Research Resources
The $3.4 Trillion Mistake: The Cost of Mass Incarceration and Criminalization, and How Justice Reinvestment Can Build a Better Future for All
“Communities United, Make the Road New York, and Padres & Jóvenes Unidos have just released a new report detailing how the U.S.’s misguided criminal justice policies wasted $3.4 trillion over the last three decades that could have instead been used to more effectively address the root causes of crime and meet critical community needs. The report provides a national and state-by-state analysis of the country’s investments in police, prisons, jails, prosecutors, and immigration enforcement.”
Power in Partnerships: Building Conenctions at the Intersections of Racial Justice and LGBTQ Movements to End the School to Prison Pipeline
“Dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline, especially for LGBTQ students and youth of color, needs to happen now. Success requires the best of our movement’s collective thinking, visioning, and strategy. We have made significant progress but still have a way to go. With Power in Partnerships, we look forward to continuing to build, grow, and collaborate toward ending the school-to-prison pipeline and building a better tomorrow for our young people.”
LGBTQ Youth of Color: Discipline Disparities, School Push-Out, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline
“Findings in this study support previous research on the prevalence of bullying and harassment in schools. However, LGBTQ youth of color are bullied based on race, sexual orientation, gender identity, or all of the above at once. While harassment and bullying of any kind negatively affects students’ ability to thrive in school, student’s who experience multiple forms of bullying and harassment face even greater challenges.”
Police in Schools are Not the Answer to School Shootings
“Police do not contribute to positive, nurturing learning environments for students. The increased presence of police officers in schools across the country discipline has been linked to increases in school-based arrests for minor misbehaviors and negative impacts on school climate. In the last five years, the evidence against placing police in schools has only grown.”
Bullies in Blue
“This new ACLU white paper, “Bullies in Blue: Origins and Consequences of School Policing,” explores the beginnings of school policing in the United States and sheds light on the negative consequences of the increasing role of police and links it to both the drivers of punitive criminal justice policies and mass incarceration nationwide. It posits that police are police, and in schools they will act as police, and in those actions bring the criminal justice system into our schools and criminalizing our kids.”
From Preschool to Prison: The Criminalization of Black Girls
“The school-to-prison pipeline is the path through which unfair treatment of adolescents leads to involvement in the criminal justice system. However, efforts to correct this problem often fail to include black girls, who are six times more likely to receive an out-of-school suspension than their white counterparts.”
School Pushout: Impacts on Students with Special Needs and Their Families
“This workshop from Advocates for Equity in Schools highlights the Special Needs student population, which are often among the most common targets of the school-to-prison pipeline. It offers linkages to the federal education protections of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and Section 504 legislation, which are critical components to dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline.”
A World of Hardship: Deep Poverty and the Struggle for Educational Equity
“Children living in households in deep poverty are often “invisible” to more affluent community members—and likely to many educators as well. Too often, the plight of students living in deep poverty is subsumed under the broad definition of poverty, which does not reveal the unique hardships that are endured by those families and children with virtually no material resources.”
Beyond Suspensions: Examining School Discipline Policies and Connections to the School-to-Prison Pipeline for Students of Color with Disabilities
“Children living in households in deep poverty are often “invisible” to more affluent community members—and likely to many educators as well. Too often, the plight of students living in deep poverty is subsumed under the broad definition of poverty, which does not reveal the unique hardships that are endured by those families and children with virtually no material resources.”
Restorative Justice Now: A Community Review of Alexandria City Public Schools’ Implementation of Restorative Justice
“This report contains a timeline of our work to implement restorative justice, an analysis of the suspension and referral to law enforcement data from the 2014-15 school year, and a list of recommendations to end harsh school discipline in ACPS.”
Lost Opportunities: How Disparate School Discipline Continues to Drive Differences in the Opportunity to Learn
“This national study provides a comprehensive analysis of the instruction days lost due to out-of-school suspensions in 2015-16 for middle and high school students, for every state and district. The study also demonstrates how the frequent use of suspension contributes to stark inequities in the opportunity to learn, especially for those groups most frequently suspended. The descriptive findings will help policymakers understand the impact on every racial group and on students with disabilities.”
11 Million Days Lost: Race, Discipline, and Safety at US Public Schools
“Specifically, this snapshot highlights new data showing the days of lost instruction resulting from the use of suspension. Unlike all prior reports, these data are not estimates but based on the actual reports from nearly every public school in the nation. It provides vital information to parents, students, educators, advocates, researchers, policy makers and others interested in the impact of discipline disparities on educational equity and opportunity.”
The School Girls Deserve: Youth driven solutions for creating safe, holistic, and affirming New York City public schools
“This participatory action research project and policy report, is driven by girls and TGNC youth of color, but was truly an intergenerational process with the researchers and core authors being under 30 years old. Through collaboration with our study participants, staff and academic researcher, these visionary strategies were developed by young people most impacted by the problems and solutions.”
