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

by Nancy A. Heitzeg

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798216142072
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	04/11/2016
Series:	Racism in American Institutions
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	7 - 17 Years

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.
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.

Table of Contents

Series Foreword vii

Introduction ix

Part 1 School-to-Prison Pipeline: Education on Lockdown 1

1 Education, Race, and Social Control 3

2 Segregated Schools, Sociopolitical Shifts, and Education under Siege 17

Part 2 School-to-Prison Pipeline: The Context of Social Control 33

3 Racialized Control in the Era of Color Blindness 35

4 The Prison Industrial Complex: Profit, Race, and the Prison Track 51

5 The Medical Industrial Complex: Race and the Double Standards of Diagnosis 69

Part 3 School-to-Prison Pipeline: Punitive Policies and Transformative Alternatives 87

6 Criminalized Education: Schoolhouse as Jailhouse 89

7 Education Not Incarceration: Ending the School-to-Prison Pipeline 105

Notes 125

Bibliography 155

Index 173

Editorial Reviews

Compelling. . . . Hetizeg's book on the school-to-prison pipeline introduces the readers to an atrocious phenomenon, gives information on society's impact on the growth of the pipeline, and finishes with a sense of optimism as she strives to see more education and less incarceration in America's schools.” —Adolescent Research Review

From the Publisher