Carceral Structures in Schools and the Carceral Continuum

Abstract

The new and limited studies around the existence of a carceral continuum and carceral structures within schools deserves further analysis and studies. The carceral continuum argues that Black and poor individuals navigate and experience carceral practices across various facets of their daily life extending beyond direct interactions with law enforcement. Current literature explores the carceral continuum through qualitative field work, focusing predominantly on the lived experiences and internalization of those who experience the carceral continuum. Particularly within schools, literature has focused on students’ relation with carceral policies predominantly through interaction with sworn law enforcement in schools and the use of metal detectors or drug searches in large city schools among others. This study aims to build on this literature by assessing the validity of the presence of varied carceral cultures using a nationally representative school sample. Additionally, the relationship between carceral structures, school characteristics, and school discipline was analyzed to better understand the existence and impact of carceral structures in schools. The results indicate a varied existence of carceral structures across the country, and that region, grade level, size, and racial demographics of the school were all significant in their association with carceral structures. Larger schools, higher grade level of the school, schools in the south, and schools that had greater percentages of low income and students of color (notably Black and Hispanic students) were more likely to have high levels of carceral structure. Similarly, the results showed carceral structure and all of these aforementioned categories are significant in the overall count of disciplinary actions occurring within schools. There were slight differences in the impact of region and student demographics, notably that schools in the west region and the percentage of Hispanic students was negatively related with disciplinary counts.