Things are tough all over

Across the USA, schools have dramatically altered how they respond to school crime in recent decades, with a growing police presence and increased levels of punishments. Based on a cultural reproduction approach to understanding how students are socialized within schools, one would expect that these increasingly law-and-order-centered shifts would be disproportionately focused in schools with mostly racial and ethnic minorities and low-income youth, relative to schools with mostly white middle-class youth. To address this issue, I consider data from observations and interviews at four high schools with varying student demographics in two states. I find that although there certainly are discrepancies between schools that a cultural reproduction approach would lead one to predict, there are also substantial similarities. Students at all four schools are exposed to punitive, rule-based policies, though the effects of these similar policies are unequally distributed. Practices that were once reserved primarily for schools hosting poor students and students of color are now implemented in mostly white middle-class schools as well.