Examining the School-to-Prison Pipeline Metaphor (2024)

Utility of the Metaphor

One of the clear benefits of the STPP metaphor is its ability to raise awareness and alarm. The slogan “school-to-prison pipeline” provides jarring visual imagery and a simple narrative. The term resonated with both journalists seeking a sensational angle and advocacy organizations pushing for change in school discipline policy.

As mentioned, in 2011 Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Attorney General Eric Holder launched the Supportive School Discipline Initiative. The official press release states that the collaborative initiative addresses the “‘school-to-prison pipeline’ and the disciplinary policies that can push students out of school and into the justice system.”4 The use of this term signals that the metaphor was already well established in political discourse as government leaders began to take on school discipline as a focal issue. Following this announcement, in December of 2012, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights held hearings, which were anchored to the pipeline metaphor (Kupchik, 2014).

The metaphor joins together multiple processes within schools and criminal justice under a single system. This conceptual integration helps galvanize and legitimize coalitions of stakeholders across institutional domains that seek to reduce exclusionary and criminalizing practices and expand disciplinary alternatives such as school-based restorative justice (Hernandez & Lance, 2016). The STPP model highlights the processes that produce parallel racial inequalities across social settings. The expanded definition of what qualifies as illegal school misconduct, as well as the growing prominence of law enforcement within education increase the concordance between schools and criminal justice. The pipeline framework emphasizes the negative impact of exclusionary discipline and school-based criminal justice interactions. Through this lens, exclusionary school policies and practices seem to prepare youth for an adulthood marked by a heavy police presence and diminished civil rights (Foucault, 1979; Kupchik, 2014).

Critiques of the Metaphor

Despite STPP’s strong political, social justice and advocacy benefits, the academic utility of the metaphor is less clear (Hirschfield, 2012; McGrew, 2016). Scholars have asserted that the STPP metaphor lacks theoretical elucidation (McGrew, 2016) and complexity (Kupchik, 2014; Hirschfield, 2012). Theories of resistance, social reproduction, as well as political economy tend to be conspicuously absent from, or improperly situated within, the school-to-prison pipeline literature (McGrew, 2016). In addition, pipeline proponents often fail to confirm the theoretical validity of the pipeline and use it as a stand-in for theory itself (McGrew, 2016). Aside from inadequate theoretical grounding, some aspects of the model risk calling too much policy attention to some factors and too little to others. First, the connection between schools and prisons is much more indirect than some images of the STPP convey. Close examination reveals that statements about the role of law enforcement in schools are, in some cases, rhetorically inflated. For example, most students who commit code of conduct infractions at school are not arrested; they are rather penalized through some form of exclusionary discipline like in-school or out-of-school suspension (Fabelo et al., 2011; Kupchik, 2014). School-based court referrals are common in many jurisdictions, but police in schools rarely provide a direct pathway to incarceration.

Although school-based arrests are infrequently used in some places to address student misconduct problems (Fabelo et al., 2011), exclusionary discipline and future criminal justice involvement are strongly correlated (Wald & Losen, 2003; Noguera, 2003; Skiba, 2014; Skiba et. al., 2014). However, leading proponents of the metaphor often fail to document exactly how school exclusion facilitates involvement in the criminal justice system. While the school-to-prison pipeline metaphor connotes a direct pathway from school exclusion to prison, there is a much more complicated and intricate relationship that exists between these two entities. Figure 1 depicts the most direct path.

In this figure, school exclusion is highlighted as the sole vehicle that drives juvenile justice involvement. The model fails to elaborate the intermediary steps between school exclusion and justice system involvement. Skiba, Arrendondo, and Williams (2014) specify such intermediary processes in a second model (see Figure 2).

This expanded model includes other factors such as school climate, achievement, and behavior that influence the outcome of school exclusion. These factors are considered to be additive, compounding the likelihood of involvement in the criminal justice system. An even more detailed pipeline model (see Figure 3) has no clear start or end, emphasizing the multidirectional nature of the processes that contribute to justice system involvement over the short and long terms (Hirschfield, 2012).

This model includes multiple experiences that can help forge a pathway to prison. Each factor overlaps and interacts with the others, creating a web of forces that eventuate in incarceration. This model emphasizes the indeterminate nature of the pipeline process. Hirschfield emphasizes macro processes that shape the course to prison, while acknowledging the unique experiences of individual students that include potential diversions or interruptions. Hirschfield’s (2012) model challenges the uni-directional pipeline visual by explaining that whereas some students are advanced to the next stage of the process, others manage to avoid or delay negative outcomes. Moreover, the same student could enter (and reenter) the process at different stages of his or her life, challenging the determinacy of the pipeline metaphor. Hirschfield also presents an alternate model that depicts success pathways becoming more narrow, precarious, and blocked, leading students to fall through the cracks. Rather than a deliberate channeling of youth through stages of exclusion and criminalization, Hirschfield’s model depicts a probabilistic narrowing of legitimate alternatives to criminal justice involvement. Such alternative models highlight the role of schools alongside systems of child welfare and other social services in shaping the risk of incarceration (Kupchik, 2014).

Mass Incarceration

Theoretical and empirical work on mass incarceration and the so-called prison industrial complex developed alongside the increased salience of the school-to-prison pipeline metaphor (McGrew, 2016). The prison industrial complex describes the network of economic and political elites who draw power and wealth from the expansion of prisons. The literature links developments in the political economy (e.g., deindustrialization) with multiple social problems such as school failure, unemployment, and incarceration. Scholars such as Hirschfield articulate how the shift toward over-incarceration had a direct impact on school policy. Many legislators responsible for education policy and funding also have vested interests in an expanding penal system that provides population-based political benefits (e.g., representation), as well as an economic boost to their jurisdiction. Therefore, such legislators have little incentive to direct funds away from prisons into schools (Hirschfield, 2008). Criminal justice expansion also leaves states and school districts with fewer resources to spend on effective prevention and curricular reform, making school exclusion and criminalization the most economically viable means to address chronic student misconduct. Lastly, Hirschfield (2008) points out that the criminal justice expansion afforded schools an army of security consultants ready to help schools address crime and fear while demonstrating allegiance to a “get tough” politics of crime.

Patterns of racial disproportionality provide grounds for another notable comparison between mass incarceration and STPP. Black and Latino males are hyper-criminalized even in non–criminal justice spaces (including schools) in such a way that the control and punishment of black and brown youth has taken precedence over their growth and development (Rios, 2011). Similarly, Wacquant highlights the links between multiple “peculiar institutions” (Wacquant, 2000) that serve to control African Americans in myriad ways. Much like how Angela Davis suggests that incarceration has become the primary vehicle through which difficult social problems such as addiction and mental illness are addressed (Davis, 1998), schools have adopted strategies similar to courts when dealing with challenging behavior in learning environments (Wilson, 2014). As Wilson (2014) denotes specifically, the idea of applying predetermined punishments for specific behavioral offenses is a practice schools have adopted in the era of zero-tolerance discipline that closely mirrors criminal justice procedures. As previous research reviewed in this article has shown, these sorts of practices most acutely impact African American youth and Latino youth (in select contexts). When these policies and practices are codified into law, it is easy for these youths to get entangled in systems that seemingly work together.

Critical Race Theory

The school-to-prison pipeline metaphor borrows ideologically from Critical Race Theory (CRT), the legal studies theory that seeks to explain the ways in which laws, including those regulating education, perpetuate racial inequality without explicitly discriminating. CRT emerged in the 1970s as a movement of scholars and activists who bemoaned the fact that the civil rights era produced only modest, liberal reforms that had limited material impact on most minorities in the United States (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012). CRT is variously defined in the literature, but common themes, interests, and principles unite CRT scholars under a common agenda. CRT holds that white supremacy and systems of hierarchy lock communities of color into marginalized positions over time, irrespective of legal reforms (Crenshaw, 1995; Bell, 1980). According to one of the founders of CRT (Crenshaw, 1995), white supremacy is built into our political and legal structure and is therefore resistant to liberal reforms. Structurally embedded racism seems ordinary and natural, as it is now advanced through race-neutral practices.

Within a CRT perspective, races are not consciously targeted for zero-tolerance discipline. Rather, school codes and informal disciplinary mechanisms direct disproportionate penal scrutiny to behaviors that African American and Latino students are either more likely to commit or be perceived as committing (Skiba et al., 2002). For example, Skiba, Michael, Nardo, and Peterson (2002) found that African American and Latino students were more likely to be disciplined for disrespect, talking loudly or minor threats. It is the very existence of vague and expansive categories such as insubordination and willful defiance—an institutional feature—that makes it possible for black and Latino students to be disproportionately swept into the disciplinary process. Some researchers claim that national data show that racial disparities in suspensions reflect racial differences in misbehavior (Wright et al., 2014). However, their net “black effect” is likely smaller than that observed in other studies, because their analysis controls for other indicators and sources of racial bias such as percent of black enrollment, parental perceptions of school quality, and early teacher reports of misbehavior—all of which could be infused with racial bias.

CRT helps to explain how seemingly race-neutral practices have racially disparate consequences. According to CRT scholars, while liberal reforms seemingly promote the rights of the marginalized and underserved, they simultaneously legitimize the widespread use of restrictive definitions of merit, fault, and causation (Crenshaw, 1988). It is possible that the struggle for dignity and legitimacy was waged with such vigor that anyone who fell outside of a normalized Western standard for behavior and aptitude were deemed undeserving of protection under the law. Rigid school discipline practices can be viewed as examples of these inflexible standards, in which the pursuit of a narrowly defined path to excellence has squeezed out students who fall outside of the set of prescribed cultural norms and learning styles.

Critical Race Theory Applied to Education

Scholarship that applies CRT principles to education helps provide context for the STPP metaphor. In the first published application of CRT to education, Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995) elucidated how education perpetuates poverty and disadvantage, namely through the coupling of property rights and race. Framing school discipline in the context of property rights within education (i.e., the premise that education belongs to some and not others) illuminates how some students are deemed undeserving of consideration for academic, financial, and cultural realities not conveniently aligned with white cultural norms and furthermore are sanctioned for non-white cultural practices (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Watts & Erevelles, 2004).

Property rights within education also include the right to exclusion (Harris, 1993), a primary outcome of zero-tolerance discipline and the main mechanism of STPP. In 2010, Sullivan and colleagues linked zero-tolerance discipline in Texas to two certain elements of CRT, the permanence of racism and a critique of liberalism. They argue that historically discriminatory ways of thinking about minority youth and violence yield racially disparate outcomes in school discipline. A confluence of additional factors including the spread of gang activity into suburbs, and an increasingly punitive criminal justice system, led to a tightening of school disciplinary procedures over both criminal and non-criminal behaviors. The punitive shift in school discipline was accomplished with ostensibly race-neutral school safety and disciplinary initiatives that, in fact, targeted behaviors and demeanors implicitly associated with race. This system ignores influences on student behavior that may not be the fault of the student, such as economic circ*mstances and family environment. Elements of critical race theory help to contextualize the racially disproportionate outcomes examined in STPP research.

Governing Through Crime

There are other theoretical links to the STPP metaphor that bring broader understanding to the pipeline metaphor and why these policies and practices exist. Criminalization is a broad term used to describe a range of political and social processes that result in behaviors such as abortion and stalking becoming illegal (Hirschfield, 2008). The term also has specific relevance for school discipline. As Hirschfield (2008) points out, serious crimes on school grounds such as weapons possession and drug offenses are often subject to mandated police referrals. Moreover, the infusion of law enforcement into schools has also resulted in various acts of student misconduct (e.g., minor fights, running in the hallways, insubordination and rudeness, etc.) being redefined as criminal behavior (Fabelo et al., 2011).

Some scholars have linked school criminalization to broader political and economic shifts that resulted in the control and punishment of crime becoming a more viable mission of governance than redistributive aims. The government prioritization of crime resulted in a vastly expanded crime control infrastructure. The imperative to govern through crime transformed not only crime policy at the highest levels but also filtered to the local level and to government agencies that were traditionally separate from criminal justice like schools and child welfare. Sustained by a stable criminal justice infrastructure and a crime-fixated media, crime control has become well cemented into America’s social fabric. This approach to governance has seeped into school policies and practices, and crime governance has transformed the general function of education for our communities and the country at large. However, the process of criminalization has not occurred in a monolithic fashion across the country. Rather, school disciplinary and security practices show great variability across schools, districts and states (Hirschfield, 2008). Whereas policies that were initially restricted to schools with an actual violence problem expanded to school districts nationwide (Simon, 2007), criminalization assumed milder and more flexible forms in whiter and more affluent contexts (Hirschfield, 2008, 2009).

The Safe Schools Act of 19945 cemented and nationalized zero-tolerance policies in schools by providing financial incentives for schools to adopt codes that comply with state mandates for the removal of a student from class.6 This focus lead to further exclusion of students deemed in violation of the new policies. This legislation imposed a number of requirements (e.g., standardized data collection, reporting crimes to police) that made crime more visible and commensurable, and thereby amenable to state regulation (Simon, 2007). The next hallmark of federal reform, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 enacted by the Bush administration, punished educational failure, a symbolic mode of governing through crime (Simon, 2007).7 This legislation links educational failure and crime as ills of the American school system that can and should be addressed together, adding to the already well-cemented influence on schools to align with funding pathways that support environments where crimes are identified. This made it more appealing to sweep more forms of student misbehavior under the umbrella of crime or possible crime. The “dangerous schools” provisions also incentivized making the knowledge of crimes on school grounds salient on an organizational level. However, competing evidence suggests that some schools were incentivized to decriminalize their environments in order to stay off the radar of state overseers (National School Safety and Security Services, 2016).

These processes are also racialized. Assessing schools on the basis of standardized test scores (along with safety measures) without providing resources to increase students’ enrichment and engagement incentivizes schools to exclude those students who will hurt schools’ “bottom line” (Figlio, 2006). Moreover, disciplinary and criminal codes afford enforcement agents considerable discretion in targeting students for exclusion or arrest on the basis of disruptive or disorderly behavior. This dynamic systematically disadvantages poor students of color, especially African Americans, in two ways. First and foremost, these students are much more likely than white students to attend schools that face such exclusionary pressures coupled with more limited resources to pursue non-exclusionary alternatives. Second, as noted previously, in the context of racially diverse schools, cultural biases on the part of predominantly white and middle-class school professionals result in more behaviors of youth of color being perceived and classified as disorderly or disruptive (Shedd, 2015). School personnel are more likely to project bleak or criminal adult futures onto black students (Noguera, 2003; Rios, 2006), which likely contributes to harsher disciplinary outcomes for black students (Hirschfield, 2008). Teachers’ anticipatory labeling of students, school administrators, and school police officers may, in turn, influence students’ vision for their own future (Hirschfield, 2008; Noguera, 2003). The ubiquitous and internalized labeling of urban minority males as criminals is a feature of the “youth control complex” (Rios, 2011), the network of community, law enforcement, and teachers that view urban youth as deviant, which steers them away from schools and toward criminal justice (including within school contexts) (Rios, 2011). As products of their experiences, these youths form identities around their involvement with the criminal justice system more so than a promising future of opportunity.

These theoretical links illustrate the myriad ways in which schools came to function as a conduit to criminal justice. The pathways are numerous and include political actors who incentivize schools toward criminalization, school personnel whose personal and professional discretion determine which students end up on the track toward juvenile justice involvement through classroom and school exclusion. Students’ choices and self-efficacy are shaped by the external circ*mstances of a criminalized school, coupled with the realities they may face in their communities.

The pipeline metaphor is useful for characterizing the predictable pathways that many students follow en route to incarceration. Most STPP models properly depict multiple pathways between school punishment and criminal justice involvement. The image of a progressively punitive “pipeline” emphasizes that movement through each stage increases the odds of moving through successive stages. Criminological theories such as cumulative disadvantage are helpful for understanding movement through the pipeline (Mowen & Brent, 2016). That said, a pipeline is not the only way of characterizing the interrelationship between school and justice system experiences. Other metaphors and models are needed that take into account the role of individual agency, reverse pathways (e.g., returns to school following dropout or incarceration), and other social and government institutions (e.g., social service and treatment agencies).

Limitations of the STPP model aside, the devastating short- and long-term consequences of school punishment and criminalization for targeted students, and for their families and communities, are real (Kupchik, 2016). Various states and local jurisdictions are beginning to acknowledge the negative consequences of merging educational and the criminal justice processes.

Restorative Justice and Restricting the Use of Police

The criminal justice system provides a template not only for swiftly removing students from school but also for helping offenders repair the harm their crimes have done to victims and the community. Reforms have been instituted across the country that target various aspects of STPP, such as the hyper-exclusionary zero-tolerance discipline practices that target minor offenses, schools’ tendencies to refer disciplinary problems to law enforcement, and the discriminatory manner in which these sanctions are levied. This section will provide examples of successful efforts underway to dismantle the pipeline, including restorative justice programs, PBIS (Positive Behavioral Intervention Services), and diversion programs.

Numerous jurisdictions have adopted school-based restorative justice to supplement or partially supplant exclusionary approaches. For example, Denver, Colorado, was a forerunner in the shift from punitive to restorative justice as an explicit effort to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline. Padres y Jovenes Unidos, a coalition of parents and students backed by the Advancement Project, took aim at discriminatory school disciplinary practices in Denver.9 Reform initiatives targeted multiple aspects of STPP. First, they reduced suspensions by training thousands of educators in restorative justice practices and revising the district’s disciplinary code. Second, new disciplinary codes mandated that schools make less use of suspensions and expulsions and implement more restorative and therapeutic alternatives. Lastly, an Intergovernmental Agreement was reached between Denver Public Schools and the Denver Police Department that focused on redefining the role of police in schools, with a focus on distinguishing between disciplinary issues and crime (Hirschfield, 2018). As a result, schools experienced reductions in the use of exclusionary discipline and the racial disparities that persist therein. Between 2005 and 2015 out-of-school suspensions fell by 64%, and referrals to law enforcement fell by 31% in Denver (Hirschfield, 2018). Evidence also suggests academic improvement in reading levels and graduation rates as a result of these reforms.

Numerous other jurisdictions have followed Denver’s lead. Oakland has seen comparable gains from their restorative justice programs. Local reforms, like Oakland’s, are sometimes spurred by federal investigative and enforcement actions, which explicitly aimed to address the STPP. Under federal scrutiny, Oakland expanded and revised their disciplinary practices in schools. They later joined Los Angeles and Pasadena in banning suspensions for willful defiance and prohibiting school officials from involving law enforcement to address violations of school rules and nonviolent offenses (Hirschfield, 2018). With the recent blessing of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing (2015), administrators have limited the scope of police responsibilities within schools. For example, districts such as Baltimore, Buffalo, Chicago, and Fort Wayne reduced the number offenses for which schools can refer students to law enforcement (Hirschfield, 2018). Other jurisdictions such as Broward County, Sedgwick County (Kansas), and Cambridge (Massachusetts) mandated that police resort to arrest less frequently and refer students to diversion programs (Hirschfield, 2018).

It is important to note that restorative justice reforms do not address the special needs of students with chronic behavioral problems and disorders and who account for a disproportionate share of students subject to harsh and exclusionary policies (Palley, 2004; Dickinson & Miller, 2006; Fabelo et al., 2011). One way to reduce school exclusion is to provide treatment and support that effectively prevent further misbehavior. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs promoted the implementation of Positive Behavioral Intervention Services (PBIS), equipping states and school districts with additional resources to train individuals supporting children with disabilities, in positive, non-punitive responses to misconduct including rewards systems, revised teaching expectations that accommodate different learning styles, and more intensive interventions that are multitiered and culturally responsive.10 PBIS has proven benefits including reducing suspensions and dropout (Horner et al., 2010).

Considering Trauma

Trauma has not typically been factored into school disciplinary decisions. However, trauma, whether due to exposure to violence, poverty, racism, or other negative life events, can impact the life of a student much like war trauma affects military veterans. In 2015, public counsel and Irell & Manella LLP filed a lawsuit against the Compton Unified School District on behalf of teachers and students, asserting that students experiencing trauma had been punished and excluded more than supported and provided with a healthy school learning environment. The plaintiffs and their supporters mandated that practices be implemented to support students suffering from emotional trauma, similar to those that assist students with physical and learning disabilities.11

The mandates made by the plaintiffs in this case are in line with other trauma-centered alternatives implemented by other states (e.g., Massachusetts): providing mental health services for high-risk students, trauma-informed training for educators and school staff, teaching emotional coping skills to students, and creating restorative strategies to keep students in the classroom.12 The claims in this lawsuit also bolster research suggesting the importance of trauma in explaining differential involvement by race and gender in the school disciplinary process. For example, in her analysis of the overrepresentation of black girls in school discipline, Morris (2015) notes that many black girls in trouble at school have been overexposed to racial and gender-based oppressions including violence (sexual and otherwise), which can contribute to defiant behaviors at school such as violations of the dress code. Morris calls for educators and school staff to recognize the “centrality of trauma and the conditions that affect black girls’ actions.” (Morris, 2015, p. 50). Morris (2015) calls for healing-informed learning spaces in which teachers and school staff employ empathic discipline (which has proven successful in reducing the incidence of out-of-school suspension), unbiased curriculum, and a focus on college and career readiness.

The Teske Model

In Clayton County, Georgia, Chief Juvenile Court Judge Steve Teske implemented a comprehensive program that has inspired similar reforms around the country.13 The “Teske Model” explicitly aims to disrupt the flow of students from schools to juvenile courts. As many of the previously mentioned critiques of the pipeline metaphor state, the issue is complex, involving multiple social stakeholders including law enforcement, schools, and social services. Judge Teske takes a holistic approach to school discipline, recognizing that actions and inactions on the part of various interdependent entities push students into courts (Hirschfield, 2012). Systemic analysis of the problem in Clayton County revealed that schools essentially transferred responsibility for addressing behavioral issues to the juvenile justice system because schools lacked the resources to manage all students’ behavioral needs. To address the challenges to improving school-based and prevention and disciplinary policy, the juvenile court and its partnering agencies created a county-funded, team-based service entity that includes a mental health professional, the school’s social worker, a social services professional, a juvenile court officer, other service providers, and a trained facilitator provided by the courts (Teske et al., 2013). To further reduce referrals, the school district and the chief of police signed an agreement that mandated a three-step procedure would be followed for students who committed misdemeanor offenses at school, where referral to the juvenile courts would be a last resort after receiving a warning on the first offense and a conflict skills workshop on the second (Teske et al., 2013).

Like the desegregation of schools, many of the recent efforts to dismantle STPP have been spurred and overseen by the federal government. Other states such as Connecticut,14 North Carolina,15 Kentucky,16 Virginia,17 and others have pursued reforms similar to those described here. Local reform efforts have encountered some pushback from entrenched interest groups such as teachers associations. Some teachers and school administrators have complained that reforms curtail one of the few available tools to ensure student and staff safety (e.g., suspensions) without providing them effective resources to replace exclusionary discipline. Disciplinary alternatives, when implemented with few resources and in contexts with “entrenched punitive logics” may come to function as disguised, alternative forms of exclusion (see Brent, 2017).