The role of K-12 schools in sentencing children to life in prison: examining the impact of race and classroom discipline

This article investigates pre-incarceration schooling experiences of Black men who were sentenced to life in prison as children. Further, we explore the long-term effects of these harmful schooling practices and directly implicate schools as primary contributors to negative life outcomes for Black children sentenced to life in prison. Despite the uniform role of schools, their influence on children condemned to die behind bars from a developmental and life-course perspective remains relatively unexplored. This study aims to bridge this research gap by examining the role of schools within a developmental and life-course framework and by employing the Black radical tradition. Findings of this study shed light on the relationship between education and crime over the life course and provide invaluable insights into the factors that shape their life trajectories during adolescence. In this study, we ask one question: What role do schools play in sentencing Black children to life in prison?