Out-of-School Suspension, Delinquency, and Desistance

• In Event: 477 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 03. Schools, Education, and Violence

Abstract

Prior research has documented strong associations between out-of-school suspension and a range of negative outcomes including grade repetition, high school dropout, arrest, and incarceration. While the notion of a “school-to- prison pipeline” has become popular in public debates, the mechanisms linking school discipline to arrest and incarceration are not well understood. In this paper, I use self-report data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to ask a simple question with profound implications for policy: What is the relationship between suspension and crime? I find that, controlling for prior delinquency and a range of theoretically relevant variables, youth who have been suspended report higher levels of delinquency and crime than their non-suspended peers. These effects persist through the early 20s, disrupting the desistance process that is expected with age. The results suggest that, in addition to shaping the life chances of individual youth, suspension has broader social consequences in the form of reduced public safety.

Author

• Tracey Shollenberger, Harvard University