Understanding and Transforming the School-Prison Nexus: A Cross-Disciplinary Examination of School Discipline and Its Reform

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Since the mid-2000s, awareness of the unequal and harmful effects of school discipline on Black, Latinx, Native American and students with disabilities has become increasingly mainstream (Hirschfield, 2018). In 2014, former president Obama issued a “Dear Colleague” letter, threatening legal action against school districts with racially disproportionate discipline (U.S. Department of Education, 2014). Despite growing recognition of the injustices stemming from punitive and zero-tolerance discipline and rhetorical support for alternatives, including restorative justice, school discipline remains racially disproportionate (GAO, 2018). Stemming from philosophic, economic, and ethnographic perspectives, respectively, the papers in this session: 1) examine the discourses, actors, and institutions that comprise the school-prison nexus, 2) investigate the effects of school discipline and efforts to transform it on students who are most marginalized by school discipline, and 3) propose strategies for transforming the school-prison nexus.

Sub Track

• AESA

Discussant

• Sabina E Vaught, University of Pittsburgh

Presenters

• Janelle Fouché, Harvard University

• Garry S. Mitchell, Harvard University

• Abigail Jane Beneke, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Session Organizer

• Abigail Jane Beneke, University of Wisconsin-Madison