Rising Up and Breaking Down: Youth Resilience and Institutional Failures in the School-to-Prison Pipeline

• In Event: Seeking Truth About the Context of School-to-Prison Nexus: Role of Racial Trauma and Healing

Abstract

Purpose. This study depicts a young man’s journey out of the school-to-prison pipeline and the role of creativity in his successful resistance. The story of Keybo Wyze Carillo illuminates how the lack of accountability in policy contributed to a fundamental denial of a young man’s educational rights, yet fueled his artistic endeavors.
Methods. The qualitative data used in this study includes excerpts from conversations between Burch (researcher) and Carillo, passages from interviews with Carillo’s mother, and field notes based on these conversations. Rejecting the concept of binary of researcher and participant, Burch interviewed Carillo about the significance of his music, Carillo interviewed Burch on how she felt after listening to his music, and Carillo interviewed his mother on her perspective of their life experiences. Transcripts were reviewed for accuracy and emerging themes by both researcher and interviewee.
Theory. The themes of the study recall findings from a larger body of work on how the organization of education policies “subtract” resources from low-income youth (c.f. Valenzuela, 1999). Students receive “subtractive schooling” when teachers fail to forge authentic, caring relationships and feel alienated from school (Brockenbrough, 2015; Noguera, 2003). They are subtracted when schools compromise on our nation’s basic social contract of equal educational opportunity and when administrators routinely disregard policies to share educational records with juvenile facilities or with public schools (Burch, this volume) The day-to-day policy decisions carry the signals and messages about white privilege, even when they are not explicitly about race (Harper, 2012). They are micro-decisions that intersect with a broader discourse that extends beyond schools and the criminal justice system. They intersect with structural inequalities such as housing segregation, economic stagnation, and the expansion of private sector solutions to public sector problems.
Results. The qualitative data portrays a young man’s turbulent journey out of the school-to-prison pipeline due to a school system that failed an extremely talented and creative young man, as well as the failures of accountability and policy within that system. This school-to-prison conceptualization highlights the dangers of repeated institutional failure from a personal perspective and how a resilient individual prospers despite these failures and barriers.
Significance. This school-to-prison pipeline sends individuals like Carillo the message they should be treated with suspicion and not respect. They are understood as angry and oppositional, but also expected to exercise personal responsibility. In a world that seems to put so little value in the capability and creativity of young men like Carillo, while showing compassion for judges convicted of hurting these youth, the system has failed. When actions demonstrate a greater and more deserved compassion for incarcerated youth, the abolition of the school-to-prison pipeline will be in motion.

Authors

• Patricia Burch, University of Southern California
  Presenting Author

• Keybo Wyze Carillo
  Non-Presenting Author