Disciplining Difference: Crime Control, Child Protection, and the Development of Schooling in Chicago's Blackbelt

• In Event: Historical Perspectives on Education and the Carceral State

Abstract

In recent years, scholars and advocates have increasingly paid attention to what is commonly referred to as the “school-to-prison pipeline,” or the process through which punitive discipline policies disproportionately funnel Black students from schools and towards the criminal justice system. In this paper, I historicize and reconceptualize the STPP by analyzing the constitutive development of schooling, child welfare, and juvenile justice in early 20th century Chicago. In doing so, this paper positions urban schooling as one site where the carceral state and the welfare state have historically interacted in order to build, maintain, and challenge a social order based on intersecting race, class, and gender hierarchies.

Author

• Rebecca Horwitz-Willis, Harvard University