The School-to-Prison Pipeline and the Limits of Metaphor

Abstract

A substantial body of literature documenting the “school-to-prison-pipeline” identifies the adverse effects of punitive school discipline policies and how they have increased the contact students have with the juvenile justice system. This literature tends to position school policies and the broader education system as a significant contributor – both directly and indirectly – to incarceration. Relying on data from California, our paper first argues that there is little evidence of a direct “school-to-prison pipeline,” as school discipline policies are rarely directly responsible for juvenile incarceration. Drawing from an extensive secondary literature on mass incarceration and data on incarceration and crime rates, the paper then argues that there is little reason to believe that school policy is a substantive indirect driver of incarceration rates. Finally, we show that activists and policymakers have adopted the STPP framework in ways that incorrectly suggest that changes in school policy are key to addressing incarceration. While the metaphor has proven to be morally evocative and catchy, attracting the attention of activists and politicians across the political spectrum, it ultimately obfuscates the complex realities of what drives punitiveness in schools and in society writ large.

Keywords:

• School-to-prison pipeline
• juvenile justice
• education
• mass incarceration
• political economy
• inequality
• California
• punitive

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Tona M. Boyd, “Confronting Racial Disparity: Legislative Responses to the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 44 (2009): 571–80; Catherine Y. Kim, Daniel J. Losen, and Damon T. Hewitt, The School-to-Prison Pipeline: Structuring Legal Reform (New York: New York University Press, 2010); Christopher A. Mallett, “The School-to-Prison Pipeline: A Critical Review of the Punitive Paradigm Shift,” Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal 33, no. 1 (2016): 2.

2 Kenneth McGrew, “The Dangers of Pipeline Thinking: How the School‐To‐Prison Pipeline Metaphor Squeezes Out Complexity,” Educational Theory 66, no. 3 (2016): 341–2.

3 In 2013 California had 7,917 youth in custody. The next highest states were Texas with 4,329 and Florida with 2,088 (American Civil Liberties Union, “America’s Addition to Juvenile Incarceration: State by State,” 2018). California has the 16th highest incarceration rate and roughly 14% of all juveniles in custody in the U.S. for 2015 were in California (Sentencing Project, “State-by-State Data,” 2017). In 2013–2014, California had the highest number of out-of- school suspensions, the 6th highest number of in-school-suspensions and the 2nd highest number of expulsions in the country (Annie E. Casey Foundation, “Kids Count Data Center,” 2018).

4 Data sources include: California Department of Education, California Department of Corrections, California Division of Juvenile Justice, and the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting.

5 Elizabeth Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016); Marie Gottschalk, Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016); Marie Gottschalk, The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Naomi Murakawa, The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); Mona Lynch, Sunbelt Justice: Arizona and the Transformation of American Punishment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009); Loïc Wacquant, “Deadly Symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh,” Punishment & Society 3, no. 1 (2001): 95–133; Loïc Wacquant, Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009); Lisa L. Miller, The Perils of Federalism: Race, Poverty, and the Politics of Crime Control (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); Sarah D. Cate, The Myth of the Community Fix: Inequality and the Politics of Youth Punishment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023).

6 Linda M. Raffaele Mendez, Howard M. Knoff, and John M. Ferron, “School Demographic Variables and Out-of-School Suspension Tates: A Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of a Large, Ethnically Diverse School District,” Psychology in the Schools 39, no. 3 (2002): 259–77; Matthew Steinberg and Johanna Lacoe, “What Do We Know About School Discipline Reform? Assessing the Alternatives to Suspension and Expulsions,” Education Next 17, no. 1 (2017): 44–52; Matthew Steinberg, Elaine Allensworth, and David W. Johnson, Student and Teacher Safety in Chicago Public Schools: The Roles of Community Context and School Social Organization (Chicago: Consortium on Chicago School Research 2011); Anthony A. Peguero and Nicole L. Bracy, “School Order, Justice, and Education: Climate, Discipline Practices, and Dropping Out,” Journal of Research on Adolescence 25 no. 3 (2015): 412–26; Linda M. Raffaele Mendez, “Predictors of Suspension and Negative Outcomes: A Longitudinal Investigation,” New Directions for Youth Development 99 (2003): 17–33; Rebecca Hinze-Pifer and Lauren Sartain, “Rethinking Universal Suspension for Severe Student Behavior,” Peabody Journal of Education 93, no. 2 (2018): 228–43. A 2008 review by the American Psychological Association Zero Tolerance Task found “despite 20 years of school implementation of zero tolerance policies, and nearly 15 years as federal policy, the research base on zero tolerance is in no way sufficient to evaluate the impact of zero tolerance policy and practices on student behavior or school climate” (American Psychological Association Zero Tolerance Task Force, 2008, p. 857). The Report ultimately concluded that the only conclusion that could be drawn from the evidence was that “Zero tolerance has not been shown to improve school climate or school safety” (860).

7 U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights. “Data Snapshot: School discipline,” (2014); Russell J. Skiba and others, “Race is Not Neutral: A National Investigation of African American and Latino disproportionality in School Discipline,” School Psychology Review 40, no. 1 (2011): 85–107; Mendez, “School Demographics.”

8 David Imbroscio, “Urban Policy as Meritocracy: A Critique," Journal of Urban Affairs 38, no. 1 (2016): 79–104; Gordon Lafer, The Job Training Charade (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002); Jacinda Swanson, “Economic Common Sense and the Depoliticization of the Economic,” Political Research Quarterly 61 no. 1 (2008): 56–67. As many scholars have pointed out, the tendency to “educationalize” social problems often downplays or completely ignores the role of political economy in the creation and maintenance of these problems, and falsely suggests education is the key to social transformation. See Allison Evans and Ian Hartshorn, “Education As The ‘Silver Bullet’: Bringing Politics Into The Study Of Social Mobility, Redistribution, And Education,” New Political Science 43, no. 3 (2021): 280–300; David Labaree, “The Winning Ways of a Losing Strategy: Educationalizing Social Problems in the United States," Educational Theory 58, no. 4 (2008): 447–60; Norton W. Grub and Marvin Lazerson, The Education Gospel (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009); Harvey Kantor and Robert Lowe, "Educationalizing the Welfare State and Privatizing Education," in Closing the Opportunity Gap: What America Must Do to Give Every Child an Even Chance, ed. Prudence L. Carter and Kevin G. Welner (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 25–39; Daniel S. Moak, From the New Deal to the War on Schools: Race, Inequality, and the Rise of the Punitive Education State (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2022).

9 For example, Anthony Grasso (2017) and Marie Gottschalk (2016) show respectively that goals of reforms such as increasing rehabilitative programs and reducing racial disparities are ineffective at checking contemporary punitive policies. While these goals are positive in their own right, they have historically become unwitting accomplices to a sprawling and abusive prison system because they do not address the underlying causes of mass incarceration. (See Anthony Grasso, “Broken Beyond Repair: Rehabilitative Penology and American Political Development,” Political Research Quarterly 70, no. 2 (2017): 394–407; Gottschalk, Caught.) Imbroscio offers a similar account from the realm of urban policy, arguing that liberal urban policy reforms based on a Meritocratic Paradigm of removing the barriers faced by the urban poor that they might reach their full potential are ultimately unlikely to improve the situation of the urban poor, and may actually make the situation worse. (Imbroscio, “Urban Policy as Meritocracy.”). Finally, Cedric Johnson argues a failure to take account of the class character of policing and police killing that has often led activists to push for technical fixes to these problems, rather than efforts to challenge the structural forces that produces disposable people. (See Cedric Johnson, After Black Lives Matter: Policing Anti-Capitalist Struggle (Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2023).

10 Daniel S. Moak and Sarah D. Cate, “The Political Development of Schools as Cause and Solution to Delinquency,” Journal of Policy History 34, no. 2 (2022): 180–212.

11 McGrew, “The Dangers of Pipeline Thinking,” 343–5.

12 Christina Pigott, Ami E. Stearns, and David N. Khey, “School Resource Officers and the School to Prison Pipeline: Discovering Trends of Expulsions in Public Schools,” American Journal of Criminal Justice 43, no. 1 (2018): 120–38; Boyd, “Confronting Racial Disparity”; Deborah N. Archer, “Introduction: Challenging the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” New York Law School Law Review 54 (2009): 867–72; Catherine Y. Kim, “Procedures for Public Law Remediation in School-to-Prison Pipeline Litigation: Lessons Learned from Antoine v. Winner School District,” New York Law School Law Review 54 (2009): 955–74; T. E. Dancy, “(Un)doing Hegemony in Education: Disrupting School-to-Prison Pipelines for Black Males,” Equity & Excellence in Education 47, no. 4 (2014): 476–93.

13 Russell J. Skiba, Mariella I. Arredondo, and Natasha T. Williams, “More than a Metaphor: The Contribution of Exclusionary Discipline to a School-to-Prison Pipeline,” Equity & Excellence in Education 47, no. 4 (2014): 548.

14 Dancy, “(Un)doing Hegemony,” 476–7.

15 Nancy A. Heitzeg, “Education or Incarceration: Zero Tolerance Policies and the School to Prison Pipeline,” Forum on Public Policy Online 2 (2009); Aaron Curtis, “Tracing the School-to-Prison Pipeline from Zero-Tolerance Policies to Juvenile Justice Dispositions,” Georgetown Law Journal 102 (2013): 1260–1; Mallett, “The School-to-Prison Pipeline,” 20–1.

16 Archer, “Introduction,” 868; Mallett, “The School-to-Prison Pipeline,” 21; Matthew W. Burris, “Mississippi and the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” Widener Journal of Law, Economics & Race 3 (2011): 2; Curtis, “Tracing the School-to-Prison Pipeline.” The vast majority of scholars that the write about the direct causal STPP connection do not argue that the pipeline is only the result of a direct mechanism - but rather argue that STPP is the result of both direct and indirect mechanisms. However, the distinction is still import to make, as they involve different causal claims.

17 Skiba et al., “More than a metaphor,” 551.

18 Aaron Kupchik and Akilah Alleyne, “Sowing the Seeds of Future Justice System Disparities: School Punishment and the School-to-Prison Pipeline," in Handbook on Punishment Decisions, ed. Jeffrey T. Ulmer and Mindy S. Bradley-Engen (New York: Routledge, 2017), 67–80.

19 Elizabeth D. Cramer, Liana Gonzalez and Cynthia Pellegrini-Lafont, “From Classmates to Inmates: An Integrated Approach to Break the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” Equity & Excellence in Education 47, no. 4 (2014): 461–75; Skiba et al., “More than a Metaphor”; Chauncee D. Smith, “Deconstructing the Pipeline: Evaluating School-to-Prison Pipeline Equal Protection Cases Through a Structural Racism Framework,” Fordham Urban Law Journal 36 (2009): 1009–49.

20 Johanna Wald and Daniel Losen, “Defining and Redirecting a School‐to‐Prison Pipeline,” New Directions for Student Leadership 99 (2003): 11; Pigott et al., “School Resource Officers,” 124; Jerrad M. Mills, “From the Principal's Office to Prison: How America's School Discipline System Defies Brown,” University of San Francisco Law Review 50 (2016): 529.

21 Mallett, “The School-to-Prison Pipeline,” 21.

22 For example, Nancy Heitzeg writes of the school policies that “are designed, by intent or default, to insure an endless stream of future bodies into the prison industrial complex. Heitzeg, “Education or Incarceration,” 7.

23 Kenneth J. Fasching-Varner and others, “Beyond School-to-Prison Pipeline and Toward an Educational and Penal Realism,” Equity & Excellence in Education 47, no. 4 (2014): 410–29; Dancy, “(Un)doing Hegemony”; Smith, “Deconstructing the Pipeline.”

24 David Stovall, “Schools Suck, but They're Supposed to: Schooling, Incarceration and the Future of Education,” Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy 13, no. 1 (2016): 2; Quaylan Allen and Kimberly A. White-Smith, “‘Just as Bad as Prisons’: The Challenge of Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline Through Teacher and Community Education,” Equity & Excellence in Education 47, no. 4 (2014): 445.

25 Smith, “Deconstructing the Pipeline,” 1027.

26 Fashing-Varner et al., “Beyond School-to-Prison Pipeline,” 425.

27 Stovall, “Schools Suck,” 2; see also Allen and White-Smith, “Just as Bad as Prisons,” 445.

28 Julissa O. Muñiz, “Exclusionary Discipline Policies, School-Police Partnerships, Surveillance Technologies, and Disproportionality: A Review of the School to Prison Pipeline Literature,” The Urban Review 53 (2021): 742.

29 Kayla Crawley and Paul Hirschfield, “Examining the School-to-Prison Pipeline Metaphor,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice (2018), https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.346, https://oxfordre.com/criminology/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.001.0001/acrefore-9780190264079-e-346.

30 Muñiz, “Exclusionary Discipline Policies,” 740; see also Decoteau Irby and Kylee Coney, “The Gun-Free Schools Act: Its Effects 25 Years Later and How to Undo Them,” Peabody Journal of Education 96, no. 5 (2021): 494–507.

31 Mallett, “The School-to-Prison Pipeline,” 18.

32 Paul J. Hirschfield, “Preparing for Prison? The Criminalization of School Discipline in the USA,” Theoretical Criminology 12, no. 1 (2008): 79–101.

33 Russell J. Skiba and Kimberly Knesting, “Zero Tolerance, Zero Evidence: An Analysis of School Disciplinary Practice,” New Directions for Student Leadership 92 (2001): 17–43; Mallett, “The School-to-Prison Pipeline”; Shawn C. Marsh, “School Pathways to Juvenile Justice System Project,” Reno, NV: National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (2014).

34 Mallett, “The School-to-Prison Pipeline.”

35 Cate, The Myth of the Community Fix.

36 David Steinhart, “Objective Juvenile Detention Criteria: The California Experience,” in Reforming Juvenile Detention: No More Hidden Closets, ed. Ira M. Schwartz and William H. Barton (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1994), 47.

37 Daniel Macallair, “California Juvenile Justice Reform and SB 81: Testimony of Daniel Macallair,” Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, (2007).

38 Mike Males, “California Youth Continue Steep Declines in Arrests,” Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, (2017).

39 Sarah D. Cate, “The Politics of Prison Reform: Juvenile Justice Policy in Texas, California and Pennsylvania,” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2016). The overall decline in youth incarceration has not been this dramatic, as many youth are now held at the county – rather than state – level in secure facilities, however there is still an overall decline in the youth incarceration rate.

40 Mallet, “The School-to-Prison Pipeline,” 15.

41 The data for column 2 and column 3 in Table 2 is not directly comparable, as the disciplinary numbers are reported on a school year basis, whereas the data for referrals from schools are reported on an annual basis. The data from column 3 are reported from the year that the school year first began, so the school year 2011–2012 would align with the data from annual year 2011.

42 In Table 2, data for column 2 and column 3 is not directly comparable, as the number of arrests are reported on a school year basis, whereas the data for referrals from schools are reported on an annual basis. The data from column 2 are reported from the year that the school year first began, so the school year 2011–2012 would align with the data from annual year 2011.

43 The case is either closed at intake, or youth are given informal probation, diversion, transferred, directly filed to adult court or a petition is filed. If a petition is filed (about 50% of all referrals), the youth is then given a “disposition” which can be wardship (own or relative’s home, secure county facility, non-secure county facility, other public or private agency, or the Division of Juvenile Justice), dismissed, diversion, informal probation, non-ward probation, or remanded to adult court.

44 Gottschalk, Caught.

45 Mills, “From the Principal's Office,” 539.

46 Ibid.

47 Hinton, From the War on Poverty; Gottschalk, Caught; Gottschalk, The Prison and the Gallows; Murakawa, The First Civil Right; Todd R. Clear and Natasha A. Frost, The Punishment Imperative: The Rise and Failure of Mass Incarceration in America (New York: New York University Press, 2014); Michael Tonry, Punishing Race: A Continuing American Dilemma (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Lynch, Sunbelt Justice; Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2012); Wacquant, “Deadly Symbiosis”; Wacquant, Punishing the Poor; Vanessa Barker, The Politics of Imprisonment: How the Democratic Process Shapes the Way America Punishes Offenders (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Miller, The Perils of Federalism; Gilmore, Golden Gulag; Jonathan Simon, Governing Through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Jeremy Travis, Bruce Western and F. Stevens Redburn, eds., The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2014); Bruce Western, Punishment and Inequality in America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006); Ryan S. King, Marc Mauer and Malcolm C. Young, “Incarceration and Crime: A Complex Relationship,” The Sentencing Project (2005), https://static.prisonpolicy.org/scans/sp/inc_crime.pdf.

48 Gottschalk, Caught, 128.

49 Travis, Western and Redburn, The Growth of Incarceration.

50 Gilmore, Golden Gulag.

51 Simon, Governing Through Crime.

52 McGrew, “Dangers of Pipeline Thinking.”

53 For example, all the following organizations work directly on the STPP: Tavis Smiley Foundation, Advancement Project, National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, GLSEN, National Opportunity to Learn Campaign, Center for Juvenile Justice, Everychild Foundation, Schott Foundation, Tow Foundation, Educational Law Center, RespectAbility, and Justice Policy Institute.

54 Dignity in Schools “Mission Statement,” (2017), http://dignityinschools.org/about-us/mission/.

55 Advancement Project, “School-to-Prison Pipeline,” (2018), https://advancementproject.org/issues/stpp/; American Bar Association, “Reversing the School to Prison Pipeline,” (2018), https://www.americanbar.org/groups/diversity/racial_ethnic_justice/projects/StPP.html; American Civil Liberties Union, “School to Prison Pipeline,” (2022), https://wp.api.aclu.org/issues/racial-justice/race-and-inequality-education/race-and-inequality-education-school-prison-pipeline; Anti-Defamation League, “Brown v. Board of Education 60 Years Later,” (2014), https://www.adl.org/media/10369/download; Kyle Bacon, “The School-to-Prison Pipeline’s Role in Criminal Justice Reform,” National Committee to Responsive Philanthropy (2015), https://www.ncrp.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/RP_Fall15_Bacon.pdf; Dignity in Schools “Mission Statement”; Education Law Center, “Stopping the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” (2018), https://www.elc-pa.org/stopping-the-school-to-prison-pipeline/; Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, “Dropout, Push-Out, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” (2018), https://www.glsen.org/article/dropout-push-out-and-school-prison-pipeline; NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, “Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” (2005), http://www.naacpldf.org/files/case_issue/Dismantling_the_School_to_Prison_Pipeline.pdf; National Education Association, “Discipline and the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” (2016), https://ra.nea.org/business-item/2016-pol-e01-2/; Amanda Petteruity, “Education Under Arrest: The Case Against Police in Schools,” Justice Policy Institute (2011), http://www.justicepolicy.org/research/3177; Rethinking Schools, “Stop the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” (2017), https://www.rethinkingschools.org/articles/editorial-stop-the-school-to-prison-pipeline; The Schott Foundation, “School Discipline Overview,” (2018), http://schottfoundation.org/issues/school-discipline/overview; Southern Poverty Law Center, “Children’s Rights,” (2018), https://www.splcenter.org/issues/childrens-rights.

56 Frederick M. Hess and Max. C. Eden, “When School-Discipline ‘Reform’ Makes Schools Less Safe,” National Review (2017), https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/12/progressive-school-discipline-reform-hurting-students-parents/; Dianna Muldrow, “School Discipline in Texas: Past, Present, and Future,” Texas Public Policy Foundation (2016), http://rightoncrime.com/2016/08/school-discipline-in-texas-past-present-and-future/; Right on Crime, “Some Common Sense Limits on Arresting School Kids,” (2011), http://rightoncrime.com/2011/10/some-common-sense-limits-on-arresting-school-kids/.

57 Alex Altman, “Koch Brother Teams Up With Liberals on Criminal Justice Reform,” Time January 29, 2015, http://time.com/3686797/charles-koch-criminal-justice/; Muldrow, “School Discipline in Texas.”

58 Muldrow, “School Discipline in Texas”; Andrew J. Coulson, “‘Zero Tolerance.’ Causes, Consequences, and Alternatives,” Cato Institute (2012), https://www.cato.org/publications/congressional-testimony/zero-tolerance-causes-consequences-alternatives.

59 American Civil Liberties Union, “Letter to Vice President Biden with Recommendations for the Gun Violence Task Force,” January 11, 2013, https://www.aclu.org/other/aclu-letter-vice-president-biden-recommendations-gun-violence-task-force.

60 Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President on ‘My Brother’s Keeper’ Initiative,” February 27, 2014, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/02/27/remarks-president-my-brothers-keeper-initiative.

61 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Ending the School-to-Prison Pipeline: Hearings before the Committee on the Judiciary, 112th Cong., 1st sess., 2012.

62 2016 Democratic Party Platform, (2016), https://www.demconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Democratic-Party-Platform-7.21.16-no-lines.pdf (2016).

63 Donald J. Trump, “Remarks at McGlohon Theatre at Spirit Square in Charlotte, North Carolina, October 21, 2016,” The American Presidency Project (2016), https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/319630.

64 For example, Republican Governor John Kasich launched an initiative in 2014 called “Ohio Communities 4 Kids” that is aligned with the national movement to end the school to prison pipeline (Schubert Center for Child Studies, “Governor’s Office Launches OC4K Initiative to Keep Ohio Kids Out of Juvenile Justice System,” (2014), http://schubert.case.edu/2014/02/ohio-communities-4-kids/). In 2015, Republican Governor Bruce Rauner signed into law legislation aimed at combating the STPP (Nicole Lafond, “Activists Hail New Law on Schools Discipline; Districts Say Few Changes Needed,” The News-Gazette, August 27, 2015, http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2015-08-27/activists-hail-new-law-school-discipline-districts-say-few-changes-needed.html). In Georgia, a bill proposed by Republican State Senator John F. Kennedy has received bipartisan support including from Republican Governor Nathan Deal (Maggie Lee, “Kennedy Bill Targets ‘School-to-Prison Pipeline’,” The Telegraph, February 17, 2016, http://www.macon.com/news/politics-government/article60837946.html). Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe of Virginia created an initiative called “Classrooms not Courtrooms” to deal with the STPP (Jennifer L. McClellan, “Let’s Shut Down the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, January 23, 2016, http://www.richmond.com/opinion/their-opinion/guest-columnists/mcclellan-let-s-shut-down-the-school-to-prison-pipeline/article_5b22b801-56c4-5774-b4f9-2b2ce4213960.html). Democratic Governor Jerry Brown signed several pieces of legislation into law geared towards dismantling the STPP (Tom Loveless, “2017 Brown Center Report on American Education: Race and School Suspensions,” Brookings (2017), https://www.brookings.edu/research/2017-brown-center-report-part-iii-race-and-school-suspensions/).

65 See Mallett, “The School-to-Prison Pipeline”; Curtis, “Tracing the School-to-Prison Pipeline”; Chandra Bozelko, “To Fix School-to-Prison Pipeline, Start with Charter Institutions,” USA Today, March 16, 2018, https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/policing/spotlight/2018/03/16/fix-school-prison-pipeline-start-charter-institutions/385818002/; and Danfeng Soto-Vigil Koon, “Education Policy Networks: The Co-Optation, Coordination, and Commodification of the School-to-Prison Pipeline Critique,” American Educational Research Journal 51, no.1 (2020): 371–410.

66 American Civil Liberties Union, “School to Prison Pipeline”; NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, “Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline”; American Bar Association, “Reversing the School to Prison Pipeline”; National Education Association, “The School-to-Prison Pipeline.”

67 American Civil Liberties Union, “School to Prison Pipeline.”

68 Southern Poverty Law Center, “Removing Police From Schools,” (2021), https://www.splcenter.org/news/2021/09/14/removing-police-schools-inaugural-learning-justice-magazine-includes-story-explaining-how; Southern Poverty Law Center, “SPLC: DOJ Settlement in School-to-Prison Pipeline Case Will Protect Mississippi Children,” (2015), https://www.splcenter.org/news/2015/06/19/splc-doj-settlement-school-prison-pipeline-case-will-protect-mississippi-children; Southern Poverty Law Center, “SPLC Launches ‘School to Prison Reform Project’ to Help At Risk Children Get Special Education Services, Avoid Incarceration,” (2007), https://www.splcenter.org/news/2007/09/11/splc-launches-school-prison-reform-project-help-risk-children-get-special-education; American Bar Association, “Reversing the School to Prison Pipeline.”

69 Southern Poverty Law Center, “Removing Police From Schools.”

70 For more context on the limitations of legal solutions to social problems see Lisa Miller’s critique of “legalism.” Miller, The Perils of Federalism; Lisa L. Miller, “What’s Violence Got to do with it? Inequality, Punishment, and State Failure in US Politics," Punishment & Society 17, no. 2 (2015): 184–210.

71 Los Angeles Sentinel, “Governor Brown Signs Assemblyman Joes-Sawyer’s Bill That Will Help End the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” Sentinel Wire, September 18, 2018, https://lasentinel.net/governor-brown-signs-assemblyman-jones-sawyers-bill-that-will-help-end-the-school-to-prison-pipeline.html.

72 McGrew, “Dangers of Pipeline Thinking.”