Preparing for prison?: The criminalization of school discipline in the USA

1. Personal interview with the author in May 2002.

2. The Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights estimates that from 1974 to 1997 the rate of suspensions increased steadily from 3.7 percent of all students to 6.8 percent (Brooks et al., 1999). As states implemented zero tolerance policies during the 1990s, the number of expulsions mounted (Fuentes, 2003). In Chicago, officially recorded expulsions increased from 14 in 1992—3—before zero tolerance was enacted—to 737 in 1998—9 (Civil Rights Project, 2000).

3. It is true that virtually all the major stakeholders in education policy at the national level endorse alternative education programs for banished students (Boylan and Weiser, 2002). However, those who operate, staff, and fund such segregated school environments may come to define their purpose as the isolation and control (or even punishment) of a criminal population. Nolan and Anyon refer to urban forms of these settings as `new intermediary institutions that manage the stages between school and prison' (2004: 142).

4. During the 1999—2000 school year, African-American students comprised 17 percent of San Diego's students and 50 percent of those suspended for `disruption' or `defiance' (Applied Research Center, 2002).

5. Thanks largely to federal funding begun under the COPS program, urban, rural, and suburban schools all vastly expanded the number of school resource officers. By 1997, public schools hosted 9400 school resource officers (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2000). Their number mushroomed to 14,337 by 2003 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2006).

6. Even the West Paducah, KY high school that experienced one of the `rampage' shootings of the 1990s has greeted criminalization with ambivalence. According to the school's principal, the main goal of the school's SRO is to be a `positive role model' and `build trusting relationships with students' (Pascopella, 2005). Likewise, the morning ritual in which teachers search book bags and pat down students is couched in a way that rejects the rhetoric of coercion and criminalization in favor of a consumerist discourse. The school principal asserts, `We've tried to make it a Wal-mart greeter situation rather than, “I'm searching your book bag.” We try to make it a positive experience' (Pascopella, 2005).

7. Many inner-city schools, in their zealous pursuit of performance standards, have adopted rigid drill-based instruction and `proto-military' methods of classroom discipline (Duncan, 2000; Kozol, 2005). One may surmise that the importation of criminal justice tools and personnel helps to sustain this `pedagogy of direct command and absolute control' (Kozol, 2005: 64).

8. Becoming a `prison town' can sometimes be a mixed economic and social blessing (Huling, 2002).

9. Empirical research supports an inverse relationship between prison funding and school funding. For instance, Johnson (1996), in his study of `transcarceration' across social control institutions in the USA, finds that states' prison admission rates negatively predicted states' high school population rates, and that they were the only significant predictor in multivariate models.

10. This interpretation of classification and socialization practices should not be confused with the correspondence principle, which posits a functional correspondence between the needs of the social structure, labor market, or corporate elite and the practices of schools and teachers (Bowles and Gintis, 1976). The correspondence thesis has been challenged by work showing that teachers' perceptions of the labor market are fuzzy, misguided, and contested, and that schools' sorting and preparatory practices often fail to produce their intended results (Weis, 1990). With respect to explaining criminalization, however, it is not important whether these perceptions perfectly mirror objective conditions of the labor market or are actualized in student outcomes. It is important only that they shift substantially and correspondingly in response to structural changes and that they influence disciplinary practices.

11. The criminalization of schools evolves new forms as terrorism becomes the major axis for new public safety initiatives. Facing progressive cuts in federal funding for SROs, the 9000-strong National Association of School Resource Officers, along with school security consulting firms, have called for an Education Homeland Security Act to `fund school terrorism training, improve security and crisis planning' (Porteus, 2003).

12. http://www.vera.org/section2/section2_4.asp