Education versus Punishment? Silo Effects and the School-to-prison Pipeline

Abstract

Objectives: This article examines the influence of social context on punishment decisions. To this end, we present a theoretical framework to identify outcomes that can occur when police and probation officers work in schools. Method: The proposed framework draws on organizational theory as well as scholarship on school discipline and punishment and the effects of placing officers in schools. It also draws from insights gathered from site visits, interviews, and focus groups conducted as part of a process evaluation of a school-based delinquency prevention program. We then present data from interviews and focus groups with 41 school-based safety staff to examine the plausibility of the hypothesized framework. Results: We find that officers’ goals interact with the goals of school-based actors to influence punishment-related outcomes. We also find that officers are not always the more punitive force in the schools and that placing officers in schools may have positive as well as negative effects for youth. Conclusions: The findings suggest that current accounts of officers in schools are incomplete. Dynamic interactions may occur within organizational partnerships and should be considered when seeking to understand punishment decisions not only in schools but also in other settings.

#FreeGrace and the Racialized Surveillance State of COVID-19 Learning

“…The school-to-prison pipeline (STPP) is a construct used to describe policies and practices, especially with respect to school discipline, in the public schools and juvenile justice system that decrease the probability of school success for children and youth, and increase the probability of negative life outcomes, particularly through involvement in the juvenile justice system. (p. 546) An integral piece to the school-to-prison pipeline is this idea of "criminalization of school discipline" (Brent, 2016;Hirschfield 2008;Hirschfield & Celinska, 2011) which involves, as Brown et al (2020) describes, "adopted approaches, such as security measures and punitive sanctions, that reflected an emphasis on punishment rather than education" (p. 406). Research has shown that students of color are disproportionately affected by school disciplinary actions (Leiber, 2002;Annamma et al, 2014;Archer, 2009;Dutil, 2020).…”