More Than a Metaphor: The Contribution of Exclusionary Discipline to a School-to-Prison Pipeline

The term and construct “school-to-prison” pipeline has been widely used by advocates, researchers, and policymakers to describe the relationship between school disciplinary practices and increased risk of juvenile justice contact. It has been unclear whether the construct is a useful heuristic or a descriptor of empirically validated relationships that establish school disciplinary practices as a risk factor for negative developmental outcomes, including juvenile justice involvement. In this article, we examine the literature surrounding one facet of the pipeline, school exclusion as a disciplinary option, and propose a model for tracing possible pathways of effect from school suspension and expulsion to the ultimate contact point of juvenile justice involvement. Available multivariate analyses suggest that regardless of demographic, achievement, or system status, out-of-school suspension and expulsion are in and of themselves risk factors for a range of negative developmental outcomes. Recommendations are offered to assist schools in replacing disciplinary exclusion with a range of alternatives whose goal is to preserve both school order and provide all students with educational opportunities.