Honors College Theses

Publication Date

12-2023

Major

Criminal Justice and Criminology (B.S.)

Document Type and Release Option

Thesis (restricted to Georgia Southern)

Faculty Mentor

Dr. Laurie A Gould

Abstract

While there are many drivers of mass incarceration including the war on drugs, mandatory minimum sentences, and a lack of resources in the free world, the school to prison pipeline is perhaps the most pressing. The use of exclusionary disciplinary policies and the presence of school resource officers in educational settings, means that the school to prison pipeline is a very real threat for many of our nation's youth. The school-to-prison pipeline is the concept that the way a child is reprimanded within the school systems puts them in direct contact with the criminal justice system. The current study will examine school policies that contribute to the school to prison pipeline using a content analysis of school board policies from four regions in the United States, the South (Florida and Georgia), the Northeast (Pennsylvania and Maine), The Midwest (Wisconsin and Missouri), and the West (California and Arizona). The policies that will be examined are school resource officers (SRO), suspensions, expulsions, zero-tolerance policies, corporal punishment, referrals to law enforcement, and alternatives to suspensions. Regional differences in the types of policies employed by school districts will be examined and changes to existing policies will be recommended based on current best practices.

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