A Downward Spiral? Childhood Suspension and the Path to Juvenile Arrest

Abstract

There is growing concern that suspensions trigger a ''downward spiral,'' redirecting children's trajectories away from school success and toward police contact. The current study tests this possibility, analyzing whether and in what ways childhood suspensions increase children's risk for juvenile arrests. Combining 15 years of data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study with contextual information on neighborhoods and schools, I find that suspensions disproportionately affect children already enduring considerable adversity. Even so, suspensions appear to redirect children's trajectories, more than doubling their risk of arrest. Although suspended children experienced greater escalations in behavioral problems than their peers, post-suspension behavioral changes explained relatively little of the association between early suspension and later arrest. Instead, the most consequential way suspended children diverged from their peers was their heightened risk for repeated school sanction. Suspended children's risk for repeated school removal explained 52 percent of the association between childhood suspension and juvenile arrest.

School punishment and interpersonal exclusion: Rejection, withdrawal, and separation from friends

“…In this work, I extend the results of prior research on the consequences of excessive crime control for social exclusion and inequality by focusing on school suspension, which many have suggested is a precursor to criminal justice involvement (Hirschfield, ; Kupchik, ; Mittleman, ; Mowen & Brent, ; Ramey, ). Moreover, I aim to advance knowledge of the prevalence and outcomes of suspension in rural schools.…”

“…Reform efforts have led to recent declines in some states (Loveless, ), but overall rates are still high, particularly for disadvantaged and racial minority students, not because juvenile crime rates are high but because suspension is often in response to minor misbehavior like classroom disruptions and attendance problems (Kupchik, ; Morris & Perry, ; Skiba et al., ). This is problematic because in a growing body of research, scholars have suggested that suspension may be harmful for child and adolescent development (Cuellar & Markowitz, ; Jacobsen, Pace, & Ramirez, ; Mittleman, ; Morris & Perry, ).…”

“…These factors include greater network density or closure, more time with neighbors, and a larger share of ties to family and kin (Beggs, Haines, & Hurlbert, ; Marsden & Srivastava, ; Smith, ). To capture such a setting, I depart from the urban focus in prior suspension research (e.g., Mittleman, ) by relying on a predominantly rural sample. Rural schools vary in size, but smaller rural schools offer less anonymity compared with larger rural schools.…”

Recent developments in school social control

“…Research connects school punishment experiences to weaker bonds to school (Way, ); lower self‐esteem (Wolf & Kupchik, ); poor academic performance (Lacoe & Steinberg, ); and a failure to complete high school (Peguero & Bracy, ). These factors increase the likelihood that punished children will be involved with the criminal justice system during adolescence and adulthood (Mittleman, ; Ramey, ). Indeed, Scholars argue that this early exposure to the juvenile justice system initiates a “school‐to‐prison pipeline” in which some American children are pushed into the criminal justice system through criminalized school discipline and exclusionary school punishment (Hirschfield, ; Kim et al, ; Mittleman, ; Rios, ).…”

Earning rent with your talent: Modern-day inequality rests on the power to define, transfer and institutionalize talent

“…"magna cum laude"). In the worst-case-scenario, they lead to a student's expulsion, the longterm consequences of which have been described as a "school-to-prison pipeline" (Kim, Losen, and Hewitt 2010;Mittleman 2018;Welch and Payne 2018). This definitional power extends far beyond the realm of education, into the world of literature (Franssen and Kuipers 2013), fashion (Mears 2010), business (Khurana 2002), and as we will see below, sports.…”