Minority youth are more likely to become incarcerated than white youth. This fact is so prevalent that even people outside the juvenile justice field are familiar with the term school-to-prison pipeline.
In an era when there’s an overall decline in the incarceration of youth, we are also seeing problematic practices regarding school discipline. The use of in- and out-of-school suspensions has nearly doubled since 1970 even though we know that suspensions serve to disrupt education and are not an effective tool for improving student discipline. Additionally, most of the students suspended are punished for relatively minor infractions — tardiness, unruliness — rather than violent behavior or drug use.
Yet suspensions are a key contributing factor in the school-to-prison-pipeline. Suspended students are more likely to become disengaged from school or to have to repeat a grade, both of which increases their likelihood to become criminal justice involved. It is well known that black students are disproportionately impacted by these draconian disciplinary policies.
[For more on this story by Kristina Kopic, go to http://jjie.org/2018/02/05/we-...h-with-disabilities/]
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