Punishment begets punishment: An exploration of racial variation in school‐to‐prison pipeline mechanisms

Abstract

To mitigate the consequences of school punishment, we must move from documenting the school-to-prison pipeline (STPP) toward understanding how punishment increases criminal legal system involvement. Beyond impacting academic performance, punishment may encourage disengagement from school, teachers, and peers; delinquency; and secondary sanctions. Because discipline is not uniformly experienced by Black and White students, these intermediate consequences might differentially impact criminal legal system involvement. To assess racial variability in the consequences of suspension and less severe forms of school punishment, we use self-report data from 2,844 students across six school districts in St. Louis County, Missouri. Examining multiple mediators via generalized structural equation modeling, our findings suggest that detention and suspension are negatively associated with most of these outcomes, but they do not necessarily translate to increased likelihood of police contact. Negative consequences are strongest for White students, suggesting that the stigma of punishment is enough to interfere with their academic and social connections. Punishments may be more normalized for Black students, resulting in fewer direct consequences. There is evidence that punishment begets punishment and has the potential to increase the likelihood of police contact, suggesting that schools can more effectively stem the STPP when they decrease reliance on punitive practices.