Durham: 2 tall young men and a short middle-aged women stand together in front of a brick building.

North Carolina’s Raise the Age Law Highlights How Schools Handle Discipline

“We don’t know how many students are casualties of a racist system, in which they are punished for being in their bodies, for being brown and black kids, and we’ve got to do something,” said Fatimah Salleh, mother of two former students at Durham School of the Arts (DSA) in Durham, N.C. “If we are not really aggressive about it, then it will be the way America has always deemed it to be.”

school-to-prison pipeline: photo illustration of hands clutching cell bars made of pencils with brick background

Florida Has Work to Do to Treat African American Youth Fairly

In the early 2000s I had the privilege to serve as the administrator of the Pinellas and Pasco counties Juvenile Assessment Centers. For those of you not familiar with the JACs, their purpose is to serve as a one-stop shop for all juvenile services. The JACs provide law enforcement with a central point of contact for juveniles who have been arrested. 

Schedule statistics data, analytical indicator sci-fi background

Data Collection, Sharing Crucial in Developing School-justice Partnerships

The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges released a bulletin last October that details the importance of data in developing effective school-justice partnerships. In the report, NCJFCJ laments that “poor data collection and management strategies” often hamper the effectiveness of school-justice partnerships aimed at disrupting the school-to-prison-pipeline.

Why Wyoming Is Using After-school Programs to Keep Kids Out of School-to-prison Pipeline

In 2013, the Wyoming Afterschool Alliance (WYAA) became interested in understanding the school-to-prison pipeline based on the alarming statistics that we were seeing in Wyoming and across the nation about incarceration and detention. It was confounding and disturbing to see more and more children and youth entering the system, especially at younger ages. What was going on? And, more importantly — why?

How SRO Programs Can Actually Divert Youth from Pipeline

Like it or not, cops in schools are here to stay. The question is: How do we do it right? An important principle for doing it right is driven by this key question: How can we help make sure that law enforcement actually works to keep youth in school and out of justice involvement?

scared girl of color

Black Girls Pay the Price When Police Enter Schools

Sen. Marco Rubio sent a letter to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Attorney General Jeff Sessions this week wrongly blaming the Parkland shooting on the Department of Education’s School Discipline Guidance package. This guidance, released in 2014, reminded schools of their responsibility to address racial discrimination in school discipline, which affects students in every state.