Education versus Punishment? Silo Effects and the School-to-prison Pipeline

• Author: Daniel P. Mears,Sonja E. Siennick,George B. Pesta,Andrea N. Montes,Samantha J. Brown,Nicole L. Collier
• DOI: 10.1177/0022427819897932
• Published date: 01 July 2020
• Date: 01 July 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Education versus

Punishment? Silo

Effects and the

School-to-prison

Pipeline

Samantha J. Brown

1

, Daniel P. Mears

1

,

Nicole L. Collier

1

, Andrea N. Montes

2

,

George B. Pesta

3

, and Sonja E. Siennick

1

Abstract

Objectives: This article examines the influence of social context on punish-

ment decisions. To this end, we present a theoretical framework to identify

outcomes that can occur when police and probation officers work in

schools. Method: The proposed framework draws on organizational theory

as well as scholarship on school discipline and punishment and the effects of

placing officers in schools. It also draws from insights gathered from site

visits, interviews, and focus groups conducted as part of a process evalua-

tion of a school-based delinquency prevention program. We then present

data from interviews and focus groups with 41 school-based safety staff to

examine the plausibility of the hypothesized framework. Results: We find

that officers’ goals interact with the goals of school-based actors to

1

College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

2

School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, USA

3

Center for Criminology and Public Policy Research, College of Criminology and Criminal

Justice, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

Corresponding Author:

Samantha J. Brown, College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University,

Eppes Hall, 112 South Copeland Street, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA.

Email: sjl13f@my.fsu.edu

Journal of Research in Crime and

Delinquency

2020, Vol. 57(4) 403-443

ªThe Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0022427819897932

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influence punishment-related outcomes. We also find that officers are not

always the more punitive force in the schools and that placing officers in

schools may have positive as well as negative effects for youth. Conclusions:

The findings suggest that current accounts of officers in schools are incom-

plete. Dynamic interactions may occur within organizational partnerships

and should be considered when seeking to understand punishment deci-

sions not only in schools but also in other settings.

Keywords

schools, police, probation, delinquency, school-to-prison pipeline

The era of get-tough punishment in American schools began in the 1980s

and has led to significant changes that mirror the rise of more punitive

sanctioning in the juvenile justice system. This punitive shift has resulted

in longer and more severe sanctions for youth who have contact with the

juvenile justice system (Drinan 2017; Feld and Bishop 2012; Schaefer and

Uggen 2016). At the same time, schools have used suspensions, expulsions,

and mandatory court referrals to punish and exclude youth (see, generally,

Hirschfield 2008; Kupchik 2010; Mallett 2016b). Critics of this get-tough

movement in schools have argued that schools’ reliance on exclusionary

discipline practices has contributed to a figurative “school-to-prison

pipeline,” one in which greater numbers of youth who engage in school

misconduct are arrested and transferred to the juvenile justice system.

Research has highlighted that the adoption of such practices can in fact

result in legal sanctions for youth who in the past would have received less

severe, nonlegal punishments (Curtis 2014; Heitzeg 2009; Mallett 2016b;

Skiba, Arrendondo, and Williams 2014). Some of these punitive trends have

abated in recent years, perhaps in response to declines in juvenile crime

rates and as schools and policymakers have come to recognize the potential

harms of zero-tolerance policies (Martinez, 2010; Merlo and Benekos 2016;

Teasley, 2014). Several questions about the influence of the punitive-

oriented approaches that continue to be used, however, remain unanswered.

Indeed, scholars continue to call for wor k that illuminates how schools

punish youth (Hughes et al. 2017; McKenna and White 2018).

Prior scholarship has investigated whether claims about the school-to-

prison pipeline are theoretically and empirically founded (Irby 2014;

McGrew 2016; Pesta 2018). One prominent line of research focuses on

the placement of police officers—also referred to as school resource

404 Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 57(4)

officers—on school campuses. Historically, police did not play a significant

role in schools. Get-tough policies, however, have changed the school land-

scape, and school police are now commonplace in American schools

(Kupchik and Monahan 2006; Nance 2016; Peake 2015). Part of the logic

of placing officers on school campuses isthat collaboration between the two

institutions—schools and police—will improve communication between the

agencies, facilitate the sharingof resources, and, not least, improve the safety

of schools (Police Foundation 2016). One of the concerns of this practice,

however, hasbeen that placing officers in schools has effectivelysituated one

institution, that of police, within another, that of the education system. The

result, according to critics, has been the prioritization of punishment over

education (Johnson and Sullivan 2016; Nolan 2011; Petteruti 2011).

Against this backdrop, we present a theoretical framework that examines

how the interplay of two institutions that traditionally have operated as inde-

pendent “silos” may unfold and influence punishment decisions and social

control. The framework draws on the work of Brickman et al. (1982) who

examined ways that collaborative partnerships can be classified and categor-

ized to explain their effectiveness.We extend their argument by highlighting

the salience of both officers and school administrators in influencing school

safety, noting that the dynamic organizational arrangements that occur in

interinstitutional partnershipsmay either amplify or mute the intendedeffects

of a partnership. We also draw on theory and research on the role of punish-

ment and sentencing contexts (e.g., Eisenstein and Jacob 1977; Johnson,

King, and Spohn 2016; Ulmer 1995), and scholarship on school contexts in

particular (e.g., Arazan, Bales, and Blomberg 2018; Hughes et al. 2017), to

identify howschools respond to misconductand delinquency. In so doing, we

seek to respond to calls to understand better how organizational contexts

interact to influence punishment decisions generally (e.g., Johnson et al.

2016) as well as in schools specifically (Gottfredson 2017; Kupchik 2010;

McKenna and White 2018). In what follows, we describe the contemporary

role of police in schools before presenting our theoretical framework. We

then discuss the study’s methodology, provide findings from interviews and

focus groups with school staff and officers, and thendiscuss its implications.

Background

The Get-tough Era in Juvenile Justice and Schools

Although the juvenile justice system was created with the goal of rehabi-

litating wayward youth (Feld and Bishop 2012), get-tough policies in the

Brown et al. 405