Aaron Kupchik

The New American School: preparation for post‐industrial discipline

In this article we consider how broad shifts in social relations over the past 30 years have given rise to new social control regimes in US public schools. We argue that the contemporary mechanisms of control engendered by mass incarceration and post‐industrialization have re‐shaped school discipline. To illustrate contemporary discipline in the ‘New American School,’ we discuss the emergence of police officers and technological surveillance in schools. These two strategies of school social control facilitate the link between courts and schools, and expose students to both the salience of crime control in everyday life and to the demands of workers in a post‐industrial world. By incorporating police officers and technological surveillance into the school safety regime, schools shape the experiences of students in ways that reflect modern relationships of dependency, inequality, and instability vis‐à‐vis the contemporary power dynamics of the post‐industrialist labor market and the neoliberal state.

Things are tough all over: Race, ethnicity, class and school discipline

Across the USA, schools have dramatically altered how they respond to school crime in recent decades, with a growing police presence and increased levels of punishments. Based on a cultural reproduction approach to understanding how students are socialized within schools, one would expect that these increasingly law-and-order-centered shifts would be disproportionately focused in schools with mostly racial and ethnic minorities and low-income youth, relative to schools with mostly white middle-class youth. To address this issue, I consider data from observations and interviews at four high schools with varying student demographics in two states. I find that although there certainly are discrepancies between schools that a cultural reproduction approach would lead one to predict, there are also substantial similarities. Students at all four schools are exposed to punitive, rule-based policies, though the effects of these similar policies are unequally distributed. Practices that were once reserved primarily for schools hosting poor students and students of color are now implemented in mostly white middle-class schools as well.

Race, Poverty, and Exclusionary School Security: An Empirical Analysis of U.S. Elementary, Middle, and High Schools

As violence and crime within and around U.S. schools has drawn increased attention to school security, police, surveillance cameras, and other measures have grown commonplace at public schools. Social scientists commonly voice concern that exclusionary security measures are most common in schools attended by poor and non-White students, yet there is little empirical basis for assessing the extent of differential exposure, as we lack research on how exclusionary measures are distributed relative to school and student characteristics. To address this gap in the research, we use nationally representative school-level data from the School Survey on Crime and Safety to consider the security measures employed in elementary, middle, and high schools. Results indicate that while security measures are ubiquitous in U.S. high schools, those considered more exclusionary are concentrated in elementary, middle, and high schools attended by non-White and/or poorer students.

What Drives Juvenile Probation Officers? Relating Organizational Contexts, Status Characteristics, and Personal Convictions to Treatment and Punishment Orientations

Data from surveys of juvenile court probation officers in four states are analyzed to understand professional orientations toward two seemingly contrasting goals of contemporary juvenile justice systems: punishment and treatment. These self-reported juvenile probation officer orientations are considered in relation to three clusters of variables representing somewhat distinct hypothetical bases of professional orientation: court context, decision-maker status characteristics, and resonance with legal, victim’s rights, and character issues. Although court context and status characteristics distinguish attitudes toward treatment and punishment, attitudinal resonance is an especially strong predictor of these orientations. Rather than mutually exclusive or static ideologies, treatment and punishment appear to be flexible, overlapping goals that appeal to officers according to their congruence with other personal convictions. Younger probation officers are also found to be more punitive, net of other influences, suggesting cohort replacement may accelerate the displacement of juvenile rehabilitative ideals. Implications for juvenile justice research and policy are considered.

Discipline and Participation: The Long-Term Effects of Suspension and School Security on the Political and Civic Engagement of Youth.

This study uses the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health data set to evaluate the long-term influence of school discipline and security on political and civic participation. We find that young adults with a history of school suspension are less likely than others to vote and volunteer in civic activities years later, suggesting that suspension negatively impacts the likelihood that youth engage in future political and civic activities. These findings are consistent with prior theory and research highlighting the long-term negative implications of punitive disciplinary policies and the role schools play in preparing youth to participate in a democratic polity. We conclude that suspension undermines the development of the individual skills and capacities necessary for a democratic society by substituting collaborative problem solving for the exclusion and physical removal of students. The research lends empirical grounds for recommending the reform of school governance and the implementation of more constructive models of discipline.

The Decision to Incarcerate in Juvenile and Criminal Courts

Despite a recent proliferation of laws transferring adolescents from juvenile court to criminal court, no research examines whether these transfer policies subject adolescents to a different set of evaluative criteria in criminal courts than in juvenile courts. Prior literature and political rhetoric suggest that a criminal justice model of offense-based evaluative criteria would apply in the criminal court, in contrast to an offender-based juvenile justice model. Yet this hypothesis remains untested by prior research. In response, this article tests whether legal and case-processing factors have a relatively greater influence in criminal than in juvenile court, as the literature and political rhetoric would predict. To do so, the author uses comparable samples of cases, matched by age and offense, from two adjacent jurisdictions with different thresholds for criminal court eligibility. By finding no differences among factors predicting sentencing across the two legal forums, the results challenge widely held assumptions about the distinctions between juvenile and criminal courts.

The Correctional Experiences of Youth in Adult and Juvenile Prisons

This article analyzes data from interviews with inmates to examine the correctional experiences of young men incarcerated through criminal (adult) courts in a large Northeastern state. The sample (N = 95) includes respondents from five correctional institutions; some of these inmates have been sentenced to adult department of corrections facilities, and some to juvenile facilities operated by the states childrens services bureau. Relative to the adult facilities, the juvenile facilities are smaller, have much lower inmate‐to‐staff ratios, and they place greater emphasis (in their official guidelines) on treatment, counseling, education, and mentoring of inmates. As a result, one might expect juvenile‐facility inmates to report a relatively more supportive, mentoring‐focused style of staff–inmate interactions than adult‐facility inmates. Yet surprisingly, inmates in adult facilities report better access to education and treatment/counseling services offered in their facilities.

Youthfulness Responsibility and Punishment Admonishing Adolescents in Criminal Court

This article describes interaction in a criminal (adult) court in which adolescents are punished. As a result of the particular set of courtroom dynamics and the youthfulness of the defendants in this court, two potentially conflicting ideas about punishment are expressed concurrently: (1) proportionality, and (2) reduced culpability among youth. I demonstrate how judges talk to adolescent defendants during sentencing in ways that simultaneously communicate the defendants’ criminal responsibility and their youthfulness. In doing so, judges admonish the adolescents. The delivery of this admonishment is a ceremonial event that bears some similarities to the degradation rituals described by Harold Garfinkel, and also to the reintegration ceremonies described by John Braithwaite. Yet the admonishment varies from both of these events in that it is a more practical adaptation to the particular constraints of punishing adolescents in a criminal court. Thus I illustrate how judges strategically use admonishing discourse to solve intractable problems that arise from the circumstances of this court.

School Suspensions and Adverse Experiences in Adulthood

The “school-to-prison pipeline” and the negative effects of suspensions, expulsions and school arrests have received increasing national attention recently. Researchers have documented some of the potential harms of these exclusionary school discipline practices for students, including academic difficulties, increased misconduct, and future justice system contact. However, these investigations have been somewhat limited in scope, as they tend to focus only on students’ academic outcomes and juvenile justice system involvement. In this paper we seek to expand upon prior studies by considering how school suspensions may affect youth in peripheral and long-lasting ways. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent to Adult Health, we analyze whether being suspended from school relates to the likelihood of students experiencing a number of adverse events and outcomes when they are adults. We find that being suspended increases the likelihood that a student will experience criminal victimization, criminal involvement, and incarceration years later, as adults.

Racial Politics of Juvenile Justice Policy Support Juvenile Court Worker Orientations Toward Disproportionate Minority Confinement

Since 1992 there has been a federal mandate to reduce “disproportionate minority contact” (DMC), that is, juvenile and criminal justice system contact of non-White youth at rates exceeding their representation in the population. There is little research on how juvenile court authorities interpret this problem and their responsibility to address it, yet existing studies suggest that racial attitudes of court workers, and the lack of diversity among these officials, may contribute to DMC. Using a survey of juvenile court workers, the authors consider how court authorities view the importance of addressing disproportionate minority confinement and the individual-level and contextual predictors of these orientations. The authors find significant variation in the extent to which local court workers view DMC as a problem and that racial politics condition these orientations. Their findings support prior work suggesting that courtroom workgroups be seen as collectives that filter and interpret external rules and regulations, such as the DMC Mandate and indicate the significance of race to the focal concerns of court workers. Within limitations of the study, findings suggest racial politics of probation officers and court contexts may impede or promote local responses to the DMC Mandate and that minority representation within the courtroom workforce is an important source of DMC Mandate support.