School Discipline, Desistance, and Labeling: The Effect of School Punishment on Offending Across Time

• In Event: Labeling and Stigma II

Abstract

Despite broad decreases in offending in schools across the U.S., many schools continue to use exclusionary discipline. Although school punishment has been tied to a variety of outcomes, the extent to which suspensions contribute to within-individual changes in offending across time and/or influence pathways to desistance between-individuals remains unclear. To address this gap, we place labeling theory within the life-course framework to examine how school suspensions may serve as a turning point towards – or away from – offending as youth move into early adulthood. Results of a series of dynamic panel data models analyzing multiple waves of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 reveal that school suspensions contribute to significant within-individual increases in offending even after progressively accounting for baseline levels of offending on future crime. Further, repeated suspensions appear to significantly amplify offending pathways between-individuals. Placed within labeling theory, these findings suggest that school suspensions significantly alter offending outcomes through a process of deviance amplification. Overall, suspensions appear to prolong pathways to desistance for youth as they age through critical junctures of adolescence and into adulthood.

Authors

• Thomas J. Mowen, Bowling Green State University

• John J. Brent, Eastern Kentucky University

• John H. Boman, Bowling Green State University