The school-to-prison pipeline: a failed holding environment

Abstract

The deleterious impact of the school-to-prison pipeline (STPP) on minority youth in the United States, as well as the underlying sociocultural and political factors contributing to the pipeline, are well established. While the literature provides abundant evidence about the negative impact of secondary school punitive and exclusionary disciplinary policies on students’ behavioural and academic outcomes, consideration of the relational world of the school and its subjective impact is largely absent. This article contributes an examination of the relational world of schools to the analysis of the STPP and its developmental impact on youth of colour. By applying Diamond’s (2017; 2020) object relations approach to life in secondary schools, the article exposes how the STPP undermines schools’ capacity to provide a healthy holding environment. The article demonstrates how the school functions as a failed holding environment and concludes with case examples illustrating how psychodynamically informed school-based interventions are positioned to mitigate the toxic effects of the STPP on the identity development of adolescents of colour.