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.