The College-Prison Nexus: Higher Education and the Extension of the Carceral State

• In Event: Exploring Carcerality in the Pre-K–20 Pipeline

Abstract

From the student conduct process to the screening of applicants with criminal records in college admissions, students at colleges and universities in the United States are surveilled, policed, and disciplined. Consider recent media coverage of racial profiling of students in campus facilities, the arrests of student activists, and the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers on campuses targeting undocumented students. These are just a few examples of the ways in which higher education institutions and their policies and practices reflect “carceral logics.”
In this conceptual paper, the authors will argue that our nation’s colleges and universities operate as extensions of the carceral state and as state-sanctioned systems of social control. They will draw on the notion of “carcerality” to detail and demonstrate the formal and informal ways in which students are criminalized, facilitating their exposure to or entry into the criminal (in)justice system. And close with a robust set of recommendations for institutional actors that aim to help dismantle what they term the “college-prison nexus.”

Authors

• Royel M. Johnson, University of Southern California

• Jude Paul Matias Dizon, University of Southern California