Hardening Schools, Targeting Students: Minoritized Students, School Security, and the School-Prison Nexus

• In Event: The School-Prison Nexus: Causes and Effects

Abstract

Amid rising investments in school security, concerns persist about security’s disproportionate impact on minoritized students. This study leverages a competitive state grant program that funds security equipment purchases in K–12 schools to identify impacts on minoritized students. Drawing on nine years of this security grant program, the study seeks to identify causal effects of security equipment purchases on a variety of school-level and student-level outcomes including exclusionary discipline and juvenile justice involvement. Preliminary analysis reveals the grant program has wide-ranging implications with over 4,500 awards distributed, over $8 million in spending. Findings will inform our understanding of how spending on security entrenches our education system in the school-prison nexus as well as effects of that spending on vulnerable students.

Author

• Samantha L. Viano, George Mason University