Exclusionary Discipline and School Crime: An Analysis of the Los Angeles Unified School District

• In Event: School Crime, Punishment, and Control

Abstract

Empirical research linking exclusionary discipline to school crime is sparse, yet whether the practice of temporarily removing students from school effectively improves school safety has been a subject of debate for decades. This study sheds light on the efficacy of this common disciplinary practice that has been associated with numerous unfavorable outcomes, including future contact with the juvenile and/or criminal justice system. I use school discipline and crime data from the Los Angeles Unified School District to answer the following research question: Do school exclusions reduce school crime? This study builds on the few previous studies that attempted to answer this important question by utilizing school crime incident data as the outcome variable as opposed to future suspensions or administrator estimates of crime incidents from the previous year. I also use multiple school years to address the temporal ordering issues that exist in cross-sectional analyses. Finally, both discipline and crime data contain student information, allowing for analyses by student race and ethnicity.

Author

• Julie Gerlinger, University of Oklahoma