Reframing the School-to-Prison Pipeline: The Experiences of Latina/o Youth and Families.

In this paper, I argue that school-to-prison pipeline (SPP) research on Latin@s shows the existence of an interconnected system of policies and social practices, in and out of schools, punitive and non-punitive in nature, which together work to criminalize Latin@ students and their families. This intersection (Crenshaw, 1991) and multiplicity (Hames-Garcia, 2012) of oppressive immigration, mass incarceration and schooling systems, among other factors, shapes the process and outcomes of Latin@s’ criminalization (Scott & Saucedo, 2013; Timmons Flores, 2013; Campano et al, 2013). As a result, I believe we must re-conceptualize the “pipeline” metaphor in a way that views policies and social practices that criminalize Latin@ students and their families as part of an interconnected, interdependent system or web. Such an expansion of how we understand this term challenges a central assumption inherent in this “pipeline” metaphor; that the criminalization of youth fl ows unidirectionally and unidimensionally from schools to prisons and that disruption of such criminalization should be primarily focused on fi xing punitive policies in schools. Advocacy and research efforts built upon the reconceptualization of this system or web would address the criminalizing social practices and policies that, while interconnected with much of the existing SPP literature, have been largely missed in the dominant SPP discourse. Over the last decade, education, sociology and legal scholars have been researching the school-based criminalization of minoritized youth in the United States, particularly as it relates to high U.S. incarceration rates, in order to account for, and disrupt, a disturbing relationship between schools and prisons (e.g., Advancement Project, 2005, 2010; Wald & Losen, 2003). What the research on this relationship has yielded is the “Schoolto-Prison Pipeline” (SPP), a theory that suggests punitive school policies, such as detentions, suspensions and truancy policies, among others, disproportionately punish minoritized students31 pushing them out of schools and consequently sharply increasing the likelihood they will end up incarcerated32 (e.g., Advancement Project, 2005, 2010; Croger & Hewitt, 2011; Skiba et al., 2011; Wald & Losen, 2003, 2011). Overall, SPP research proposes that there is a direct and explicit connection between institutionalized racism in schools and the growing mass incarceration crisis in the U.S. SPP studies often indicate that the factors constructing the “pipeline” – Jim Crow legacies (Alexander, 2010), zero tolerance policies (Advancement Project, 2005, 2010), high stakes testing (Advancement Project, 2010), and the “race threat hypothesis” (Wald & Losen, 2011) for example – do not all, or completely, originate within schools (Morris, 2012). Yet SPP studies are anchored on the “pipeline” metaphor, which implies “the school” as the universal starting point (point A) of the criminalization pipeline and “the prison” as the universal ending point (point B) of it. It is crucial to note that this “pipeline” metaphor has successfully shaped SPP advocacy efforts, making clear that there is a troubling relationship between schools and prisons and, in doing so, pointed to two sites – the education and criminal justice system – and to specifi c policies – zero tolerance policies in schools and discriminatory juvenile justice system policies – as central targets in the imperative to disrupt the SPP. In doing so, however, the research has also encouraged a linear (school  prison), simplistic and deterministic understanding of the school-based criminalization of minoritized youth. Even so, the “pipeline” metaphor has 31. Compared to White students, African Americans are 3 times more likely to be suspended and 3.5 times more likely to be expelled while Latin@ students are 1.5 times more likely to be suspended and twice more likely to be expelled than White students (Crogen & Hewitt, 2010). 32. Currently, Latin@s make up 53% of U.S. prison population and African Americans make up 37% of it (Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2013). Association of Mexican-American Educators (AMAE) Special Theme Issue ©2013, Volume 7, Issue 3 18 Reframing the School-to-Prison Pipeline: gone almost completely unchallenged by SPP researchers and legal or education practitioners33. As a result, SPP scholars and advocates of disrupting the SPP have risked ignoring – and thus not researching and addressing – criminalizing policies and social practices that do not originate solely within the school. Consequentially, practices and policies that do not result in students’ deterministic interactions with the criminal justice system yet still crucially shape the school-based criminalization experiences of minoritized students and their families, have similarly gone under-researched within the SPP fi eld. It is also important to highlight that dominant SPP research has focused on the “Black-White dyad” (Portillos, Gonzalez, & Peguero, 2012) of school-based criminalization. As a result, the study of the criminalization experiences of African American male students has been prioritized (Morris, 2012) while the study of the schoolbased criminalization experiences of other minoritized students (e.g., female, Latin@s, Native Americans, LGBTQ students) have been marginalized (Gebhard, 2013; Meiners, 2011, 2006; Morris, 2012; Portillos, Gonzalez, & Peguero, 2012) and thus make up a very small percentage of the SPP research. As a result of my interest in these characteristics of the SPP literature, in this thinking paper I review the nascent SPP research that moves beyond the dominant focus on school-based criminalization experiences of African American males and into that of the less researched experiences of Latin@ students and families. As I do so, I challenge the dominant “pipeline” metaphor and argue that SPP research on Latin@s shows the existence of an interconnected system of policies and social practices, in and out of schools, punitive and nonpunitive in nature, which together work to criminalize Latin@ students and their families. I argue that, for this community, the intersection34 (Crenshaw, 1991) and multiplicity35 (Hames-Garcia, 2012) of oppressive immigration, mass incarceration and schooling systems, among other factors, shape the process and outcomes of Latin@s’ criminalization (Campano et al., 2013; Scott & Saucedo, 2013; Timmons Flores, 2013). Thus, as I broadly synthesize the literature, I argue for a reconceptualization of the “pipeline” metaphor in a way that views policies and social practices that criminalize Latin@ students and their families as part of an interconnected, interdependent system or web. Such an expansion of how we understand this term challenges, among other things, one of the current implications inherent in this “pipeline” metaphor; that the criminalization of youth fl ows unidirectionally from schools to prisons (Richardson & Judge, 2013), that it originates at the school and, subsequently, that disruption of such criminalization should be primarily focused on fi xing punitive policies schools. This framework shift would allow scholars and practitioners to better understand and address the “multiple pipelines” (Richardson & Judge, 2012) that intersect (Crenshaw, 1991) and mutually constitute each other (Hames-Garcia, 2012) to form a criminalization web or system. Thus, advocacy and research efforts built upon this framework would continue to disrupt criminalization in the education and criminal justice systems yet expand to address criminalization policies and social practices that fall outside the school-prison pipeline metaphor and are interconnected to those already identifi ed in the SPP literature. For example, in the case of the criminalization of Latin@ youth and families, the deportation of Latin@ immigrant youth and/or their families would become part of the ongoing SPP research and advocacy efforts (Scott & Saucedo, 2013; Timmons Flores, 2013) in order to most effectively understand and address this population’s school-based criminalization. 33. Richardson & Judge (2013), Scott & Saucedo (2013) and Morris (2012) are the only scholars I have found have suggested that the “pipeline” metaphor might not accurately explain the criminalization experiences of minoritized youth in schools. I explicate their critiques later in this paper. 34. Kimberly Crenshaw’s (1991) “intersectionality” concept refers to the ways in which ascribed social categories (race, gender, sexuality, class, etc.) intersect in ways that shape people’s experiences. Therefore, an intersectional approach to social inequity is essential to understanding the ways in which oppression is experienced as various minoritized identities intersect. In the case of the SPP experiences of Latin@s, I fi nd that Crenshaw’s intersectional approach to analysis critically allows us to see that oppressive systems (of immigration, incarceration, schooling, among others) intersect, and as they do, their intersection defi nes the criminalization experiences of Latin@s. 35. Michael Hames-Garcia’s (2011) concept of “multiplicity,” builds upon Crenshaw’s “intersectionality” one, and argues that assigned identity categories (citizenship, ethnicity, race, religion, gender, etc.) not only intersect but also are interdependent and “necessarily constitute one another” (Campano et al,. 2013, p.317). In the context of the SPP experiences of Latin@s, the concept of “multiplicity” allows us to see that systems of oppression not only intersect, as Crenshaw’s intersectional analysis puts forth, but also are interdependent and mutually constitute one another (Campano et al., 2013), so that the criminalization experiences of Latin@s (a heterogeneous community) are shaped by their identities’ multiplicity and by the multiplicity of the systems that criminalize them.