Generations of Criminalization: Resistance to Desegregation and School Punishment

• Author: Aaron Kupchik,Felicia A. Henry
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00224278221120675
• Published date: 01 February 2023
• Date: 01 February 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Generations of

Criminalization:

Resistance to

Desegregation and

School Punishment

Aaron Kupchik

and Felicia A. Henry

Abstract

Objectives: In this paper we refocus discussions of criminalization of stu-

dents on structural racial inequality. We help explain racially disproportion-

ate school punishments, while demonstrating the necessity for

criminologists to examine how a historic legacy of racial oppression shapes

contemporary punishments. More specif‌ically, we explore the extent to

which contemporary school punishment ref‌lects a legacy of racial oppres-

sion and educational exclusion of Black students. Methods: Using nation-

wide data from multiple sources, we analyze how resistance to school

desegregation, measured by the number of court cases contesting school

segregation from 1952 −2002, relates to suspensions from school and

days missed due to suspension. Results: Our analyses show that schools

in districts marked by resistance to school desegregation have signif‌icantly

and substantially higher rates of suspensions for Black students and days

missed by Black students due to suspension. Conclusions: Contemporary

Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

Corresponding Author:

Aaron Kupchik, Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, University of Delaware,

Newark, DE, USA.

Email: akupchik@udel.edu

Thematic Issue: Centering Race in the Study of Crime and Criminal Justice

Journal of Research in Crime and

Delinquency

2023, Vol. 60(1) 43-78

© The Author(s) 2022

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00224278221120675

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school suspension is shaped by a legacy of racial oppression and educational

exclusion. Our results conf‌irm the importanceof using a racialized social sys-

tems approach to understand and begin to remedy the criminalization of

Black students.

Keywords

school punishment, desegregation, systemic racism, suspension

Introduction

Schools across the U.S. use exclusionary punishments, like out-of-school sus-

pensions, in ways that harm students and school communities. Students who are

suspended begin a track of criminalization, where they are at greater risk of

future arrest, incarceration, and criminal behavior (Hemez, Brent and Mowen

2020; Mittleman 2018; Mowen and Brent 2016; Mowen, Brent and Boman

2020). As a result, school punishment is an area of increased focus among

criminologists in recent years. This body of research shows that students

of color –particularly Black students –are far more likely to be punished

than other students. In other words, they are disproportionately criminalized

in school, exacerbating racial inequality. These facts are fairly well estab-

lished by a consistent and robust body of evidence (e.g., Fabelo et al.

2011; Hirschf‌ield 2018; Rocque and Snellings 2018), but undertheorized:

scholars have yet to explain why students of color are punished as frequently

and severely as occurs across the U.S.

In this paper we offer a novel way of conceptualizing why school punish-

ment rates are so high, particularly for Black students, via empirical analyses

that highlight the importance of historic racial oppression and resistance to

racial equity. Current explanations for excessive rates of punishments, spe-

cif‌ically among Black students, are limited in their ability to explain sys-

temic patterns of racially disproportionate punishment. We address this

gap in our understanding of student criminalization by conceptualizing

school punishment as a function of structural racial inequality, and part of

a centuries-long history and legacy of racially differentiated educational

opportunity. For African Americans this has included formal prohibitions

of education and a range of exclusionary policies and practices both

before and after emancipation from slavery. In the decades after the

Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision,

which prohibited racially segregated schools, efforts to desegregate were

44 Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 60(1)

marked by resistance and conf‌lict, including repeated legal actions forcing

school districts across the U.S. to comply with the Brown decision.

We theorize that these conf‌licts over race and education help to explain

racially disproportionate use of punishments observed in schools today. We

analyze national-level data to examine how school district-level legal battles

around school desegregation relate to contemporary rates of punishment for

white and Black students. Our results show a consistent relationship

between the two; schools in districts involved in legal action over desegre-

gation show substantially greater rates of suspensions and numbers of days

punished for Black students –but not for white students. Recognizing

racially disproportionate school punishment as a legacy of structural racial

inequality and racially differentiated access to education helps to contextu-

alize school criminalization and its many consequences, including risk of

future criminal involvement, arrest, and incarceration, among others

(Kupchik 2016).

Our goal in this paper is to refocus discussions of criminalization of stu-

dents on structural racial inequality. We do so by demonstrating an empirical

connection between past battles over school desegregation and contempo-

rary school punishments. Our analyses offer a national-level view of how

these phenomena relate, and as a result they are broad but shallow. It is

our hope that our analyses offer a guide for future criminological work

and catalyze additional research, such as site-specif‌ic archival work that

addresses questions we are unable to answer concerning specif‌ic mecha-

nisms and timelines by which legacies of systemic racism and contemporary

school criminalization are linked.

School Punishments

In her description of school punishments over time, Kafka (2011) describes

how moral training was seen as the primary purpose of Antebellum school-

ing, with discipline (often corporal punishment) as the primary tool used to

teach morality. Yet the goal of punishment changed considerably over time,

shifting from an effort to teach morality to excluding students from school

(Kafka 2011). According to some scholars, suspension was rarely if ever

used before the 1960s. For example, Allman and Slate (2011, pg. 2) state

that “School administrators’use of out-of-school suspension began as a

method of reducing student misbehavior in the 1960s and has continued

to be used since that time”(see also Adams 2000). In other words, before

the Civil Rights Era and racial desegregation of schools, suspension was

rarely if ever used.

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