Navigating the School-Prison Nexus in Pursuit of Educational Attainment

Current school level practices and policies reproduce and reify carceral logics in schools through the disproportionate exclusion, removal, policing, and surveillance of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous students from low-income backgrounds. Given the link between school-based discipline and youth incarceration, we sought to understand how young people experience and respond to inequitable discipline practices in educational settings. In this two-part study, we conceptually explore the mechanisms by which schools function as an extension of the carceral system through inequitable disciplinary practices and seek to empirically understand how students perceive and experience school-level carceral logics and the processes that lead students into the juvenile legal system. Study 1 consisted of three focus groups (N = 24) with high school students from historically marginalized backgrounds and explored youth perceptions of and experiences with discipline. Study 2 consisted of six focus groups (N = 28) with community college students who were incarcerated as youth, to understand their trajectories and educational experiences before, during, and following their incarceration. Taken together, the studies illuminate the intersection of schools and prisons as complex systems that historically marginalized students must navigate to access their education, leveraging skills and collective resilience to do so.