A Web of Punishment: Examining Black Student Interactions With School Police in Los Angeles

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Three
  In Roundtable Session: Culturally Sustaining and Decolonial Pedagogical Praxis (Table 2)

Abstract

In this article the authors show that an examination of the data reveals that
interactions between students and police follow distinct patterns with respect to race and geographic space. The authors
use the “sociospatial dialectic” method to explain why certain student populations are most vulnerable to negative
interactions with school police within particular spatial settings. Oral history interviews with 120 Black students in a large
urban public school district reveal two self-reinforcing pathways: (1) soft coercion, when care and courtesy meet preemptive
criminalization to produce punitive policing, and (b) shielding, when referrals to school police officers by school personnel
shift blame onto students and invite the use of punitive policing without care.

Author

• Terry Allen, University of California - Los Angeles
  Presenting Author