School-to-prison pipeline

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In the United States, the school-to-prison pipeline (SPP), also known as the school-to-prison link, school–prison nexus, or schoolhouse-to-jailhouse track, is the disproportionate tendency of minors and young adults from disadvantaged backgrounds to become incarcerated because of increasingly harsh school and municipal policies. Additionally, this is due to educational inequality in the United States. Many experts have credited factors such as school disturbance laws, zero-tolerance policies and practices, and an increase in police in schools in creating the "pipeline".^[1] This has become a hot topic of debate in discussions surrounding educational disciplinary policies as media coverage of youth violence and mass incarceration has grown during the early 21st century.^[1][2][3][4]

The term school–prison nexus in place of school-to-prison pipeline is sometimes used to challenge the idea of a unidirectional pipeline that begins in schools in order to show that schools work within a web of institutions, policies, and practices that funnel youth into prisons. Moreover, it may no longer operate as a "pathway" to prison but instead as a de facto prison.^[5]

The current climate of mass incarceration in the US increases the contact the incarceration system has with the US education system. More specifically, these patterns of criminalization translate into the school context.^[1] Specific practices implemented in US schools over the past 10 years^[when?] to reduce violence in schools, including zero-tolerance policies and an increase in school resource officers (SROs), have created the environment for criminalization of youth in schools. This results from patterns of discipline in schools mirroring law-enforcement models.

The disciplinary policies and practices that create an environment for the US SPP to occur disproportionately affect disabled, Latino, and Black students, which is later reflected in the rates of incarceration. Between 1999 and 2007, the percentage of Black students being suspended has increased by 12 percent, while the percentage of white students being suspended has declined since the implementation of zero-tolerance policies.^[6] Of the total incarcerated population in the US, 61 percent are Black or Latino.^[7]