Exploring the School-to-Prison Pipeline: How School Suspensions Influence Incarceration During Young Adulthood

A growing body of research has evoked the life-course perspective to understand how experiences in school relate to a wide range of longer term life outcomes. This is perhaps best typified by the notion of the school-to-prison pipeline which refers to a process by which youth who experience punitive punishment in schools are increasingly enmeshed within the criminal justice system. While this metaphor is commonly accepted, few studies have examined the extent to which exclusionary school discipline significantly alters pathways toward incarceration as youth transition into young adulthood. Applying a life-course perspective and leveraging 15 waves of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, this study examines how school suspensions influence the odds of imprisonment during young adulthood. Mixed-effects longitudinal models demonstrate that receiving a suspension serves as a key turning point toward increased odds of incarceration, even after accounting for key covariates including levels of criminal offending. However, results show that repeated suspensions do not appear to confer additional risk of incarceration. Results carry implications for the ways in which school punishment impacts youths' life-course.