intergenerational trauma and school to prison pipeline

& Kimberly Jenkins Robinson, Creating New Pathways to Equal Educational Opportunity, in The Enduring Legacy of Rodriguez: Creating New Pathways to Equal Educational Opportunity 263, 264 (Charles J. This left educational opportunity to the discretion of state legislatures and courts. Show More the Court eliminated a federal constitutional remedy to achieve greater equity in school funding. Show More Even while acknowledging the need for higher quality schools and more equality in educational opportunity, 5 5.Id. Constitution did not protect education as a fundamental right therefore, students could not challenge in federal court the funding disparities in Texas or elsewhere that privileged wealthier school districts while greatly disadvantaging poorer ones. Show More The United States Supreme Court held in Rodriguez that the U.S. Rodriguez decision of 1973 fertilized this flower. The San Antonio Independent School District v. Nevertheless, I will use school-to-prison pipeline because it remains the most well-known phrase to describe the topic in this Essay. For this reason, I would prefer to name what we see a “child-to-prison” pipeline. Thus, the “school-to-prison” pipeline phrase is myopic, in part, as a point of origin for this phenomenon. Others arrive in the criminal justice system as children of an incarcerated mother or father, while factors such as race, gender, disability, poverty, or other issues not related directly to a school also provide a pathway. Another pathway for school-age youth is participation in illegal activities outside of school hours. How did they end up in the justice system? The pathway for some school-age youth began with a school referral to law enforcement officers based on a report of disruptive behavior-real or imagined. 2 2.I use the term “school-to-prison” pipeline broadly to address the number of school-age children, adolescents, and teens who are justice-involved youth. The seeds that germinated from those decisions grew into a black flower whose bloom shaped American modernity for the next fifty years: the school-to-prison pipeline.

By doing so, they inadvertently made it harder to invest in public education, but easier to invest in public prisons. Show More our leaders in the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court made several decisions about law and social policy between 19 that created a new culture of public accountability for uses (or misuses) of taxpayers’ money. He who opens a school door, closes a prison.Īnalogous to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s critique of his leaders’ decision to use punishment as a sign of public accountability, and his adoption of the phrase “the black flower of civilized society” to describe the prison, 1 1.Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter 39 (Brian Harding ed., 2007). *Lecturer at the University of Virginia School of Law and former Virginia Secretary of Education.

Intergenerational trauma and school to prison pipeline