Overpoliced, Underprotected: The Role of School Culture in Combating Exclusion and Criminalization of Students Through an Institutional Culture of Care

• In Event: A Critical Examination of Public Scholarship on K–12 Racialized Contexts

Abstract

In the last decade, the approaches of the modern criminal justice system, including the adoption of zero tolerance policies and use of carceral technologies, have seeped into the U.S educational system. Dissimilar to past research that credits the facilitation of the School to Prison Pipeline to the punitive tools that criminalize student behavior, this paper aims to illuminate the role of school culture in mitigating exclusion and criminalization of students. More specifically, we seek to explore the elements of a school culture that mitigate pathways of the pipeline by exploring the relationship between a schools’ engaging, challenging curriculum, high academic expectations and meaningful relationships- a school culture of care- with Black students’ perceptions of exclusion, sense of belonging and criminalization.

Authors

• Brianna Baker, Spelman College

• Robert Cooper, University of California - Los Angeles