Understanding, Dismantling, and Disrupting the Prison-to-School Pipeline

About this book

This volume examines the school-to-prison pipeline, which refers to a number of interrelated concepts and activities that most often include the criminalization of students, the police-like state found in many schools throughout the country, and the introduction of youth into the criminal justice system at an early age. The school-to-prison pipeline negatively and disproportionally affects communities of color throughout the United States, particularly in urban areas. While the academic conversation has consistently called the pipeline "school-to-prison," including the framing of many chapters in this book, the economic and market forces driving the prison-industrial complex urge us to consider reframing the pipeline as one working from "prison-to-school." Understanding, Dismantling, and Disrupting the Prison-to-School Pipeline points toward the tensions between efforts to articulate values of democratic education and schooling against practices that criminalize youth and engage students in reductionist and legalistic manners.--from back cover.