The School to Prison Pipeline - Education, Discipline, and Double Standards

This book offers a research and comparison-driven look at the school-to-prison pipeline, its racial dynamics, the connections to mass incarceration, and our flawed educational climate-and suggests practical remedies for change.
How is racism perpetuated by the education system, particularly via the "school-to-prison pipeline?" How is the school to prison pipeline intrinsically connected to the larger context of the prison industrial complex as well as the extensive and ongoing criminalization of youth of color? This book uniquely describes the system of policies and practices that racialize criminalization by routing youth of color out of school and towards prison via the school-to-prison pipeline while simultaneously medicalizing white youth for comparable behaviors.

This work is the first to consider and link all of the research and data from a sociological perspective, using this information to locate racism in our educational systems; describe the rise of the so-called prison industrial complex; spotlight the concomitant expansion of the "medical-industrial complex" as an alternative for controlling the white and well-off, both adult and juveniles; and explore the significance of media in furthering the white racial frame that typically views people of color as "criminals" as an automatic response. The author also examines the racial dynamics of the school to prison pipeline as documented by rates of suspension, expulsion, and referrals to legal systems and sheds light on the comparative dynamics of the related educational social control of white and middle-class youth in the larger context of society as a whole.

About the author

Nancy A. Heitzeg, PhD, is professor of sociology and codirector of the interdisciplinary Critical Studies of Race/Ethnicity Program at St. Catherine University, St. Paul, MN.

Product details

• Authors: Nancy Heitzeg, Nancy A. Heitzeg, Heitzeg Nancy A.
• Publisher: Greenwood Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.01.2016
• EAN: 9781440831119
• ISBN: 978-1-4408-3111-9
• No. of pages: 235
• Series: Racism in American Institution; Racism in American Institution; Racism in American Institutions
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Education > General, dictionaries; USA, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Minority Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Penology, EDUCATION / Educational Policy & Reform / General, United States of America, USA, Ethnic groups and multicultural studies, Ethnic minorities & multicultural studies, Penology and punishment, Prisons, Multicultural education, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Biracial & Multiracial Studies, Educational strategies and policy