The School-to-Prison Pipeline

Our articles this week focused on two student populations that are often pushed into the school-to-prison pipeline. The case study “Smoking Guns or Smoke & Mirrors?: Schools and the Policing of Latino Boys” by Victor Rios and Mario Galicia outlines the issues faced by Latino students whose actions are scrutinized more closely than those of their white peers. They begin by recounting the story of four high-school students who were wrongfully accused of having a gun at a supermarket. “The white mother that witnessed the boys ‘grabbing whatever they could grab,’ panicked when she saw the boys in a conflict and apparently witnessed seeing a gun. She ran to the school to report the gun sighting to high school administrators. The school immediately reported the incident to local law enforcement and put the school’s students, staff, and administrators on lockdown until the investigation was over” (54). The boys in question had no idea they were even accused of a crime until they returned to school. “This misinformation and hysteria delivered by parents to other parents, the school, media, and social media exemplifies how, in an era of mass incarceration, schools, law enforcement, and community members perceive and interact with young Black and Latino boys as culprits and suspects, even before any concrete evidence arises against them” (55).  Unfortunately, there are many other stories that play out just like this one. People are quick to jump to judgement, and the repercussions for the accused students are greater and more impactful than many would know.

For Latino students, punishment for minor infractions is often more severe than for other students. “Since schools have the power to package, construct, label, and deem students as troublemakers and offenders, they often become a launching pad from which young people are catapulted into the criminal justice system. Schools have the power to determine the life-course outcomes of marginalized young people” (57). For these boys, who committed no crime, this sort of accusation can start the slippery slope from school to jail. Even as they try to return to their normal routines, the stigma remains. Any small misstep could be what leads them to suspension or worse. Students feel like they cannot trust authority figures, even if the students themselves are not breaking the rules.

When schools do not support their students, students turn elsewhere for validation. “Negative encounters with police, schools, and community centers led the boys into the streets to seek out older boys, with whom they would feel that they were affirmed and protected” (61). This is an unintended but common consequence of the biases of school administration. These punishments do nothing to help students, put push them further in the wrong direction.

Similar issues are faced by LGBTQ students, as described in “Messy, Butch, and Queer: LGBTQ Youth and the School-to-Prison Pipeline” by Shannon Snapp, Jennifer Hoenig, Amanda Fields, and Stephen Russell. These students represent another marginalized group in our schools, and one that often does not have support at home. In this case study, researchers ran focus groups in four different states in order to understand the experiences of these students. They found that “LGBTQ youth may be blamed, ignored, or even punished for behaviors that should elicit support rather than punishment from school staff” (59). These students are punished for PDA, self-expression through clothing choices, are often outed by administration, and sometimes are even blamed for their own mistreatment. This is a population that needs support, but in many cases cannot find it where they should.

As students are punished for minor infractions, they look for meaning and support in any way they can. According to an adult involved in the study, just like the Latino students, LGBTQ students “may be spending time at home while you’re expelled or on the streets, which may be getting you into other illicit activities...that end you up in jail” (73). This is a clear demonstration of how the school-to-prison pipeline acts as a way to incarcerate minority and other marginalized students. Schools leave these students with nowhere to turn, and create more problems than they solve.

What is crucial in these situations is that students are not denied their ability to learn. “Schools can serve as a ‘firewall’ that stops the flow of the pipeline for youth who may face multiple forms of oppression and marginalization” (77). As Dana Goldstein describes in The Teacher Wars, an education is considered a “passport from poverty”. Yet if we deny education to students by pushing them away from schools, societal divides only become larger. Luckily there are people out there willing to take on the system and make real changes.