Synopses & Reviews
The “school-to-prison pipeline” is an emerging trend that pushes large numbers of at-risk youth—particularly children of color—out of classrooms and into the juvenile justice system. The policies and practices that contribute to this trend can be seen as a pipeline with many entry points, from under-resourced K-12 public schools, to the over-use of zero-tolerance suspensions and expulsions and to the explosion of policing and arrests in public schools. The confluence of these practices threatens to prepare an entire generation of children for a future of incarceration.
In this comprehensive study of the relationship between American law and the school-to-prison pipeline, co-authors Catherine Y. Kim, Daniel J. Losen, and Damon T. Hewitt analyze the current state of the law for each entry point on the pipeline and propose legal theories and remedies to challenge them. Using specific state-based examples and case studies, the authors assert that law can be an effective weapon in the struggle to reduce the number of children caught in the pipeline, address the devastating consequences of the pipeline on families and communities, and ensure that our public schools and juvenile justice system further the goals for which they were created: to provide meaningful, safe opportunities for all the nations children.
Review
“Tilton has written a lively, compelling book that calls for a progressive politics of youth which also values human connections and interdependency. Richly rooted in the social geography of Oakland, the ethnography illuminates how youth and their parents struggle against the ways they are pathologized and feared. The book makes a critical contribution to urban studies, criminal justice and anthropological theory and practice.”
-Brett Williams,professor of anthropology, American University
Review
“This compelling book reveals a disturbing trend towards widening, racialized social class divisions among children growing up in U.S. cities. Drawing upon extensive fieldwork in affluent and impoverished areas of Oakland, Tilton maps varied forms of community mobilization around children and youth. Beautifully observed, astutely analyzed, and directly relevant to current debates about ways of restoring a sense of the public good in an era of privatization.”
-Barrie Thorne,author of Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School
Review
“Increasingly, we must understand the production of structural disadvantage through a systems lens that focuses on the relationships between critical institutions rather than viewing them as distinct concerns. This incisive new work targets the interface between our K‒12 educational system and our juvenile and criminal justice systems with a fresh, unflinching account that is invaluable to lawyers, organizers and researchers alike.”
-John A. Powell,Executive Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and the Williams Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University
Review
“Fills a much‒needed gap in the school‒to‒prison pipeline literature. There is very little information about legal strategies to interrupt the pipeline when you encounter reticent policy‒makers. This book provides just that, and covers all of the bases for doing so. As such, it is an invaluable resource for legal advocates working in the education and juvenile justice fields.”
-Randee J. Waldman,Barton Juvenile Defender Clinic, Emory Law
Review
"This startling book begins with the insight that criminal justice processes have come to dominate U.S. social institutions . . . this useful, in-depth guide to education and juvenile justice reform would complement more sociological texts that explore cultural or societal aspects of the pipeline."-J.S. Montgomery,Choice
Review
"This book is a real eye-opener. For anyone involved in any way with educating our youth, it is a must-read."-BIZ INDIA,
Synopsis
An in-depth analysis of the legal entry points and remedies in the school-to-prison pipeline
The "school-to-prison pipeline" is an emerging trend that pushes large numbers of at-risk youth--particularly children of color--out of classrooms and into the juvenile justice system. The policies and practices that contribute to this trend can be seen as a pipeline with many entry points, from under-resourced K-12 public schools, to the over-use of zero-tolerance suspensions and expulsions and to the explosion of policing and arrests in public schools. The confluence of these practices threatens to prepare an entire generation of children for a future of incarceration.
In this comprehensive study of the relationship between American law and the school-to-prison pipeline, co-authors Catherine Y. Kim, Daniel J. Losen, and Damon T. Hewitt analyze the current state of the law for each entry point on the pipeline and propose legal theories and remedies to challenge them. Using specific state-based examples and case studies, the authors assert that law can be an effective weapon in the struggle to reduce the number of children caught in the pipeline, address the devastating consequences of the pipeline on families and communities, and ensure that our public schools and juvenile justice system further the goals for which they were created: to provide meaningful, safe opportunities for all the nation's children.
Synopsis
How do you tell the difference between a “good kid” and a “potential thug”? In
Dangerous or Endangered?, Jennifer Tilton considers the ways in which children are increasingly viewed as dangerous and yet, simultaneously, as endangered and in need of protection by the state.
Tilton draws on three years of ethnographic research in Oakland, California, one of the nation's most racially diverse cities, to examine how debates over the nature and needs of young people have fundamentally reshaped politics, transforming ideas of citizenship and the state in contemporary America. As parents and neighborhood activists have worked to save and discipline young people, they have often inadvertently reinforced privatized models of childhood and urban space, clearing the streets of children, who are encouraged to stay at home or in supervised after-school programs. Youth activists protest these attempts, demanding a right to the city and expanded rights of citizenship.
Dangerous or Endangered? pays careful attention to the intricate connections between fears of other people's kids and fears for our own kids in order to explore the complex racial, class, and gender divides in contemporary American cities.
About the Author
Catherine Y. Kim is a former attorney for the Racial Justice Program of the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, National Legal Department. She currently teaches at the University of North Carolina School of Law at Chapel Hill.
Daniel J. Losenis a former lecturer at Harvard Law School and a senior education law and policy associate at The Civil Rights Project/Projecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA.
Damon T. Hewitt is director of the Education Project at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) and founder of its “Dismantling the School‒to‒Prison Pipeline” initiative.