Pandemic Halts School-to-Prison Pipeline, But Expected to Restart

In March 2020, elementary, middle, and high schools in the middle of their spring semesters came to a grinding halt. As students were sent home to learn and teachers transitioned to virtual teaching, another increasingly common element of modern-day schools paused as well: The school-to-prison pipeline.

The school-to-prison pipeline is characterized by a school disciplinary approach (for example, “zero tolerance” policies, out-of-school suspensions, expulsions, and law enforcement referrals) that essentially funnels adolescents out of schools and into juvenile and, ultimately, adult legal systems. The pipeline is especially pronounced for Black and Latinx students and students with disabilities and in schools serving impoverished communities, explained Sarah Vinson, M.D., and Randee Waldman, J.D., in a commentary published in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health. Vinson is a clinical associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and of pediatrics at Morehouse School of Medicine, and Waldman is the director of the Barton Juvenile Defender Clinic at Emory University School of Law.

During an APA Foundation town hall titled “What Do Disruptive Behaviors Indicate?,” Waldman explained that, typically, about 40% of juvenile court referrals come from schools. Those referrals stopped altogether from March until at least May. Crime, however, has not correspondingly risen. “Although data are scarce, they do not indicate that society has become less safe in this context,” Vinson and Waldman wrote in their Lancet article. “Rather, there has been a decrease in new juvenile justice referrals overall in the USA, which is suggestive of a decrease in crime.”

“I think some people tend to think that locking up kids who do ‘bad things’ makes everybody safer, and that’s part of why they’re OK with kids going to jail,” Vinson told Psychiatric News. “But people don’t understand that, quite often, these kids do not need to be in jail, and the experience of incarceration puts them on a trajectory that ultimately makes us less safe, because these kids are less likely to graduate from high school and more likely to cycle in and out of the criminal justice system throughout their lives.”

Waldman stressed that many of the students who end up entangled in the juvenile justice system are simply acting, as she put it, like teenagers. They get into a fight at lunch, she said, or curse at a teacher. “They’re behaviors that also occur at wealthier schools, but the students don’t get arrested,” she said. There are, of course, instances in which students act out because they need more supports, such as because they are experiencing poverty at home or need treatment for a mental illness. “But the vast majority of kids are not who the average citizen would refer to as criminals,” Waldman said. “They’re teenagers doing things that teenagers do, and they should be addressed in appropriate ways at school, not in the court system.”

It’s not that school staff are badly motivated, Waldman explained. The problems are exacerbated by under-resourced schools, which frequently lack school counselors and mental health professionals and whose teachers are often overburdened and overworked. On top of that, she said, is the common misconception that the criminal justice system automatically fixes problems. “That’s simply not how it works,” she said.

Both she and Vinson expressed concerns about how the school-to-prison pipeline might worsen when students eventually return to in-person learning.

The educational gaps between Vinson’s patients have been exacerbated since the pandemic began, she said. Some students attend schools with fewer resources or they have the additional challenges of requiring special education services or dealing with the symptoms of a mental illness. “When they go back to school, they’re going back to an environment where they’re more likely to meet a school resource officer than a counselor or mental health professional,” Vinson said.

When in-person learning restarts, students will have plenty of reasons to be frustrated and anxious, and maybe even angry, because of all the changes and stress that the pandemic has brought. “Yet they’ll be characterized as being oppositional or disrespectful,” Vinson said.

One of the reasons students act out in school is because they sometimes don’t understand what’s being asked of them, Waldman explained. “When they go back after the pandemic, there are going to be shorter fuses on both sides, among students and teachers, because of how stressful everything has been,” Waldman said. “I fear we’re going to see a whole new level of student arrests.”

Yet there are ways to curb the school-to-prison pipeline. Ultimately, the pipeline is rooted in a tendency to respond to disruptive behaviors with punishment and even criminalization. The APA Foundation’s Notice. Talk. Act. at School program is designed to help school staff—such as teachers, janitors, administrators, or anyone who interacts with students in schools—recognize disruptive behavior and approach the student with empathy and compassion.

Psychiatrists play a vital role in Notice. Talk. Act. at School to educate school staff on what the symptoms of mental illness look like. The goal is not for staff to diagnose students, but to help them notice these symptoms, start a conversation with the students to learn more, and refer the students to the appropriate resources if necessary.

“Understanding why kids may behave this way is really important,” Vinson said. She urged communities to be proactive and not wait until students return to in-person learning before trying to help them deal with the stress they’re likely experiencing. “We already know which communities deal with housing insecurity, and we already know which school districts have only seen 25% of their students log in for virtual learning. There are things we could do as a society that would give these kids the support they need right now.”

Psychiatrists can get involved in Notice. Talk. Act. at School by completing certificate training and sharing their expertise with school staff. To learn more, visit the APA Foundation’s website or email Christopher Chun-Seeley. ■