As the movement on the ground gains momentum and many cities and districts demand #PoliceFreeSchools, I’m seeing a lot interest in trying to understanding the so-called School-to-Prison Pipeline (STPP)- the mainstream term for how schools through the use of discipline, policing, and security practices “pushout” students towards incarceration.
STPP is a concise term for capturing this sort of dynamic, but precisely because it is so concise, it is also too narrow and fails to capture the scope and context of the issue. A better conception is to consider schools as an integral part of the broader carceral state.
Here’s a list of readings by scholars who helped to show me this:
Unequal City: Race, Schools, and Perceptions of Injustice by Carla Shedd
Additional Work by Carla Shedd:
Countering the Carceral Continuum: The Legal of Mass Incarceration
First Strike: Educational Enclosures in Black Los Angeles by Damien M. Sojoyner (currently available online through August!)
Additional work by Damien M. Sojoyner:
Black Radicals Make for Bad Citizens: Undoing the Myth of the School to Prison Pipeline
CHAPTER THREE: Changing the Lens: Moving Away from the School to Prison Pipeline
Transformative Justice Journal has published essays about schooling through an abolitionist lens
Restorative Justice as a Doubled-Edged Sword: Conflating Restoration of Black Youth with Transformation of Schools by Arash Daneshzadeh and George Sirrakos
For the Children? Protecting Innocence in a Carceral State by Erica R. Meiners
Review of Right to Be Hostile: Schools, Prisons, and the Making of Public Enemies by Erica R. Meiners
Anastasia C. Wilson 