A School-to-Prison Pipeline?: Understanding the Relationship Between Exclusionary Discipline Juvenile Justice Contact Using School and Justice Administrative Data

Horace Duffy

Youths face negative outcomes due to punishment from school and justice systems. The school-to-prison pipeline argues school discipline leads to students becoming incarcerated as youths or adults. While studies suggest both an association and causal relationship between school discipline and juvenile justice contact, the lack of administrative data from schools and justice institutions limit the understanding of how suspensions and juvenile justice contact operate temporally. This paper fills in significant gaps in understanding the relationship between school discipline and juvenile justice. Using a unique dataset connecting school administrative data and juvenile justice administrative data, this papers explores the possible temporal link between school discipline and juvenile justice contact. This paper uses survival analysis to examine if suspensions increase the risk of juvenile justice contact. Preliminary descriptive and negative binomial regression suggests a relationship between exclusionary school discipline and justice contact exists.

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 Presented in Session 2. Children & Youth