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Abstract:
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Over the last several decades , punishment in school has become increasingly harsh . Students are suspended and expelled for minor infractions or are being referred to the criminal justice system for behaviors that , in the past , were largely dealt with by school administrators . In addition , school districts are hiring their own police and security forces , and surveillance technologies are becoming a permanent part of school budgets and spaces . Three converging social trends have facilitated these changes in school discipline : (1 ) the steady growth of a pervasive sense of social anxiety coupled with a political and cultural shift away from rehabilitative to more punitive forms of punishment (e .g . , imprisonment , the death penalty , etc . ) ; (2 ) a series of moral panics in the 1980s and 1990s about drugs , gangs , and violence that heightened fear of , and for , the nation’s youth ; and , (3 ) shifts in both policing philosophy and funding towards increased police penetration into community settings . Concerns are mounting that the intertwining of schools and criminal justice has forged a “school -to -prison pipeline” for some students , especially special education students , poor students and students of color . My dissertation focuses on one aspect of the pipeline : issuing citations to students for school misbehavior . There are three questions I seek to address : For what behaviors or activities are students being ticketed ? What are the characteristics of students being ticketed ? After school - based citations enter the courtroom , how are these students processed ? I use quantitative and qualitative data to address these questions . My larger argument is that school discipline processes not only have significant consequences for the life chances of our country’s young people , but they also have very serious consequences for the civil liberties of all public school students and for the socialization of our young people into the principals of democratic citizenship . |