on Youth (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2013). 7. Leslie Thatcher, America’s Education Deficit and the War on Youth, Interview with Henry A. Giroux, Truthout, July 18, 2013. Retrieved from: http://www.truth -out.org/news/item/17047-laboratories-of-democracy-an-interview-with-henry -giroux 8. Gary Orfield and Erica Frankenberg, with Jongyeon Ee and John Kuscera, Brown at 60: Great Progress, a Long Retreat and an Uncertain Future (Los Angeles, CA: The Civil Rights Project, 2014). 9. Brown v. Bd. of Educ. of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

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10. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States, 3rd Ed. (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013); Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Era of Color-Blindness (New York: The Free Press, 2010). 11. Orfield and Frankenberg, Brown at 60. 12. Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Era of Color-Blindness (New York: The Free Press, 2010). 13. Advancement Project, Education on Lockdown: The School to Jailhouse Track (Washington, D.C.: Advancement Project, 2005); Children’s Defense Fund, America’s Cradle to Prison Pipeline (Washington, D.C.: CDF, 2007); NAACP, Interrupting the School to Prison Pipe-line (Washington, D.C.: NAACP, 2005). 14. Thatcher, America’s Education Deficit. 15. Advancement Project, Federal Policy, ESEA Reauthorization, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline (Washington, D.C.: Advancement Project, 2011). 16. P. J. Hirschfield, “Preparing for prison? The criminalization of school discipline in the USA,” Theoretical Criminology 12(2008): 79. 17. Advancement Project, Education on Lockdown; Children’s Defense Fund, America’s Cradle to Prison Pipeline; NAACP, Interrupting the School to Prison Pipe-line. 18. American Psychological Association, Are Zero Tolerance Policies Effective in the Schools? An Evidentiary Review and Recommendations (Washington, D.C.: APA, 2006). 19. Thomas A. Birkland and Regina Lawrence, Zero Tolerance, Zero Evidence: An Analysis of School Disciplinary Practice (Bloomington: Indiana Education Policy Center, Indiana University, 2001). 20. Catherine Kim, Daniel Losen, and Damon Hewitt, The School to Prison Pipeline: Structuring Legal Reform (New York: New York University Press, 2010). 21. Barbara Raymond, Assigning Police Officers to Schools: Problem-Oriented Guides for Police Response Guides Series Guide No. 10 (Washington, D.C.: Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, Inc., 2010); Matthew T. Theriot, “School resource officers and the criminalization of student behavior,” Journal of Criminal Justice 37, no. 3 (2009): 280–287. 22. L. A. Addington, “Cops and cameras: Public school security as a policy response to Columbine,” American Behavioral Scientist 52, no. 10 (2009): 1426– 1447; Thomas A. Birkland and Regina Lawrence, “Media framing after Columbine,” American Behavioral Scientist 52 (2009): 1404–1425; B. Frymer, “The media spectacle of Columbine: Alienated youth as an object of fear,” American Behavioral Scientist 52 (2009): 1387–1404. 23. Raymond, Assigning Police Officers to Schools; Theriot, “School resource officers and the criminalization of student behavior.” 24. Ibid.

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25. Justice Policy Institute, Education under Arrest: The Case against Police in Schools (Washington, D.C.: Justice Policy Institute, 2011); Chongmin Na and Denise C. Gottfredson, “Police officers in schools: Effects on school crime and the processing of offending behaviors,” Justice Quarterly (2011): 1–32. 26. Henry A. Giroux, “Schools as punishing factories: Handcuffing education,” Truthout, August 6, 2015. 27. Kim, Losen, and Hewitt, The School to Prison Pipeline; Annette Fuentes, Lockdown High: When the Schoolhouse Becomes a Jailhouse (New York: Verso, 2013). 28. The Schott Foundation for Public Education, The Urgency of Now: 50 State Report on Black Males and Education (Cambridge, MA: Scott Foundation 6, 2012); U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Data Collection: Data Snapshot (School Discipline) (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, March 21, 2014). 29. NAACP, Interrupting the School to Prison Pipe-line. 30. Advancement Project, Federal Policy. 31. Maureen Carroll, “Educating expelled students after No Child Left Behind: Mending an incentive structure that discourages alternative education and reinstatement,” UCLA Law Review 55, no. 6 (2008): 1909. 32. Advancement Project, Test Punish and Push-Out: How “Zero Tolerance” and High-Stakes Testing Funnel Youth into the School-to-Prison Pipeline (Washington, D.C.: Advancement Project, 2010); Sasha Polakow-Suransky, “America’s least wanted: Zero tolerance policies and the fate of expelled students,” in The Public Assault on America’s Children: Poverty, Violence and Juvenile Justice, ed. Valerie Polakow (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 2001), pp. 101–139. 33. Advancement Project, Federal Policy. 34. National Center for Education Statistics, The Condition of Education (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, 2012). 35. Advancement Project, Federal Policy; Justice Policy Institute, Education under Arrest; Kathleen Nolan, Police in the Hallways: Discipline in an Urban High School (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011). 36. Justice Policy Institute, Education under Arrest. 37. Na and Gottfredson, “Police officers in schools.” 38. Advancement Project, Education on Lockdown. 39. Peter Wagner and Leah Sakala, Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie (Northampton, MA: Prison Policy Initiative, 2014). 40. Peter Conrad, “The shifting engines of medicalization,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 46, no. 1 (March 2005): 3–14; Peter Conrad and J. W. Schneider, Deviance and Medicalization: From Badness to Sickness. Rev. Ed. (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1998).

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41. Daniel J. Losen and Jonathan Gillespie, Opportunities Suspended: The Disparate Impact of Disciplinary Exclusion from School (Los Angeles, CA: The Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the Civil Rights Project, August 2012); The Schott Foundation for Public Education, The Urgency of Now; Howard Witt, “School discipline tougher on African Americans,” Chicago Tribune, September 5, 2007. 42. Losen and Gillespie, Opportunities Suspended; The Schott Foundation for Public Education, The Urgency of Now. 43. Ibid. 44. U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Data Collection: Data Snapshot (School Discipline). 45. Losen and Gillespie, Opportunities Suspended. 46. David M. Ramey, “The social structure of criminalized and medicalized school discipline,” Sociology of Education 88, no. 3 (2015): 181–201; Monique W. Morris, Race, Gender and the School to Prisons Pipeline: Expanding Our Discussion to Include Black Girls (African American Policy Forum, 2012); Jamilah Blake, Betty Ray Butler, and Danielle Smith, “Challenging middle-class notions of femininity: The cause of black female disproportionate suspension rates,” in Closing the School Discipline Gap: Equitable Remedies for Excessive Exclusion, ed. Daniel Losen (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 2015). 47. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Ed. (Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 2013). 48. Jamila Codrington and Halford H. Fairfield, “Special education and the Miseducation of African American children: A call to action,” Position Paper of the Association of Black Psychologists (San Francisco, CA: Association of Black Psychologists, 2012). 49. U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Data Collection: Data Snapshot (Opportunity Gap) (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2012); Russell Skiba, L. Poloni Staudinger, S. Gallini, A. B. Simmons, and R. Feggins Azziz, “Disparate access: The disproportionality of African American students with disabilities across educational environments,” Exceptional Children 72, no. 4 (2006): 411–424; Nancy A. Heitzeg, “Criminalization and medicalization: The school to prison pipeline and racialized doublestandards of disciplinary control,” in The Race Controversy in American Education, ed. Lillian D. Drakeford (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger Publishing, 2015). 50. R. Goldring, L. Gray, and A. Bitterman, Characteristics of Public and Private Elementary and Secondary School Teachers in the United States: Results from the 2011–12 Schools and Staffing Survey (NCES 2013-314) (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, 2013). Retrieved from: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch 51. Phillip Atiba Goff and Matthew Christian Jackson, “The essence of innocence: Consequences of dehumanizing black children,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 106, no. 4 (April 2014): 526–545; Kathleen Welch, “Black

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criminal stereotypes and racial profiling,” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 23 (2007): 276. 52. Howard Witt, “School discipline tougher on African Americans,” Chicago Tribune, September 5, 2007; Heitzeg “Criminalization and medicalization”; Ramey, “The social structure of criminalized and medicalized school discipline.” 53. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2011–2012 National Survey of Children’s Health (Hyattsville, MD: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013); Lawrence M. Diller, Running on Ritalin (New York: Bantam, 1998); A. Schwarz and S. Cohen, “A.D.H.D. seen in 11% of U.S. children as diagnoses rise,” New York Times, March 31, 2013; A. Schwarz, “The selling of attention deficit disorder,” New York Times, December 14, 2013. 54. Ibid.; Javier I. Escobar, “Diagnostic bias: Racial and cultural issues,” Psychiatric Services (2012); M. Henley, R. S. Ramsey, and R. F. Algozzine, Characteristics of and Strategies for Teaching Students with Mild Disabilities, 6th Ed. (New York: Pearson, 2008); Stephen P. Hinshaw and Andrea Stier, “Stigma as related to mental disorders,” Annual Review of Clinical Psychology 4 (2008): 367–393. 55. U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Data Collection: Data Snapshot (School Discipline). 56. The Schott Foundation for Public Education, The Urgency of Now. 57. Angela Davis, “Masked racism: Reflections on the prison industrial complex,” Colorlines, September 10, 1998. Retrieved October 1, 2015 from: http://www .colorlines.com/articles/masked-racism-reflections-prison-industrial-complex 58. NAACP, Interrupting the School to Prison Pipe-line, p. 2.

Chapter 2 1. Rebecca Klein, “Texas senate votes to substantially reduce number of standardized tests for students,” Huffington Post, May 9, 2013. Retrieved from: http:// www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/08/texas-standardized-tests-senate_n_3232984 .html 2. Ibid. 3. Eric Nicholson, “Arlington high suspends student for tweeting STARR test photo, inspires predictable backlash,” Dallas Observer, April 2, 2013. Retrieved from: http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/arlington-high-suspends-student -for-tweeting-staar-test-photo-inspires-predictable-backlash-7113652 4. Ibid. 5. Ryan Broderick, “High school student suspended for writing ‘YOLO’ on a test and tweeting it,” Buzzfeed, April 2, 2013. Retrieved from: http://www .buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/high-school-student-suspended-for-writing-yolo -on-a-test-and#.areJooQ2p 6. Anthony M. Platt, The Child Savers: The Invention of Delinquency (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977); Ira Katznelson and Margaret Weir, Schooling

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for All: Class, Race and the Decline of the Democratic Ideal (New York: Basic Books, 1985). 7. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). 8. Henry A. Giroux, America’s Education Deficit and the War on Youth (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2013). 9. Gary Orfield and Erica Frankenberg, with Jongyeon Ee and John Kuscera, Brown at 60: Great Progress, a Long Retreat and an Uncertain Future (Los Angeles, CA: The Civil Rights Project, 2014). 10. The Schott Foundation for Public Education, The Urgency of Now: 50 State Report on Black Males and Education (Cambridge, MA: The Schott Foundation for Public Education, 2012); Grace Kena, Lauren Musu-Gillette, and Jennifer Robinson, The Condition of Education 2015 (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, 2015). 11. Advancement Project, Federal Policy, ESEA Reauthorization, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline (Washington, D.C.: Advancement Project, 2011); Giroux, America’s Education Deficit and the War on Youth. 12. U.S. Department of Education. Every Student Succeeds ACT (ESSA). Retrieved from: http://www.ed.gov/esea; Valerie Strauss. “The successor to NCLB has, as it turns out, big problems of its’ own,” Washington Post, December 7, 2015. Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ answer-sheet/wp/2015/12/07/the-successor-to-no-child-left-behind-has-it-turns -out-big-problems-of-its-own/ 13. Ibid. 14. Rose Brewer and Nancy A. Heitzeg, “The racialization of crime and punishment: Criminal justice, color-blind racism and the political economy of the prison industrial complex,” American Behavioral Scientist 51 (2008): 625–644. 15. Brown v. Board of Education (II), 349 U.S. 294, 75 S. Ct. 753, 99 L. Ed. 1083, 1955 U.S. 16. Orfield and Frankenberg, Brown at 60. 17. Nancy A. Heitzeg, “On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: Persistent white supremacy, relentless anti-blackness, and the limits of the law,” Hamline University’s School of Law’s Journal of Public Law and Policy 36, no. 1 (2015); Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. 3rd Ed. (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013). 18. S. F. Reardon, E. Grewal, D. Kalogrides, and E. Greenberg, “Brown fades: The end of court-ordered school desegregation and the resegregation of American public schools,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 31, no. 4 (2012): 876–904. 19. Orfield and Frankenberg, Brown at 60. 20. John Powell, “The house we live in,” ed. Llewellyn M. Smith, Race: The Power of Illusion (California: Newsreel, 2003).

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21. Orfield and Frankenberg, Brown at 60. 22. Ibid. 23. The Schott Foundation for Public Education, The Urgency of Now. 24. Ibid.; U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Data Collection: Data Snapshot (Opportunity Gap) (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2012.) 25. Linda Darling-Hammond, The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 2010). 26. Ibid. 27. Advancement Project, Federal Policy. 28. Ibid. 29. “The ABCs of ESEA and NCLB,” Education Post, n.d. Retrieved from: http://educationpost.org/issues/taking-responsibility/esea-reauthorization/abcsesea-child-left-behind/#.VfgpzyuYJcy 30. Advancement Project, Federal Policy; C. E. Rouse and L. Barros, “School voucher and school achievement: Recent evidence, remaining questions,” Annual Review of Economics 1 (2009). Retrieved from: http://www.ers.princeton.edu/ workingpapers/28ers.pdf and http://www.nscpe.org/publications_files/OP163.pdf 31. “The ABCs of ESEA and NCLB”; Advancement Project, ESEA Reauthorization: A Chance to Right a Wrong (Washington, D.C.: Advancement Project, April 11, 2015). 32. Linda Darling-Hammond, “Evaluating NCLB: The problems and promises of Bush’s education policy,” The Nation, May 21, 2007. 33. Ibid. 34. A. R Odden. and L. O. Picus, School Finance: A Policy Perspective. 4th Ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008). 35. Mariame Kaba and Erica Meiners, “Arresting education,” in Class Action: An Activist Teacher’s Handbook. Ed. Jacobin and Chicago Teachers CORE (Chicago, IL: Jacobin, 2015); Paul Buchheit, “Growing evidence that charter schools are failing,” Common Dreams, July 6, 2015. Retrieved from: http://www .commondreams.org/views/2015/07/06/growing-evidence-charter-schools-are -failing; Kate Taylor, “At a success academy charter school, singling out pupils who have ‘got to go,’ ” New York Times, October 29, 2015. Retrieved October 30, 2016, from: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/30/nyregion/at-a-success-academy -charter-school-singling-out-pupils-who-have-got-to-go.html?hp&action=click&pgtype =Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top -news&_r=0 36. Advancement Project, ESEA Reauthorization. 37. Darling-Hammond, “Evaluating NCLB”; Jesse Hagopian, ed., More Than a Score: The New Uprising against Standardized Testing (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2014).

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38. Ibid. 39. Ibid. 40. Claude Steele, and J. Aronson, “Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African-Americans,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 62, no. 1 (1995): 26–37. 41. David M. Ramey, “The social structure of criminalized and medicalized school discipline,” Sociology of education 88, no. 3 (2015): 181–201. 42. NAACP, Interrupting the School to Prison Pipe-line (Washington, D.C.: NAACP, 2005). 43. Dignity in Schools Blog, “Dignity in schools campaign opposes final ESEA bill that cuts back Federal accountability” November, 30 2015. Retrieved from: http://www.dignityinschools.org/blog/dignity-schools-campaign-opposes-finalesea-bill-cuts-back-federal-accountability; Valerie Strauss. “The successor to NCLB has, as it turns out, big problems of its’ own,” Washington Post, December 7. 2015. Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/ 2015/12/07/the-successor-to-no-child-left-behind-has-it-turns-out-big-problems -of-its-own/ 44. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of America (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995); Anne Koplinka-Loehr, “Knowing what’s white: Eurocentrism in the middle school curriculum—teachers’ perceptions,” Capstone Collection, 2010, Paper 2375. Retrieved from: http://digitalcollections.sit.edu/capstones/ 2375; Cameron McCarthy, “Multicultural education, minority identities, textbooks, and the challenge of curriculum reform,” Journal of Education 172, no. 2 (1990): 118–129; Ivor F. Goodson, School Subjects and Curriculum Change (New York: Routledge, 2013). 45. Theresa Perry and Lisa Delpit, eds., The Real Ebonics Debate: Power, Language and the Education of African American Children (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1998); John Baugh, Beyond Ebonics: Linguistic Pride and Racial Prejudice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 46. Julie Landsman and Chance W. Lewis, White Teachers, Diverse Classrooms: Creating Inclusive Schools, Building on Students’ Diversity, and Providing True Educational Equity. 2nd Ed. (New York: Stylus Publishing, 2011); R. Goldring, L. Gray, and A. Bitterman, Characteristics of Public and Private Elementary and Secondary School Teachers in the United States: Results from the 2011–12 Schools and Staffing Survey (NCES 2013–314) (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2013). Retrieved from: http://nces .ed.gov/pubsearch 47. Leland Ware and Melva Ware, “Plessy’s legacy: Desegregating the Eurocentric curriculum,” Georgia State University Law Review 12, no. 4 (2012): 16; Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896). 48. Seattle University School of Law, “Fighting Arizona’s attack on ethnic studies—Maya Arce, et al. v. John Huppenthal, et al.” Retrieved October 1,

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2014, from: http://www.law.seattleu.edu/centers-and-institutes/korematsucenter/arizona-ethnic-studies-case; Laura Isnee, “How textbooks can teach different versions of history,” NPR, July 15, 2015. Retrieved October 1, 2015, from: http://www.edcircuit.com/from-npr-how-textbooks-can-teach-different-versions -of-history/ 49. C. Veney, “The multicultural practices of highly effective teachers of African-American and Latino students in urban schools,” Proquest 2008. 50. Hagopian, More Than a Score. 51. U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Data Collection: Data Snapshot (Opportunity Gap). 52. Richard Majors and Janet Billson, Cool Pose: The Dilemmas of Black Manhood in America (New York: Touchstone, 1992); Elijah Anderson, Code of the Street (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999). 53. Victor Rios, Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys (New York: New York University Press, 2012); Ann Arnette Ferguson, Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001). 54. Ibid.; Jason Okonufua, “Two strikes: Race and the disciplining of young students,” Psychological Science 26, no. 5 (2015): 617–624. 55. Loı¨c Wacquant, “Class, race & hyperincarceration in revanchist America,” Daedalus 139, no. 3 (2010): 74–90; Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). 56. Stanley Aronowitz and Henry Giroux, Postmodern Education: Politics, Culture and Social Criticism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991). 57. Wacquant, “Class, race & hyperincarceration in revanchist America.” 58. William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The New World of the Urban Poor (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996). 59. Wacquant, “Class, race & hyperincarceration in revanchist America.” 60. Frances Fox Piven, “Why welfare is racist,” in Race and the Politics of Welfare Reform. Ed. Sanford F. Schram, Joe Soss, and Richard C. Fording (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2003). 61. Herbert Gans, The War against the Poor: The Underclass and Antipoverty Policy (New York: Basic Books, 1995). 62. Brewer and Heitzeg, “The racialization of crime and punishment.” 63. Wacquant, “Class, race & hyperincarceration in revanchist America.” 64. Leah Sakala, Breaking Down Mass Incarceration in the 2010 Census: Stateby-State Incarceration Rates by Race/Ethnicity (Northampton, MA: Prison Policy Initiative, 2014); Peter Wagner and Leah Sakala, Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie (Northampton, MA: Prison Policy Initiative, 2014). 65. Ibid.; Wacquant, “Class, race & hyperincarceration in revanchist America.”

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66. Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003); Angela Davis, “Race and criminalization: Black Americans and the punishment industry,” in The Angela Y. Davis Reader. Ed. J. James (New York: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 61–73. 67. Bruce Western, Punishment and Inequality in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). 68. Loı¨c Wacquant, Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity (Raleigh, NC: Duke University Press, 2009). 69. Martin Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy. 2nd Ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists. 70. Bill Ayers, “With teacher tenure threatened, trouble in every direction for education,” Truthout, June 29, 2014. 71. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). 72. Tal Yellin, “Education versus prison costs,” Graphic, CNN Money, August 20, 2015. 73. L. A. Addington, “Cops and cameras: Public school security as a policy response to Columbine,” American Behavioral Scientist 52, no. 10 (2009): 1426– 1447; Thomas A. Birkland and Regina Lawrence, “Media framing after Columbine,” American Behavioral Scientist 52 (2009): 1404–1425; B. Frymer, “The media spectacle of Columbine: Alienated youth as an object of fear,” American Behavioral Scientist 52 (2009): 1387–1404. 74. Henry A. Giroux, “Schools as punishing factories: Handcuffing education,” Truthout, August 6, 2015. 75. Mariame Kaba and Erica Meiners, “Arresting education,” in Class Action: An Activist Teacher’s Handbook. Ed. Jacobin and Chicago Teachers CORE (Chicago, IL: Jacobin, 2015). 76. Henry A. Giroux, Disposable Youth: Racialized Memories in an Age of Cruelty (New York: Routledge, 2012).

Chapter 3 1. Janice D’Arcy, “Salecia Johnson, 6, handcuffed after tantrum: What’s wrong with this picture?,” Washington Post, April 18, 2012. Retrieved from: https:// www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-parenting/post/salecia-johnson-6-handcuffed -after-Atantrum-whats-wrong-with-this-picture/2012/04/18/gIQAiUitQT_blog.html 2. “Kindergartner Handcuff Case: do we need police in schools?” Christian Science Monitor, April 18, 2012. Retrieved from: http://www.csmonitor.com/ The-Culture/Family/2012/0418/Kindergartner-handcuff-case-Do-we-need-police -in-schools

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3. Antionette Campbell, “Police handcuff 6-year-old student in Georgia,” CNN, April 17, 2012. Retrieved from: http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/17/justice/ georgia-student-handcuffed/ 4. Nancy A. Heitzeg, Deviance: Rule-Makers and Rule-Breakers (St. Paul, MN: West, 1996). Nancy A. Heitzeg, “Differentials in deviance: Race, class, gender, and age,” in The Routledge Handbook of Deviant Behavior. Ed. C. Bryant (New York: Routledge, 2011), pp. 53–60; Peter Conrad, “The shifting engines of medicalization,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 46, no. 1 (March 2005): 3–14; Samuel Walker, C. Spohn, and M. DeLone, The Color of Justice: Race, Ethnicity and Crime in America. 6th Ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2012). 5. Marc Mauer and Meda Chesney-Lind, eds., Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment (New York: The New Press, 2003). 6. Peter Conrad and J. W. Schneider, Deviance and Medicalization: From Badness to Sickness. Rev. Ed. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998). 7. Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963); Heitzeg, Deviance; Heitzeg, “Differentials in deviance”; Conrad, “The shifting engines of medicalization”; Walker, Spohn, and DeLone, The Color of Justice; David Simon, Elite Deviance. 7th Ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2006). 8. Ibid.; Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001). 9. Heitzeg, “Differentials in deviance”; Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, ed., Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. 3rd Ed. (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013). 10. Victor Rios, Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys (New York: New York University Press, 2012). 11. Heitzeg, Deviance; Heitzeg, “Differentials in deviance”; Conrad, “The shifting engines of medicalization”; Walker, Spohn, and DeLone, The Color of Justice; Simon, Elite Deviance; Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003). 12. Philip Foner, ed., The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass: Volume 4, Reconstruction and After (New York: International Publishers, 1955). 13. Joe Feagin, The White Racial Frame: Centuries of Racial Framing and Counter-Framing. 2nd Ed. (New York: Routledge, 2013). 14. Ruth Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992). 15. Feagin, The White Racial Frame. 16. Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists. 17. Derrick Bell, And We Not Saved: The Elusive Search for Racial Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1989).

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18. Ibid.; Joe Feagin, Racist America: Root Realities and Future Reparations. 4th Ed. (New York: Routledge, 2012); Nancy A. Heitzeg, “On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: Persistent white supremacy, relentless anti-blackness, and the limits of the law,” Hamline University’s School of Law’s Journal of Public Law and Policy 36, no. 1 (2015). 19. Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Era of Color-Blindness (New York: The Free Press, 2010). 20. Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists. 21. Ibid.; Bonilla-Silva, White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era; Feagin, The White Racial Frame. 22. Ibid. 23. Heitzeg, “On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” 24. Ibid.; Bell, And We Not Saved. 25. Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists. 26. Ibid. 27. Heitzeg, “On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964”; Bell, And We Not Saved; Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003); Gratz v. Bollinger, 02-516 530 U.S. 244 (2003); Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, No. 09–50822(2014); Shelby Cnty. v. Holder, No. 12–96 (2012). 28. Kathryn Russell-Brown, The Color of Crime. 2nd Ed. (New York: New York University Press, 2009); Kathleen Welch, “Black criminal stereotypes and racial profiling,” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 23 (2007): 276. 29. Khaled G. Muhammad, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). 30. Rose Brewer and Nancy A. Heitzeg, “The racialization of crime and punishment: Criminal justice, color-blind racism and the political economy of the prison industrial complex,” American Behavioral Scientist 51, no. 5 (2008): 625–644. 31. American Civil Liberties Union, The Persistence of Racial and Ethnic Profiling in the United States (New York: American Civil Liberties Union, 2009); American Civil Liberties Union, The War on Marijuana in Black and White (New York: American Civil Liberties Union, 2013). 32. Alexander, The New Jim Crow. 33. Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete?; Angela Davis, “Race and criminalization: Black Americans and the punishment industry,” in The Angela Y. Davis Reader. Ed. J. James (New York: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 61–73. 34. Alexander, The New Jim Crow; Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete?; Walker, Spohn, and DeLone, The Color of Justice. 35. Russell-Brown, The Color of Crime. 36. Welch, “Black criminal stereotypes and racial profiling.” 37. Muhammad, The Condemnation of Blackness.

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38. A version of this section was originally published in Nancy A. Heitzeg, “Education Not Incarceration: Interrupting the School to Prison Pipeline,” Forum on Public Policy 2 (2009). 39. Welch, “Black criminal stereotypes and racial profiling.” 40. R. M. Entman and K. A. Gross, “Race to judgment: Stereotyping media and criminal defendants,” Law and Contemporary Problems 71 (2008): 93–133. 41. L. Hancock, “Framing children in the news: The face and color of youth crime in America,” in The Public Assault on America’s Children: Poverty, Violence and Juvenile Justice. Ed. Valerie Polakow (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 2001), pp. 78–100. 42. Welch, “Black criminal stereotypes and racial profiling”; F. D. Gilliam and S. Iyengar, “Prime suspects: The influence of local television news on the viewing public,” American Journal of Political Science 44, no. 3 (2000): 560–573. 43. E. Rhymes, “Turning racism upside down to see it right side up: The remix,” Black Agenda Report, August 4, 2009. Retrieved from: http://www.blackagenda report.com/content/turning-racism-upside-down-see-it-right-side-remix 44. Entman and Gross, “Race to judgment.” 45. R. M. Entman and A. Rojecki, The Black Image White Mind: Media and Race in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). 46. L. Dorfman and V. Schiraldi, Off Balance: Youth, Race and Crime in the News, 2001. Retrieved from: http:// buldingblocksforyouth.org/media/media.htlm 47. Gilliam and Iyengar, “Prime suspects”; Entman and Rojecki, The Black Image White Mind. 48. Gilliam and Iyengar, “Prime suspects.” 49. M. Peffley, T. Shields, and B. William, “The intersection of race and crime in television news stories: An experimental study,” Political Communication 13 (1996): 309–327. 50. Barry Glassner, The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things (New York: Basic Books, 1999); Welch, “Black criminal stereotypes and racial profiling”; Gilliam and Iyengar, “Prime suspects”; Rebecca Hetley and Jennifer Eberhardt, “Racial disparities in incarceration increase acceptance of punitive policies,” Psychological Science (August 5, 2014). doi: 0956797614540307. 51. Ibid.; Dorfman and Schiraldi, Off Balance. 52. Hetley and Eberhardt, “Racial disparities in incarceration increase acceptance of unitive policies.” 53. Entman and Gross, “Race to judgment.” 54. L. A. Addington, “Cops and cameras: Public school security as a policy response to Columbine,” American Behavioral Scientist 52, no. 10 (2009): 1426– 1447; Thomas A. Birkland and Regina Lawrence, “Media framing after Columbine,” American Behavioral Scientist 52 (2009): 1404–1425; B. Frymer, “The media spectacle of Columbine: Alienated youth as an object of fear,” American Behavioral Scientist 52 (2009): 1387–1404.

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55. R. McCorkle and T. Miethe, Panic: Reality and Reality in the War on Street Gangs (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001). 56. F. D. Gilliam and S. Iyengar, “The superpredator script,” Nieman Reports 52 (Winter 1998): 45–52. 57. John J. Dilulio Jr., “The coming of the super-predators,” Weekly Standard, November 27, 1995. 58. Ibid.; Randall Shelden, Sharon K. Tracy, and William B. Brown, Youth Gangs in American Society. 2nd Ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2001); Walker, Spohn, and DeLone, The Color of Justice; Robin Templeton, “Superscapegoating: Teen ‘superpredators’ hype set stage for draconian legislation FAIR,” January 1, 1998. Retrieved October 1, 2015, from: http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/ superscapegoating/ 59. Nancy Stein, Susan Roberta Katz, Esther Madriz, and Shelley Shick, “Losing a generation: Probing the myths and reality of youth and violence,” Social Justice 24, no. 4 (1997). 60. Walker, Spohn, and DeLone, The Color of Justice; Riya Saha Shah, Esq. Lauren Fine, and Esq. Jamie Gullen, Juvenile Records: A National Review of State Law on Confidentiality, Sealing and Expungement (Philadelphia, PA: Center on Juvenile Law, 2014). 61. Howard Witt, “School discipline tougher on African Americans,” Chicago Tribune, September 5, 2007. 62. Ibid.; Victor Rios, Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys (New York: New York University Press, 2012); Ann Arnette Ferguson, Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001). 63. Victor Rios, Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys (New York: New York University Press, 2012); Ann Arnette Ferguson, Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001). 64. Jason Okonufua and Jennifer l. Eberhardt, “Two strikes: Race and the disciplining of young students,” Psychological Science 26, no. 5 (2015): 617–624 65. Ibid., 629, 623. 66. Phillip Atiba Goff and Matthew Christian Jackson, “The essence of innocence: Consequences of dehumanizing black children,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 106, no. 4 (April 2014): 526–545. 67. Ibid., 541.

Chapter 4 1. ACLU Press Release, “ACLU files lawsuit over unlawful sweep at Utah school targeting students of color,” ACLU, December 13, 2012. Retrieved from:

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https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-files-lawsuit-over-unlawful-sweep-utah-school -targeting-students-color 2. Brooke Adams, “ ‘Gang sweep’ at West High leads to a proposed classaction suit,” The Salt Lake Tribune, December 14, 2012. Retrieved from: http:// www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/55462826-78/gang-students-west-youth.html.csp 3. Winston v. Salt Lake City Police Department, et al., Complaint, Case 2:12-cv01134-PMW Filed 12/13/12. 4. Peter Wagner and Leah Sakala, Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie (Northampton, MA: Prison Policy Initiative, 2014). 5. Leah Sakala, Breaking Down Mass Incarceration in the 2010 Census: State-byState Incarceration Rates by Race/Ethnicity (Northampton, MA: Prison Policy Initiative, 2014); Wagner and Sakala, Mass Incarceration. 6. Ibid.; Sabrina Jones and Marc Mauer, Race to Incarcerate: A Graphic Retelling (New York: The Free Press, 2013). 7. Wagner and Sakala, Mass Incarceration. 8. Jones and Mauer, Race to Incarcerate. 9. Loı¨c Wacquant, “Class, race & hyperincarceration in revanchist America,” Daedalus 139, no. 3 (2010): 74–90. 10. Stephen Donzinger, The Real War on Crime: Report of the National Criminal Justice Commission (New York: Perennial, 1996). 11. Rose Brewer and Nancy A. Heitzeg, “The racialization of crime and punishment: Criminal justice, color-blind racism and the political economy of the prison industrial complex,” American Behavioral Scientist 51, no. 5 (2008): 625–644. 12. Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003). 13. Angela Davis, “Masked racism: Reflections on the prison industrial complex,” Colorlines, September 10, 1998. Retrieved October 1, 2015, from: http:// www.colorlines.com/articles/masked-racism-reflections-prison-industrial-complex 14. Wacquant, “Class, race & hyperincarceration in revanchist America.” 15. Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete?; Davis “Race and criminalization: Black Americans and the punishment industry,” in The Angela Y. Davis Reader. Ed. J. James (New York: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 61–73; Brewer and Heitzeg, “The racialization of crime and punishment”; Dorothy Roberts, “The social and moral cost of mass incarceration in African American communities,” Stanford Law Review 56, no. 127 (2004): 1271–1305. 16. Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Era of Color-Blindness (New York: The Free Press, 2010). 17. Jones and Mauer, Race to Incarcerate. 18. Samuel Walker, C. Spohn, and M. DeLone, The Color of Justice: Race, Ethnicity and Crime in America. 6th Ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2012). 19. Sakala, Breaking Down Mass Incarceration in the 2010 Census; Wagner and Sakala, Mass Incarceration.

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20. American Civil Liberties Union, The Persistence of Racial and Ethnic Profiling in the United States (New York: American Civil Liberties Union, 2009); American Civil Liberties Union, The War on Marijuana in Black and White (New York: American Civil Liberties Union, 2013). 21. Alexander, The New Jim Crow. 22. Ibid. 23. Walker, Spohn, and DeLone, The Color of Justice. 24. Alexander, The New Jim Crow. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid. 27. James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, “Broken windows,” Atlantic Monthly 249, no. 3 (1982): 29–38. 28. Randall Shelden, “Assessing ‘broken windows’: A brief critique,” Center of Juvenile and Criminal Justice, http://198.170 117 (2004); Jeffrey Fagan and Garth Davies, “Street stops and broken windows: Terry, race and disorder in New York City,” Fordham Urban Law Journal 28 (2000): 457. 29. Gary Stewart, “Black codes and broken windows: The legacy of racial hegemony in anti-gang civil injunctions,” Yale Law Journal 107, no. 7 (1998): 2249–2279; Loı¨c Wacquant, Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009); Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty (New York: Vintage Books, 1997). 30. Nicole D. Porter, Expanding the Vote: State Felony Disenfranchisement Reform, 1997–2010, Sentencing Project, 2010; Marc Mauer and Meda ChesneyLind, eds., Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment (New York: The New Press, 2003); Jeremy Travis, “Invisible punishment: An instrument of social exclusion,” in Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment. Ed. M. Mauer and M. Chesney-Lind (New York: The New Press, 2002), pp. 15–36. 31. Ibid.; Jones and Mauer, Race to Incarcerate. 32. Ibid. 33. A version of this section was originally published in Nancy A. Heitzeg, “Race, class and legal risk in the United States: Youth of color and colluding systems of social control,” Forum on Public Policy 2 (2008). 34. Kent v. U.S., 383 U.S. 541, 556–557 (1966); In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1 (1967); In Re Winship Citation: 397 U.S. 358 (1970); Barry C. Feld, “Race, politics, and juvenile justice: The Warren court and the conservative ‘backlash,’ ”Minnesota Law Review 87, no. 1447 (2003). 35. Joshua Rovner, Policy Brief: Disproportionate Minority Contact in the Juvenile Justice, Sentencing Project (Washington, D.C.: NAACP, 2014); NAACP, Interrupting the School to Prison Pipe-line (Washington, D.C.: NAACP, 2005). 36. Rovner, Policy Brief.

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37. Ibid.; Walker, Spohn, and DeLone, The Color of Justice. 38. Walker, Spohn, and DeLone, The Color of Justice. 39. National Gang Center, Compilation of Gang Legislation. Retrieved from: https://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/Legislation; Kim Strosnider, “Anti-gang ordinances after City of Chicago v. Morales: The intersection of race, vagueness doctrine, and equal protection in the criminal law,” American Criminal Law Review 39 (2002). 40. City of Chicago v. Morales, 527 U.S. 41 (1999); Strosnider, “Anti-gang ordinances after City of Chicago v. Morales”; Walker, Spohn, and DeLone, The Color of Justice. 41. Ibid. 42. Patrick Griffin, “National overviews,” State Juvenile Justice Profiles (Pittsburgh, PA: National Center for Juvenile Justice, 2007). Retrieved from: http://www.ncjj.org/stateprofiles 43. Marjorie Zatz and Richard Krekjer Jr., “Anti-gang initiatives as racialized policy,” in Crime Control and Criminal Justice: The Delicate Balance. Ed. Daniel Hawkins, Samuel Meyers, and Randolph Stone (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2003). 44. Linda S. Beres and Thomas D. Griffith, Demonizing Youth, 34 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 747 (2001). Retrieved from: http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/llr/vol34/iss2/9 45. Feld, “Race, politics, and juvenile justice.” 46. Griffin, “National overviews.” 47. Walker, Spohn, and DeLone, The Color of Justice. 48. Randall Shelden, Sharon K. Tracy, and William B. Brown, Youth Gangs in American Society. 4th Ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2013). 49. Rovner, Policy Brief; Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551, 569 (2005); Graham v. Florida, 130 S. CT. 2011 (2010); Miller v. Alabama, 132 S. Ct. 2455 (2012). 50. Griffin, “National overviews.” 51. Ibid. 52. Shah, Fine, and Gullen, “Juvenile records.” 53. Walker, Spohn, and DeLone, The Color of Justice. 54. Nancy A. Heitzeg, “Criminalizing education: Zero tolerance policies, police in the hallways, and the school to prison pipeline,” in From Education to Incarceration: Dismantling the School to Prison Pipeline. Ed. Anthony J. Noecella II, Priya Parmar, and David Stovall (New York: Peter Lang, 2014). 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid.; Daniel J. Losen and Jonathan Gillespie, Opportunities Suspended: The Disparate Impact of Disciplinary Exclusion from School (The Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the Civil Rights Project, August 2012). 57. Heitzeg, “Criminalizing education.” 58. Eric Eckholm, “With police in schools, more children in court,” New York Times, April 12, 2013; Kathleen Nolan, Police in the Hallways: Discipline in an Urban High School (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011).

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Notes

59. Stephen Donzinger, The Real War on Crime: Report of the National Criminal Justice Commission (New York: Perennial, 1996).

Chapter 5 1. Blue Telusma, “11-year old autistic boy handcuffed at school and later charged with a felony,” The Grio, April 12, 2015. Retrieved from: http://thegrio .com/2015/04/12/11-year-old-autistic-boy-handcuffed-at-school-and-later -charged-with-a-felony/ 2. Chris Zubak-Skees and Ben Winder, “A state-by-state look at students referred to law enforcement,” Center for Public Integrity, April 10, 2015. Retrieved from: http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/04/10/17074/state-state-look-students -referred-law-enforcement 3. Susan Ferriss, “Kayleb returned to court as schools alter discipline policies,” Center for Public Integrity, September 3, 2015. Retrieved from: http://www .publicintegrity.org/2015/09/03/17942/kayleb-returned-court-schools-alter -discipline-policies 4. Nancy A. Heitzeg, “ ‘Whiteness,’ criminality, and the double standards of deviance/social control,” Contemporary Justice Review: Issues in Criminal, Social, and Restorative Justice (2015). doi: 10.1080/10282580.2015.1025630. 5. Jamilah Codrington and Halford H. Fairfield, “Special education and the Miseducation of African American children: A call to action,” Position Paper of the Association of Black Psychologists (San Francisco, CA: Association of Black Psychologists, 2012). 6. U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Data Collection: Data Snapshot (School Discipline) (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, March 21, 2014). 7. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 5th Ed. (Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 2013). 8. Peter Conrad, The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007). 9. Ibid.; Heitzeg, “ ‘Whiteness,’ criminality, and the double standards of deviance/social control.” 10. Codrington and Fairfield, “Special education and the miseducation of African American children”; Javier I. Escobar, “Diagnostic bias: Racial and cultural issues,” Psychiatric Services (2012); M. Henley, R. S. Ramsey, R. F. Algozzine, Characteristics of and Strategies for Teaching Students with Mild Disabilities. 6th Ed. (New York: Pearson, 2008); Stephen P. Hinshaw and Andrea Stier, “Stigma as related to mental disorders,” Annual Review of Clinical Psychology 4 (2008): 367–393.

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11. Peter Conrad, “The shifting engines of medicalization,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 46, no. 1 (March 2005): 3–14; Peter Conrad and J. W. Schneider, Deviance and Medicalization: From Badness to Sickness. Rev. Ed. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998). 12. B. Le Cook and M. Alegrı´a, “Racial-ethnic disparities in substance abuse treatment: The role of criminal history and socioeconomic status,” Psychiatric Services 62, no. 11 (November 2011): 1273–1281. 13. Loı¨c Wacquant, “Class, race & hyperincarceration in revanchist America,” Daedalus 139, no. 3 (2010): 74–90. 14. Ibid.; Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality, Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS): 2000–2010. National Admissions to Substance Abuse Treatment Services, DASIS Series S-61, HHS Publication No. (SMA) 12-4701 (Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2012). 15. Ibid. 16. Cook and Alegrı´a, “Racial-ethnic disparities in substance abuse treatment”; Heitzeg, “ ‘Whiteness,’ criminality, and the double standards of deviance/social control.” 17. Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality, Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS). 18. Cook and Alegrı´a, “Racial-ethnic disparities in substance abuse treatment.” 19. E. Fuller Torrey et al., More Mentally Ill Persons Are in Jails and Prisons Than Hospitals: A Survey of the States (Arlington, VA: Treatment Advocacy Center, 2010). 20. Ibid. 21. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 5th Ed.; Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Rev. 3rd Ed. (Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 1987). 22. Hinshaw and Stier, “Stigma as related to mental disorders.” 23. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 5th Ed. 24. Council for Exceptional Children, “Understanding the differences between IDEA and Section 504,” Teaching Exceptional Children 34, no. 3 (2002). 25. Ibid. 26. Pacer Center, Emotional and Behavioral Disturbances (Minneapolis, MN: Pacer Center Inc., 2001). 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. Stephan P. Hinshaw and Richard M. Scheffler, The ADHD Explosion: Myths, Medication, Money and Today’s Push for Performance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). 30. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 5th Ed.

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31. American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, “What is ADHD?,” ADHD Resource Center, October 2014. Retrieved from: http://www .aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Resource_Centers/ADHD_Resource _Center/FAQ.aspx#question1 32. Peter Conrad, “The shifting engines of medicalization”; Conrad and Schneider, Deviance and Medicalization. 33. Hinshaw and Scheffler, The Explosion; J. Currie, “Health disparities and gaps in school readiness,” School Readiness: Closing Racial and Ethnic Gaps 15, no. 1 (2005); D. Safer and M. Malever, “Stimulant treatment in Maryland Public Schools,” Pediatrics 6, no. 55 (2000): 106. 34. Hinshaw and Scheffler, The Explosion. 35. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 5th Ed. 36. American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, “Children with oppositional defiant disorder,” Fact for Families Guide, July 2013. Retrieved from: http://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Facts_for_Families/ FFF-Guide/Children-With-Oppositional-Defiant-Disorder-072.aspx 37. National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities, NICHCY Fact Sheet No. 5: Emotional Disturbance (2004); Cheryl B. McNeil, Laura C. Capage, and Gwendolyn M. Bennett, “Cultural issues in the treatment of young African American children diagnosed with disruptive behavior disorders,” Journal of Pediatrics and Psychology 27, no. 4 (2002): 339–350. doi: 10.1093/ jpepsy/27.4.339. 38. American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, “Children with conduct disorder,” Fact for Families Guide, October 2014. Retrieved from: http://www.aacap.org/aacap/families_and_youth/Resource_Centers/Conduct _Disorder_Resource_Center/FAQ.aspx#cdfaq2 39. Codrington and Fairfield, “Special education and the miseducation of African American children”; Escobar, “Diagnostic bias”; Henley, Ramsey, and Algozzine, Characteristics of and Strategies for Teaching Students with Mild Disabilities. 40. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 5th Ed.; Daniel Losen, ed., Closing the School Discipline Gap: Equitable Remedies for Excessive Exclusion (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 2015). 41. U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Data Collection: Data Snapshot (School Discipline). 42. Daniel J. Losen, Jongeon Ee, Cher Hodson, and Tia Martinez, “Disturbing inequities: Exploring the relationship between racial disparities in special education identification and discipline,” in Closing the School Discipline Gap: Equitable Remedies for Excessive Exclusion. Ed. Daniel Losen (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 2015). 43. Ibid.; David Osher, “Issues facing youth with emotional and behavioral disturbances,” OSEP National Leadership Summit on Improving Results for

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Youth, June 15, 2005. Retrieved October 1, 2015, from: http://www.ncset.org/ summit05/docs/NCSET2005_1c_Osher.pdf 44. Codrington and Fairfield, “Special education and the miseducation of African American children,” 3. 45. Ibid., 4. 46. Ibid. 47. U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Data Collection: Data Snapshot (School Discipline) 48. Codrington and Fairfield, “Special education and the miseducation of African American children,” 2. 49. Lawrence M. Diller, Running on Ritalin (New York: Bantam, 1998); Escobar, “Diagnostic bias”; Henley, Ramsey, Algozzine, Characteristics of and Strategies for Teaching Students with Mild Disabilities. 50. U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Data Collection: Data Snapshot (School Discipline). 51. David M. Ramey, “The social structure of criminalized and medicalized school discipline,” Sociology of Education 88, no. 3 (2015): 181–201. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid. 54. Hinshaw and Scheffler, The ADHD Explosion; Daniel F. Connor, “Problems of overdiagnosis and overprescribing in ADHD,” Psychiatric Times, August 11, 2011; Diller, Running on Ritalin; A. Schwarz and S. Cohen, “A.D.H.D. seen in 11% of U.S. children as diagnoses rise,” New York Times, March 31, 2013; A. Schwarz, “The selling of attention deficit disorder,” New York Times, December 14, 2013. 55. Paul Morgan, P. Staff, M. Hillemeier, G. Farkas, and S. Maczuga, “Racial and ethnic disparities in ADHD diagnoses from kindergarten to eight grade,” Pediatrics 132, no. 85 (July 2013); Paul Morgan, P. Staff, M. Hillemeier, G. Farkas, and S. Maczuga, “Racial/ethnic disparities in ADHD diagnosis by kindergarten entry,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (January 24, 2014); Currie, “Health disparities and gaps in school readiness”; Safer and Malever, “Stimulant treatment in Maryland Public Schools.”

Chapter 6 1. Rebecca Klein, “All over the country, kids are getting shocked with Tasers and sprayed with chemicals in school,” Huffington Post, April 3, 2015. Retrieved from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/03/taser-pepper-spray-in-school_n _6882920.html 2. Tom Plotehski, “Bastrop Co. settles lawsuit with family of Tased high school student,” KVUE News, Houston, Texas, August 27, 2014. Retrieved from: http:// www.khou.com/story/news/local/texas/2014/08/27/bastrop-co-settles-lawsuit -with-family-of-tased-high-school-student/14705581/

146

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3. Klein, “All over the country.” 4. U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Data Collection: Data Snapshot (School Discipline) (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, March 21, 2014). 5. Daniel J. Losen and Jonathan Gillespie, Opportunities Suspended: The Disparate Impact of Disciplinary Exclusion from School (Los Angeles, CA: The Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the Civil Rights Project, August 2012). 6. A version of this section was originally published in Nancy A. Heitzeg, “Education not incarceration: Interrupting the school to prison pipeline,” Forum on Public Policy 2 (2009). 7. Catherine Kim, Daniel Losen, and Damon Hewitt, The School to Prison Pipeline: Structuring Legal Reform (New York: New York University Press, 2010). 8. Peter Wagner and Leah Sakala, Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie (Northampton, MA: Prison Policy Initiative, 2014). 9. Kim, Losen, and Hewitt, The School to Prison Pipeline. 10. Ibid. 11. Kate Taylor, “At a success academy charter school, singling out pupils who have ‘got to go,’ ” New York Times, October 29, 2015. Retrieved October 30, 2015, from: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/30/nyregion/at-a-success-academy-charter -school-singling-out-pupils-who-have-got-to-go.html?hp&action=click&pgtype =Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top -news&_r=0; Paul Buchheit, “Growing evidence that charter schools are failing,” Common Dreams, July 6, 2015. Retrieved from: http://www.commondreams .org/views/2015/07/06/growing-evidence-charter-schools-are-failing 12. Jacob Kang-Brown, Jennifer Trone, Jennifer Fratello, and Tarika DaftaryKapur, A Generation Later: What We’ve Learned about Zero Tolerance in Schools, Issue Brief 9 (New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2013); Georges Steffgen, Sophie Recchia, and Wolfgang Viechtbauer, “The link between school climate and violence in school: A meta-analytic review,” Aggression and Violent Behavior 18, no. 2 (2013): 300–309. 13. Advancement Project, Federal Policy, ESEA Reauthorization, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline (Washington, D.C.: Advancement Project, 2011); Eric Eckholm, “With Police in schools, more children in court,” New York Times, April 12, 2013; Justice Policy Institute, Education under Arrest: The Case against Police in Schools (Washington, D.C.: Justice Policy Institute, 2011); Losen and Gillespie, Opportunities Suspended. 14. Kang-Brown, Trone, Fratello, and Daftary-Kapur, A Generation Later. 15. Ibid. 16. Kim, Losen, and Hewitt, The School to Prison Pipeline. 17. American Psychological Association Zero Tolerance Task Force, “Are zero tolerance polices effective in schools? An evidentiary review and recommendations,” American Psychologist 63, no. 9 (December 2008): 852–862.

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18. Kang-Brown, Trone, Fratello, Daftary-Kapur, A Generation Later; Daniel Losen, Cheri Hodson, Michael A. Keith II, Katrina Morrison, and Shakti Belway, Are We Closing the School Discipline Gap? (Los Angeles, CA: The Center for Civil Rights Remedies, 2015). 19. The Schott Foundation for Public Education, The Urgency of Now: 50 State Report on Black Males and Education (Cambridge, MA: The Schott Foundation, 2012). 20. NAACP, Interrupting the School to Prison Pipe-line (Washington, D.C.: NAACP, 2005). 21. Advancement Project, Federal Policy. 22. Ibid. 23. Matthew Theriot, “School resource officers and the criminalization of student behavior,” Journal of Criminal Justice 37, no. 3 (2009): 280–287. 24. Barbara Raymond, Assigning Police Officers to Schools: Problem-Oriented Guides for Police Response Guides Series Guide No. 10. (Washington, D.C.: Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, Inc., 2010). 25. L. A. Addington, “Cops and cameras: Public school security as a policy response to Columbine,” American Behavioral Scientist 52, no. 10 (2009): 1426–1447; Thomas A. Birkland and Regina Lawrence, “Media framing after Columbine,” American Behavioral Scientist 52 (2009): 1404–1425; B. Frymer, “The media spectacle of Columbine: Alienated youth as an object of fear,” American Behavioral Scientist 52 (2009): 1387–1404. 26. Kathleen Nolan, Police in the Hallways: Discipline in an Urban High School (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011). 27. Justice Policy Institute, Education under Arrest; Chongmin Na and Denise C. Gottfredson, “Police officers in schools: Effects on school crime and the processing of offending behaviors,” Justice Quarterly (2011): 1–32. 28. Mariame Kaba and Erica Meiners, “Arresting education,” in Class Action: An Activist Teacher’s Handbook. Ed. Jacobin and Chicago Teachers CORE (Chicago, IL: Jacobin, 2015). 29. Birkland and Lawrence, “Media framing after Columbine.” 30. Na and Gottfredson, “Police officers in schools”; Theriot, “School resource officers and the criminalization of student behavior.” 31. Advancement Project, Testimony of Judith A. Browne Dianis, Co-Director, Advancement Project Hearing on Ending the School-to-Prison Pipeline before the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights, Senate Committee on the Judiciary (Washington, D.C.: Advancement Project, Wednesday, December 12, 2012); Justice Policy Institute, Education under Arrest. 32. Na and Gottfredson, “Police officers in schools”; Theriot, “School resource officers and the criminalization of student behavior.” 33. Losen and Gillespie, Opportunities Suspended. 34. Richard Arum and Doreet Preiss, “Law and disorder in the classroom,” Education Next 9, no. 4 (Fall 2009): 58–66.

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35. Marcy Rasmussen-Podkopacz and Barry C. Feld, “The back-door to prison: Waiver reform, blended sentencing, and the law of unintended consequences,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 91 (2001): 997; Losen and Gillespie, Opportunities Suspended. 36. Ibid.; Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565 (1975); Arum and Preiss, “Law and disorder in the classroom.” 37. Barry C. Feld, “Juvenile justice in Minnesota: Framework for the future,” in Justice Where Art Thou? (Minneapolis, MN: Council on Crime and Justice, 2007); Barry C. Feld, “Race, politics, and juvenile justice: The Warren court and the conservative ‘backlash,’ ” Minnesota Law Review 87 (2003): 1447. 38. Arum and Preiss, “Law and disorder in the classroom”; Losen and Gillespie, Opportunities Suspended. 39. Eckholm, “With police in schools, more children in court”; Nolan, Police in the Hallways. 40. Arum and Preiss, “Law and disorder in the classroom.” 41. Losen and Gillespie, Opportunities Suspended. 42. Ibid.; Arum and Preiss, “Law and disorder in the classroom”; Jack Ryan, “Use of force in schools,” School Resource and Training Institute, 2007. Retrieved from: http://www.school-training.com/newsletter/articles/school-use-of-force -07.shtml 43. Emma Brown, “Judge: Police can no longer pepper spray students for minor misbehavior at school,” Washington Post, October 1, 2015. 44. Ibid. 45. Advancement Project, Test Punish and Push-Out: How “Zero Tolerance” and High-Stakes Testing Funnel Youth into the School-to-Prison Pipeline (Washington, D.C.: Advancement Project, 2010); Howard Witt, “School discipline tougher on African Americans,” Chicago Tribune, September 5, 2007; David M. Ramey, “The social structure of criminalized and medicalized school discipline,” Sociology of Education 88, no. 3 (2015): 181–201. 46. Losen, Hodson, Keith II, Morrison, and Belway, Are We Closing the School Discipline Gap? 47. Ibid. 48. U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Data Collection: Data Snapshot (School Discipline). 49. Ibid.; Ramey, “The social structure of criminalized and medicalized school discipline.” 50. Losen, Hodson, Keith II, Morrison, and Belway, Are We Closing the School Discipline Gap? 51. Tamar Lewin, “Black students face more discipline, data suggests,” New York Times, March 6, 2012; U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Data Collection: Data Snapshot (School Discipline); Victor Rios, Punished:

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Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys (New York: New York University Press, 2011). 52. U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Data Collection: Data Snapshot (School Discipline). 53. Ibid.; Advancement Project, Test Punish and Push-Out; U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Data Collection: Data Snapshot (Opportunity Gap) (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2012). 54. Eckholm, “With police in schools, more children in court”; Nolan, Police in the Hallways. 55. U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Data Collection: Data Snapshot (School Discipline). 56. Ibid. 57. Monique W. Morris, Race, Gender and the School to Prison Pipeline: Expanding Our Discussion to Include Black Girls (New York: African American Policy Forum, 2012). 58. Ibid.; Jamilah Blake, Betty Ray Butler, and Danielle Smith, “Challenging middle-class notions of femininity: The cause of black female disproportionate suspension rates,” in Closing the School Discipline Gap: Equitable Remedies for Excessive Exclusion. Ed. Daniel Losen (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 2015). 59. Ramey, “The social structure of criminalized and medicalized school discipline.” 60. U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Data Collection: Data Snapshot (School Discipline); Losen and Gillespie, Opportunities Suspended; The Schott Foundation for Public Education, The Urgency of Now. 61. The Schott Foundation for Public Education, The Urgency of Now. 62. Kang-Brown, Trone, Fratello, and Daftary-Kapur, A Generation Later. 63. Losen and Gillespie, Opportunities Suspended; Bruce Western, Punishment and Inequality in America (New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006). 64. Anna Aizer and Joseph J. Doyle Jr., Juvenile Incarceration, Human Capital and Future Crime: Evidence from Randomly-Assigned Judges. No. w19102 (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2013). 65. Loı¨c Wacquant, “Class, race & hyperincarceration in revanchist America,” Daedalus 139, no. 3 (2010): 74–90.

Chapter 7 1. Julianne Hing, “The shocking details of a Mississippi school to prison pipeline,” Colorlines, November 26, 2012. Retrieved October 1, 2015, from: http:// www.colorlines.com/articles/shocking-details-mississippi-school-prison-pipeline

150

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2. Department of Justice Press Release, “Justice Department releases investigative findings showing constitutional rights of children in Mississippi being violated,” Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., August 10, 2012. Retrieved from: http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-releases-investigativefindings-showing-constitutional-rights-children 3. Department of Justice Press Release, “Justice Department files lawsuit in Mississippi to protect the constitutional rights of children: Department seeks declaratory, injunctive and equitable relief against city of Meridian, Lauderdale County and Mississippi Division of Youth Services,” Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., October 24, 2012. Retrieved from: http://www.justice.gov/ opa/pr/justice-department-files-lawsuit-mississippi-protect-constitutional -rights-children 4. Brentin Mock, “Good news in Mississippi: School to prison pipeline closes,” Colorlines, May 31, 2013. Retrieved October 1, 2015, from: http://www.colorlines. com/articles/good-news-mississippi-school-prison-pipeline-closes 5. Donna St. George, “School to prison pipeline hearing puts spotlight on student discipline,” Washington Post, December 13, 2012. Retrieved October 15, 2015, from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/school-to-prison -pipeline-hearing-puts-spotlight-on-student-discipline/2012/12/13/18503286-45 24-11e2-9648-a2c323a991d6_story.html 6. Ibid.; Advancement Project, Police in School Is Not the Answer to the Newtown Shootings (Washington, D.C.: Advancement Project, 2013); Justice Policy Institute, Education under Arrest: The Case against Police in Schools (Washington, D.C.: Justice Policy Institute, 2011); Catherine Kim, Daniel Losen, and Damon Hewitt, The School to Prison Pipeline: Structuring Legal Reform (New York: New York University Press, 2010). 7. Advancement Project, Testimony of Judith A. Browne Dianis Co-Director, Advancement Project Hearing on Ending the School-to-Prison Pipeline before the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights, Senate Committee on the Judiciary (Washington, D.C.: Advancement Project, Wednesday, December 12, 2012), p. 18. 8. Advancement Project, Federal Policy, ESEA Reauthorization, and the Schoolto-Prison Pipeline (Washington, D.C.: Advancement Project, 2011). 9. Dignity in Schools Blog, “Dignity in Schools Campaign Opposes Final ESEA Bill that Cuts Back Federal Accountability,” November 30, 2015. Retrieved from: http://www.dignityinschools.org/blog/dignity-schools-campaign-opposes-final -esea-bill-cuts-back-federal-accountability 10. Positive Behavior for Safe and Effective Schools Act, H.R. 3165, 112th Cong. (1st Sess. 2011). Retrieved from: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS -112hr3165ih/pdf/BILLS-112hr3165ih.pdf; The Keeping All Students Safe Act, S. 2020, 112th Cong. (1st Sess. 2011). Retrieved from: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/ pkg/BILLS-112s2020is/pdf/BILLS-112s2020is.pdf; The Ending Corporal

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Punishment in Schools Act, H.R. 3027, 112th Cong. (1st Sess. 2012). Retrieved from: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr3027ih/pdf/BILLS-112hr302 7ih.pdf; ACLU Written Statement of the ACLU Hearing on Ending the School-toPrison Pipeline before the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights, Senate Committee on the Judiciary (Washington, D.C.: ACLU, Wednesday, December 12, 2012). Retrieved October 25, 2015, from http://www .dignityinschools.org/files/Dec-12/ACLU_Senate_Testimony.pdf 11. Press Release, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Attorney General Holder, Secretary Duncan Announce Effort to Respond to School-to-Prison Pipeline by Supporting Good Discipline Practices (July 21, 2011). Retrieved from: http://www.justice.gov/ opa/pr/2011/July/11-ag-951.html 12. Advancement Project, Testimony of Judith A. Browne Dianis; Brentin Mock, “Good news in Mississippi: School to prison pipeline closes,” Colorlines, May 31, 2013. Retrieved October 1, 2015, from: http://www.colorlines.com/ articles/good-news-mississippi-school-prison-pipeline-closes 13. U.S. Department of Education, Guiding Principles for Improving School Climate and Discipline (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 2014). 14. U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Data Collection: Data Snapshot (School Discipline) (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, March 21, 2014); Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Data Collection: Data Snapshot (Opportunity Gap) (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2012). 15. U.S. Department of Education, Guiding Principles for Improving School Climate and Discipline. 16. Susan Ferriss, “Controversy over Cops in Schools Flare Anew,” Center for Public Integrity, March 5, 2013. Retrieved September 15, 2015, from: http://www .publicintegrity.org/2013/03/05/12269/controversy-over-cops-schools-flares-anew 17. Matthew Theriot, “School resource officers and the criminalization of student behavior,” Journal of Criminal Justice 37, no. 3 (2009): 280–287. 18. Advancement Project, Education on Lockdown: The School to Jailhouse Track (Washington, D.C.: Advancement Project, 2005); NAACP, Interrupting the School to Prison Pipe-line (Washington, D.C.: NAACP, 2005). 19. Solutions Not Suspensions Campaign, Stopping Out-of-School Suspensions: A Guide for State Policymakers (New York: Rockefeller Foundation December, 2012). 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. Ted Wachtel, “A shift away from zero tolerance will improve school discipline,” Christian Science Monitor (September 27, 2012). Retrieved September 16, 2015, from: http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2012/0927/A -shift-away-from-zero-tolerance-will-improve-school-discipline-video 23. Ferriss, “Controversy over cops in schools flare anew.”

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24. Ibid.; Richard Arum and Doreet Preiss, “Law and disorder in the classroom,” Education Next 9 no. 4 (Fall 2009): 58–66; Justice Policy Institute, Education under Arrest; Ashley Franz, “Cops in school: Is zero tolerance still the right approach?,” CNN, October 29, 2015. Retrieved October 30, 2015, from http:// www.cnn.com/2015/10/29/us/police-schools-punishment-zero-tolerance/; Theriot, “School resource officers and the criminalization of student behavior.” 25. Ferriss, “Controversy over cops in schools flare anew”; Justice Policy Institute, Education under Arrest. 26. Jamilah Codrington and Halford H. Fairfield, “Special education and the miseducation of African American children: A call to action,” Position Paper of the Association of Black Psychologists (San Francisco, CA: Association of Black Psychologists, 2012), pp. 15–16. 27. Solutions Not Suspensions Campaign, Stopping Out-of-School Suspensions. 28. Jacob Kang-Brown, Jennifer Trone, Jennifer Fratello, and Tarika DaftaryKapur, A Generation Later: What We’ve Learned about Zero Tolerance in Schools, Issue Brief 9 (New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2013); Alexandra Matos, “Minneapolis bans suspension of youngest students,” Star Tribune, September 5, 2014. Retrieved October 3, 2015, from: http://www.startribune.com/minneapolis -schools-ban-suspensions-of-youngest-students/274043091/; Alexandra Matos, “Despite moratorium, K-1 kids still getting suspended,” Star Tribune, October 23, 2015. Retrieved October 15, 2015, from: http://www.startribune.com/despite -minneapolis-moratorium-k-1-schoolkids-still-getting-suspended/330535511/; Press Release, “Seattle public schools places moratorium on out-of-school suspensions,” Seattle Public Schools, September 24, 2015. Retrieved from: https:// www.seattleschools.org/cms/One.aspx?portalId=627&pageId=2391903 29. U.S. Department of Education Positive Behavioral Intervention and Support, U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP). Retrieved from: https://www.pbis.org/ 30. Russell Skiba and Jeffrey Sprague, “Safety without suspensions,” Educational Leadership 66, no. 1 (2008): 38–43. 31. Ibid.; Kang-Brown, Trone, Fratello, and Daftary-Kapur, A Generation Later. 32. Scott Nakagawa, “Restorative and transformative justice: A comparison,” Justice Matters (Fall 2003). Retrieved October 1, 2015, from http://www.safetyand justice.org/node/173 33. Solutions Not Suspensions Campaign, Stopping Out-of-School Suspensions; Fania Davis, “Discipline with dignity: Oakland classrooms try healing instead of punishment,” Yes Magazine, February 19, 2014. Retrieved October 1, 2015, from: http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of -the-school-day; Patricia Leigh Brown, “Opening up, Students Transform a Vicious Circle,” New York Times, April 3, 2013. 34. Davis, “Discipline with dignity.”

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35. Ibid. 36. Jane Hereth, Mariame Kaba, Erica R. Meiners, and Lewis Wallace, “Restorative justice is not enough: School-based interventions in the carceral state,” in Disrupting the School-to-Prison Pipeline. Ed. Sofı´a Bahena, North Cooc, Rachel Currie-Rubin, Paul Kuttner, and Monica Ng (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2012). 37. Nakagawa, “Restorative and transformative justice.” 38. Hereth, Kaba, Meiners, and Wallace, “Restorative justice is not enough.” 39. Barbara Raymond, Assigning Police Officers to Schools: Problem-Oriented Guides for Police Response Guides Series Guide No. 10. (Washington, D.C.: Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, Inc., 2010); Matthew T. Theriot, “School resource officers and the criminalization of student behavior,” Journal of Criminal Justice 37, no. 3 (2009): 280–287. 40. Advancement Project Ending the Schoolhouse to Jailhouse: Clayton County, Georgia. Retrieved October 15, 2015, from: http://safequalityschools. org/pages/clayton-county-ga; Donna St. George, “Judge Steve Teske tries to keep kids with minor problems out of court,” Washington Post, October 17, 2011. Retrieved October 1, 2015, from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/ style/judge-steve-tes 41. Advancement Project Ending the Schoolhouse to Jailhouse. 42. St. George, “Judge Steve Teske tries to keep kids with minor problems out of court.” 43. Jane Meredith Adams, “State law encourages alternatives to school-based police while federal grants increase their presence,” EdSource, October 4, 2013. Retrieved October 1, 2015, from http://edsource.org/2013/school-police-under -greater-focus/39952 44. L. A. Addington, “Cops and cameras: Public school security as a policy response to Columbine,” American Behavioral Scientist 52, no. 10 (2009): 143; Thomas A. Birkland and Regina Lawrence, “Media framing after Columbine,” American Behavioral Scientist 52 (2009): 1387. 45. Henry Giroux, “Schools as punishing factories: Handcuffing education,” Truthout, August 6, 2015. 46. Stephen Ceasar, “Compton United fights a lawsuit over ‘children’s demons,’ ” Los Angeles Times, August 15, 2015. Retrieved October 1, 2015, from: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-compton-schools-trauma-lawsuit -20150820-story.html 47. Kay J. Whitlock and Nancy A. Heitzeg, “Smoke and mirrors: Essential questions about prison reform,” Truthout, October 30, 2014. Retrieved October 1, 2015, from: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/27006-smoke-and-mirrors -essential-questions-about-prison-reform 48. Phillip Atiba Goff and Matthew Christian Jackson, “The essence of innocence: Consequences of dehumanizing black children,” Journal of Personality

154

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and Social Psychology 106, no. 4 (April 2014): 526–545; Kathleen Welch, “Black criminal stereotypes and racial profiling,” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 23 (2007): 276. 49. Amy Goodman, “Angela Davis on the Prison Abolishment Movement, Frederick Douglass, the 40th anniversary of her arrest and President Obama’s first two years,” Democracy Now!, October 19, 2010. Retrieved October 1, 2015, from: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/10/19/angela_davis_on_the_prison_abolishment 50. Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003), p. 10.

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Index AAVE (African American English Vernacular), 25 ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder), 14–15, 70–72, 75, 79, 84, 96; definition, 77–79; and race, 78, 80 Advancement Project, 11, 23, 108 African Americans. See also Black girls; Black males; Black youth Alexander, Michelle, 42, 81 American Psychiatric Association (APA), 72 American Psychological Association, 93 Americans with Disabilities Act, 121. See also IDEA; Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 Anti–Drug Abuse Acts of 1986 and 1988, 57 Arrest, 7, 14, 34, 35, 50, 53, 57, 108, 108, 111; at school, 11, 67, 70, 84, 90–91, 93–99; by race and ethnicity, 60, 62, 65, 67, 70, 84, 96, 99 Asian Americans, 20, 21, 99 Association of Black Psychologists, 81, 82, 83 Black Codes, 48 Black escalation effect, 49 Black girls, 10, 80, 81; and suspension and expulsion, 100–102 Black males; and arrests, 60, 62, 65, 67, 70, 84, 96, 99; and disposability, 27–28; and dropout rates, and gang labeling, 46, 48; and graduation rates, 52, 85, 102, 109, 120; and incarcerations rates, 36–37, 43–47, 60–62; and inexperienced

teachers, 26–28; and media stereotypes, 36–37, 44–45; and medical labels, 73–75, 80–81; racialized double standards in labeling, 26–27, 48–50, 80–85, 91; and school segregation, 20–21; suspension and expulsion, 12–13, 91–92, 100, 102; teachers and implicit bias, 15, 35, 48–50, 107 Blackness, 14, 29, 30, 36, 40, 101 Black youth; and arrests, 60, 62, 65, 67, 70, 84, 96, 99; and disposability, 27–28; and dropout rates, and gang labeling, 46, 48; and graduation rates, and incarcerations rates, 36–37, 43–47, 60–62; and inexperienced teachers, 26–28; and media stereotypes, 36–37, 44–45; and medical labels, 73–75, 80–81; racialized double standards in labeling, 26–27, 48–50, 80–85, 91; and school segregation, 20–21; suspension and expulsion, 12–13, 91–92, 100, 102; teachers and implicit bias, 15, 35, 48–50, 107 Broken windows policing, 11, 24, 64, 95, 96 Brown v. the Board of Education, Topeka Kansas, 5, 18, 20, 25 Brown v. the Board of Education II, 19 Charter schools, 19, 23, 91, 108 Civil Rights Movement, 10 Code of the street, 27 Collateral consequences, 68–69 Color-blind racism, 5, 6, 16–17, 39–43, 99; and media construction of crime, 43–47

174

Index

Conduct Disorder, 75–79; definition, 80; and race, 79 Cool pose, 27 COPS in Schools, 8, 94 CRDC (Civil Rights Data Collection), 11–13, 84 Criminal-Black-Man Archetype, 43 Criminalization, 7, 11, 15, 24, 31, 39; of school discipline, 70, 72, 84–85, 95–97, 122; versus medicalization, 52–53, 62–66 Culture of fear, 45 Davis, Angela, 16, 55, 123 Desegregation, 19, 39, 40, 41 Deviance, 37, 39, 44; and double standards, 14–17, 49–50, 71, 73, 85, 107; medical model, 38, 44, 70–72; and race and ethnicity, 35–36 Discipline, 7–16; and alternatives to zero tolerance, 107–19; and criminalization, 70, 72, 84–85, 95–97, 122; and double standards, 12–16, 52–53, 62–66, 73–75, 80–81; and medicalization, 52–53, 62–66, 73–75, 80–81; and race and ethnicity, 12–16, 26–27, 48–50, 80–85, 91–92; and teachers, 15, 35, 48–50, 107; and zero tolerance, 7–9, 90–93 Disposable labor, 6, 27–29, 30, 67, 90, 102–3, 122 Divestment, 27–28, 30, 90 DOJ (U.S. Department of Justice), 8, 89, 94; and Meridian Mississippi, 106–107; and new guidelines for school climate and discipline, 110–12, 115 Double segregation, 19, 20, 21, 89 DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition), 14, 55, 72, 73, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82 Education, 4–5; alternative schools, 7, 111, 12, 109; criminalization of education, 7; and democracy, 3–4; drop-outs and push-puts, 7, 10; school funding, 5–6, 10, 19, 91, 94; and social control, 4–5,

14–15; teachers and implicit bias, 14–15, 27, 45, 48, 70, 72, 85; tracking, 14–15 Emotional Behavioral Disorder, 16, 75, 76, 111; race and ethnicity, 80–81, 83 ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Education Act), 9, 12, 13, 18, 19, 21, 27, 30, 40, 40, 42, 44–46; history of, 22–24; reauthorization, 110 ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act), 19, 23, 24, 25, 110 Gangs, 36: gang legislation, 60–62; and media, 43–47; and race and ethnicity, 46–47, 64–65 GFSA (Gun Free School Act of 1994), 8, 65, 91, 97 Giroux, Henry R., 4–5, 9, 27, 121 Goff, Phillip Atiba, 49 Goss v. Lopez, 97 Graduation rates, 52, 85, 102, 109, 120 High-stakes testing, 5, 10, 18, 23, 25, 26, 31, 83, 89, 121. See also ESSA; NCLB Hyper-incarceration, 7, 55, 66, 107. See also Mass incarceration IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), 14, 74–76, 111; race and ethnicity, 82–83, 99; and suspension and expulsion, 14, 110–11, 122 Implicit bias, 14–15, 27, 45, 48, 70, 72, 85 Incarceration rates, 16–17; and race and ethnicity, 11, 48, 56–58 Institutionalized racism, 27, 31, 80 Intellectual disability, 14, 75; definition, 80–81; race and ethnicity, 81 Jim Crow, 5, 18, 20, 40, 42–43, 56, 81 Judge Steven Teske, 119 Juvenile justice system, 11, 46–47, 52, 80, 91–99, 105, 109–11, 117; policy shifts, 59–66; and race and ethnicity, 60–61, 66, 107

Index Kent v. U.S., 59, 63 Labeling hype, 49 Latino/as: and arrests, 60, 62, 65, 67, 70, 84, 96, 99; and disposability, 27–28; and drop-out rates, and gang labeling, 46, 48; and graduation rates, 52, 85, 102, 109, 120; and incarcerations rates, 36–37, 43–47, 60–62; and inexperienced teachers, 26–28; and media stereotypes, 36–37, 44–45; and medical labels, 73–75, 80–85; racialized double standards in labeling, 26–27, 48–50, 80–85, 91; and school segregation, 20–21; suspension and expulsion, 12–13, 91–92, 100, 102; teachers and implicit bias, 15, 35, 48–50, 107 Mandatory minimum sentencing, 42, 66 Mass incarceration, 11, 42, 46, 48, 91, 122; incarceration rates, 16–17; and race and ethnicity, 11, 48, 56–58 Media, 6, 14; and crime coverage, 43–47; and gang coverage, 46–47, 60–63; and prison industrial complex, 50; race and crime, 36–37, 43–47, 60–62; and racial stereotypes, 27–28, 30–37, 91; and school-to-prison pipeline, 47–60; teachers and implicit bias, 46–50 Medical Industrial Complex, 69–71; and race, and ethnicity, 73–75; and schoolto-prison pipeline, 75–78, 84 Medicalization, 12, 15, 24, 39; definition, 70–73; and race and ethnicity, 73–75, 80–85; and school-to-prison pipeline, 75–78, 84; and youth, 76–78 Medical Model, 30, 32, 37, 44, 50, 74, 75, 85, 122; definition, 70–73; and race and ethnicity, 73–75 Minimum wage service sector, 19, 28, 52, 122 Morris, Monique W., 101 Multicultural curriculum, 26 NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), 16, 24

175

National Center for Education Statistics, 10, 84 Native Americans, 46, 81, 83 NCLB (No Child Left Behind), 10, 19, 21, 40, 121; connections to the school-toprison pipeline, 22–25; definition, 22–24 Neoliberalism, 4–6; privatization, 5–6, 28, 73; and school policies, 4–5 New Jim Crow, 40, 42, 56, 81 Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, 8 Oppositional attitudes, 26–27, 30 Oppositional defiant disorder, 15; definition, 79–80; race and ethnicity, 79 PBIS (Positive Behavior Intervention and Support), 114, 117, 121 Police in schools, 7, 10, 21, 30, 31, 35, 36, 60, 66, 84, 95, 114, 126; SROs, 7–9; use of force in schools, 8–9, 93–94 Post–Civil Rights Era, 16–18, 40, 122 Postindustrial capitalism, 4, 56 Preschool, 20, 21; suspension and expulsion, 14, 35, 48, 50, 91, 98, 99, 100, 103 Prison industrial complex, 11, 15, 29, 31, 36, 43, 59, 65; definition, 55; and race and race ethnicity, 53–55; and schoolto-prison pipeline, 65–67 Privatization, 5–6, 28, 73 Public order policing, 11, 24, 64, 95, 96 Race neutral, 12, 17, 41–42, 47–48, 102 Race to the Top, 21, 111. See also highstakes testing Racial disparity: and school discipline, 12–13, 91–92, 100, 102; and mass incarceration, 11, 48, 56–58 Racialized double standards, 26–27, 48–50, 80–85, 91 Resegregation, 18, 25, 28, 30 Restorative justice, 111, 114, 117–18

176

Index

Safe Schools Act, 8, 31, 65, 94, 108, 110 Safford Unified School District #1 et al. v. Redding, 98 School Climate and Discipline guidelines, 11–12 School-to-prison pipeline; defined, 6–7, 90–93; and disability, 14, 110–11, 122; police in the schools, 7, 10, 21, 30, 31, 35, 36, 60, 66, 84, 95, 114, 126; racial disparities in suspension and expulsion, 12–13, 91–92, 100, 102; racial disparity in arrests, 60, 62, 65, 67, 70, 84, 96, 99; remedies, 111–18; zero tolerance policies, 57, 59, 66, 70 School segregation, 5, 18, 19, 20, 21, 25, 28, 30, 40–41, 81, 85, 107 School shootings, 9, 95 School violence, 9, 92 Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 76, 77; and race and ethnicity, 83–85 Senate Hearings on School-to-Prison Pipeline, 102 Sexual orientation, 13 Special education, 14, 21, 24, 76, 77, 80; and race and ethnicity, 81–83. See also IDEA; Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 SROs (security resource officers), 8, 94, 119, 120. See also Police in schools Stigma, 10, 14, 29, 36–39, 47, 49, 70–71, 74–75, 77, 80, 82–83, 100, 122 Substance Use Disorders, 70, 73, 74 Super-predators, 36, 41, 46–47, 52, 65 Supreme Court of the United States, 5, 20. See also Brown v. the Board of Education; Brown v. the Board of Education II; Goss v. Lopez; Kent v. U.S.; Safford Unified School District #1 et al. v. Redding

Suspension and expulsion rates, 10–11; by race and ethnicity, 12–13, 91–92, 100, 102; by race and gender, 102 SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics), 9, 94 Tasers, 8, 89, 94, 96, 98, 101 Teachers, 7, 9; demographics, 23–27, 103, 114–16; and discipline, 48–50, 114–16, 121; implicit bias, 15, 35, 48–50, 107; and prison industrial complex, 27–29; and racialized double standards in labeling, 26–27, 48–50, 80–85, 91; and school-to-prison pipeline, 27–29; and testing, 23–24; training and experience, 1–3, 25–27, 103, 115–16 Transformative justice, 118 Treatment industrial complex, 11, 15. See also Medical Industrial Complex U.S. Department of Education, 12, 84, 99, 110 U.S. Department of Justice, 8, 89, 94; and Meridian Mississippi, 106–107; and new guidelines for school climate and discipline, 110–12, 115 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, 57 Waiver, 60, 63 War on Drugs, 9, 11, 29, 36; and gangs, 60; history of, 57–59; and mass incarceration, 52–56; and race and ethnicity, 42, 43, 84; and zero tolerance, 65, 66, 91 Whiteness, 39–40, 44, 58 White racial frame, 36, 39, 40 Zero tolerance policies, 7, 11; defined, 7–9, 90–93; and Drug War policies, 57, 59, 66, 70; and policy shifts, 110–11, 123; and race and ethnicity, 79–80, 99–101

About the Author Dr. Nancy A. Heitzeg is Professor of Sociology and Co-director of the interdisciplinary Critical Studies of Race/Ethnicity Program at St. Catherine University, St. Paul, Minnesota. Professor Heitzeg has written and presented widely on issues of race, class, gender, and social control with particular attention to the school-to-prison pipeline and the prison industrial complex. Her recent and forthcoming publications include: “#BlackLivesMatter: The Implications of Social Media for Movement in the United States and Beyond,” in Black Lives Matter: The Past, Present and Future of an International Movement for Rights and Justice, Centre for Race and Research, Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2016; “Broken Windows, Broken Lives and the Ruse of Public Order Policing,” Truthout and Create, McGraw-Hill, forthcoming 2016; On Ferguson, Special Edition of Proudflesh New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics, and Consciousness, co-editor with Rose Brewer, 2015; “Criminalization and Medicalization: The School to Prison Pipeline and Racialized Double-Standards of Disciplinary Control,” in The Race Controversy in American Education, Lillian D. Drakeford, PhD, Editor, Praeger, 2015; “On the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: Persistent White Supremacy, Relentless Anti-Blackness and the Limits of the Law,” Hamline Journal of Public Law and Policy, Spring 2015; “ ‘Whiteness’, Criminality, and the Double-Standards of Deviance/ Social Control,” in Contemporary Justice Review, Special Issue: Critical White Studies in Crime & Justice, 2015; “Criminalizing Education: Zero Tolerance Policies, Police in the Hallways, and the School to Prison Pipeline,” in From Education to Incarceration, 2014; “The High Cost of Profit: Racism, Classism and Interests against Prison Privatization,” in Prison Privatization: The State of Theory and Practice, Praeger, 2013; “Differentials in Deviance: Race, Class, Gender, and Age,” in The International Handbook of Deviant Behavior, Routledge, 2012; “The Racialization of Crime and Punishment: Criminal Justice, Color-Blind Racism and the Political Economy of the Prison Industrial Complex,” with Dr. Rose Brewer, which appeared in a special volume

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of American Behavioral Scientist: Micro-Level Social Justice Projects, Pedagogy, and Democratic Movements, Winter 2008. For the past six years, Professor Heitzeg has also been co-editor of an online blog series, Criminal InJustice, which is devoted to encouraging public education, dialogue, and action on issues of mass criminalization and incarceration.