Carcerality and Education: Toward a Relational Theory of Risk in Educational Institutions

Abstract

In this paper, we explore the logics underlying the policies and practices within K-12 schools, colleges, and universities that expose students to carceral systems, such as the police and prisons. Educational institutions at all levels have had the latitude to develop the capacity to discipline, surveil, and control students, which reproduce carceral logics within as well as create pathways to carceral systems. However, our scholarly understanding of such phenomena is bifurcated and uneven. While there is an extensive line of research on exclusionary discipline in the K-12 sector, similar scholarship is emergent at the postsecondary level. The goals of this paper are twofold. First, we review the ways in which carcerality informs the development of discipline, punishment, and control structures throughout the K-16 pipeline. Second, we introduce a relational theory of risk as a unified conceptual approach to examine carceral policies and practices in both the K-12 and the higher education sectors. From a relational risk perspective, we argue that carceral practices can be understood as a relationship between educational institutions and students who are perceived to be threats to institutional interests. Engaging with the organizational imperatives that lead to carceral practices, researchers and practitioners can better attend to dismantling racial exclusion in education.

Keywords

carcerality education relational theory of risk

Introduction

Incarceration and involvement with the justice system disrupts the educational opportunities of youth and young adults. Once involved in the justice system, youth are removed from traditional classroom spaces where education is based on learning, and they must learn the (new) rules of confinement (Annamma, 2017; Huerta, 2016, 2018). In the United States, over 750,000 youth experienced the juvenile justice system in 2018 (Puzzanchera & Hockenberry, 2020), and in California over 40,000 were locked up in facilities away from their homes during the 2018-2019 academic school year (California Department of Education, 2020). Two-thirds of confined youth are held in correctional facilities, including detention centers and long-term facilities designated for juveniles as well as adult prisons and jails (Sawyer, 2019). Among young adults, approximately 25% of the federal and state prison populations are between the ages of 18–29, the traditional college-going demographic (Carson, 2020). Moreover, being labeled as deviant and having a criminal record poses barriers to reintegration into traditional school settings and furthering educational pursuits (Casella, 2003a; Huerta et al., 2020).

At the same time, there are numerous policies and practices within K-12 schools, colleges, and universities—which we refer to collectively as educational institutions—that expose students to the carceral system. Educational institutions have increased their capacities to discipline, surveil, and control students. While teaching and learning are most associated with educational institutions, punishment has also become a “natural and legitimate” function (Foucault, 1977, p. 298). Zero tolerance discipline policies, police presence, threat assessment, and security technologies are among the carceral policies and practices widely adopted among educational institutions (Fisher et al., 2020; Noguera, 2003; Rios, 2017; Shedd, 2015). In the K-12 sector, extensive research on the school-to-prison pipeline (STPP) has demonstrated an increased criminalization of students and the numerous pathways that lead students from schools into carceral spaces (Durán, 2013; Hirschfield & Celinska, 2011; Huerta et al., 2017; Lopez-Aguado, 2018; Nance, 2015; Noguera, 2003; Rios, 2010, 2011, 2017; Turner & Beneke, 2020; Wald & Losen, 2003; Weisburst, 2019). Colleges and universities have similarly come to regulate and sanction student behavior through on-campus police departments, extensive security, and crisis management structures in addition to traditional student disciplinary systems (Dannells, 1997; Dizon et al., 2020; Randazzo & Cameron, 2012). However, the structures of policing, security, punishment, and exclusion in higher education have yet to be critically interrogated regarding their impact on students. Moreover, there are limited cohesive frameworks to understand the carceral turn in K-12 and postsecondary education sectors (De Lissovoy, 2013).

In this paper, we interrogate the relationship between carcerality, educational institutions, and racially minoritized students from K-16. We aim to provide a unified conceptual approach to examine carceral policies and practices in both the K-12 and the higher education sectors. Much of the existing research focuses on carcerality for youth in K-12 schools. However, emerging research has shed light on the negative impact of campus police (Jenkins et al., 2020; Smith et al., 2007), the fear of deportation among undocumented college students (Lachica Buenavista, 2018; Gonzales, 2016), involvement in judicial affairs (Harper et al., 2005), and previous conviction records on postsecondary access and persistence (Custer, 2018; Huerta et al., 2020; Johnson, 2015; Ott & McTier, 2019). Such issues are also present in K-12 schools, affecting student learning and transitions into postsecondary education opportunities (Legewie & Fagan, 2019; Johnson, 2015). The documented racial disparities tied to the STPP are consequential insofar as they indicate “leaks” in the educational pipeline that are not often considered when examining the obstacles racially minoritized students encounter in higher education. While encounters with school resource officers may be different in nature and outcome compared to stops by college campus police officers, the prevalence of sanctioned punishment and exclusion throughout the educational pipeline calls for a holistic examination of how some students are constructed as deviants and criminals.

We propose a unified approach to conceptually examine the shared logic underpinning carceral practices in K-12 schools and higher education institutions. We introduce and apply a relational theory of risk to account for why carceral policies and practices exist at all levels of education and how racially minoritized students are disproportionately vulnerable to punishment and incarceration (Boholm & Corvellec, 2011). Risk is a socially constructed relationship between risk objects, which are deemed harmful and dangerous, and objects at risk, which are valued and considered important to society (Boholm & Corvellec, 2011). While risk has been employed in education to label types of students or identify potential liabilities to student success (i.e., “at-risk” students), we argue that the students themselves are often positioned as risk objects in relation to their educational institutions. As educational institutions have increased their capacities to manage crime, fear of victimization, and legal liability (Dizon et al., 2020), racially minoritized students and their communities are often the targets of the most extreme safety and security enhancements (Hirschfield, 2010; Shedd, 2015). A relational theory of risk allows us to consider the relationship between educational institutions and racially minoritized students as well as how carcerality shapes how racially minoritized students are positioned within their educational environments. When we consider risk as a sociocultural construct rather than as measurable and objectively real, we can account for how racial ideologies and dynamics intersect with perceptions of safety and danger. The development and implementation of carceral policies and practices shape, in part, how educators (administrators, faculty, and staff) and racially minoritized students interact with one another on unequal terms.

Education and the Carceral State

The commonly used phrase “criminal justice system” refers to crime control, enforcement of the law, and the administration of justice (Kappeler & Gaines, 2015). The notion of criminal justice activates readily available images of blue uniforms, the courtroom, and prison yards. However, inequities from arrests to court sentencing raise the question of whether justice is, and can ever be, objectively served. Building on the ideas originated by Foucault (1977), Underground Scholars (2019), a collective of system-impacted college students, have suggested the use of the term “carceral system” to describe the “comprehensive network of systems that rely, at least in part, on the exercise of state sanctioned physical, emotional, spatial, economic and political violence to preserve the interests of the state” (p. 2). The carceral system organizes not only the police, courts, and prisons but also includes surveillance systems, the social disciplining promoted by non-profit organizations, corporate exploitation of incarcerated people and their communities, and research and discourse that both criminalizes and Others (Underground Scholars, 2019). Carcerality exploits and controls the most marginalized in society to the degree that even superficially positive interventions, such as social welfare and youth development, are mechanisms that stigmatize and penalize (Bergen & Abji, 2020; Kwon, 2013). For example, Casella (2003b) highlights how schools micro-analyze untraditional characteristics of high school youth (e.g., race, family background, perceptions of intellectual abilities, and dangerousness) to determine whether students should remain in school or be sent to youth camps or alternative learning environments.

We focus on the argument embedded in this definition of a carceral system: discipline, punishment, surveillance, and incarceration are not confined to the formal criminal justice institutions. Early on, Foucault (1977) proposed the notion of the disciplinary society, which is characterized by numerous social institutions, from education to the workplace. While the formal criminal justice system is itself highly developed in terms of policy, staffing, and funds, the carceral system refers to an overall network of punishment that is “not only larger, but also more legally hybrid and institutionally variegated than is sometimes recognized” (Beckett & Murakawa, 2012, p. 222). Contemporary scholars have referred to the shadow carceral state (Beckett & Murakawa, 2012) and the universal carceral apparatus (Shedd, 2015) to describe how public institutions are co-opted into punishment delivery, including schools, colleges, and universities. Public institutions that feed into the carceral state exclude on the basis of a person’s criminal justice record, use imprisonment as a sanction, incorporate criminal justice personnel into regular organizational procedures, and cross-deputize non-criminal justice personnel to enforce criminal law (Murakawa, 2014).

The carceral influence in education has resulted in policies and practices that target students. Zero tolerance models of school discipline grew in popularity in the 1990s, particularly after the passage of the 1994 Gun-Free Schools Act (Nolan, 2011). The initial zero tolerance efforts were focused on drug prevention and use at schools; however, this gradually morphed into a catch-all phase that centered on punishment and control of students for real or perceived threats of violence. Although zero tolerance policies initially focused on weapons, many schools extended this model to other behaviors, including controlled-substance use, uniforms, non-threatening possessions such as cell phones, and movement on/off-campus. These expanded uses of zero tolerance are more prevalent in schools that serve racially minoritized students who experience increased suspensions and decreased learning time (Brown, 2007; Muñoz, 2005; Verdugo, 2002). In the 2017–2018 academic year, Black students composed 33% of expulsions, a rate twice their share (15.1%) of total student enrollment. Similarly, American Indian or Alaska Native students were expelled at rates (1.1% and 1.8%) higher than their share of total student enrollment (1.0%). Both of these groups were also overrepresented in school suspensions (U.S. Education Department, Office for Civil Rights, 2020). Harsh discipline, surveillance technologies, and police presence shape schools into prison-like environments. Similarly, in higher education, student conduct administration, policing, and surveillance are organizational structures that help define the college student experience. Although higher education no longer operates by the principle of in loco parentis, disciplinary and carceral structures create a framework for social control sanctioned within the current legal system (Fisher & Sloan, 2013). These practices are not purely based within an education-based paradigm as they are connected to the criminal justice system. For instance, interactions with campus police officers expose students of color to entry into the criminal justice system, a possible criminal record, aggressive policing, and hyper-monitoring of their presence and movement in higher education (Dizon, 2021; Jenkins et al., 2020; Smith et al., 2007). Additionally, higher education institutions restrict access for individuals with criminal records (Castro & Magana, 2020; Custer, 2018).

A framework commonly used to describe this relationship between educational institutions and the criminal justice system is the school-to-prison pipeline (STPP), evoking a linear image of students being funneled from one institution to the other (Noguera, 2003). Reform that stems from the STPP framework often focuses on student behavior and transforming racially disparate discipline policy without a thorough investigation into why such disparities are prevalent (Sojoyner, 2013). Scholars have recently amended this framework by calling it a school-prison nexus, which calls attention to the complicated, interwoven interplay of multiple systems (e.g., education, criminal justice, housing and labor policy) that work to introduce racially minoritized students to the criminal justice system (Annamma, 2017). As it relates to Black students in particular, (Sojoyner, 2013) critiques the STPP for failing “to challenge the ethos of anti-Blackness foundational to the formation and enactment of school discipline” (p. 245). He employs the enclosure analytic to argue against the distinction between educational institutions and disciplinary institutions, such as prisons. Rather, educational institutions have historically been, and continue to be, sites in which the punishment of Black students is normalized and the liberatory possibilities of education suppressed (Sojoyner, 2013).

The enclosure analytic can be applied to higher education as Black, Asian, Latinx, and Native college student activists are punished with police violence and legal sanctions for organizing against injustices on- and off-campus (Majeed, 2012; Sojoyner, 2013; Umemoto, 1989). For example, in 2011, campus police pepper-sprayed student and community demonstrators during an occupy movement event. Johnson and Dizon (forthcoming) build upon these arguments and propose the notion of the college-prison nexus to fully situate how postsecondary institutions and carceral systems mutually reinforce one another through practices, such as campus law enforcement, student conduct, the adoption of surveillance technologies, admissions, and financial aid policies. In light of these available frameworks that identify the relationships between carceral systems and educational institutions, there has yet to be a unified theoretical approach to studying carceral practices in K-12 schools and postsecondary institutions. Given how racially minoritized students are policed and disciplined at every level of education, a shared lens is necessary to better attend to inequities resulting from the carceral influence on educational institutions.

Risk and Carcerality in Education

Carceral practices in education are broadly reflective of a concern among educational institutions around occurrences of conduct violations. Of equal importance is the capacity to preempt and address perceived minor infractions of order before they escalate into acts of defiance, academic dishonesty, theft, and violence (Harcourt, 1998). Carceral functions within schools and postsecondary institutions anticipate risk, specifically the probability of disorder and consequential harm to the organization itself. Disciplinary infractions, disorder, and the grounds for punishment are thus defined by how behaviors are read as risks or risky. We contend that police presence, student conduct codes, disciplinary approaches (e.g., zero tolerance), expulsion policies, and other systems of punishment and discipline constitute risk governance in education (Huerta, 2018; Simon, 2007; Van Asselt & Renn, 2011). Carceral policies and practices establish the rules for how racially minoritized students are to behave, study, and interact to minimize the risk they pose. Whereas risk can be thought of as a measurable construct (e.g., insurance policies), we contrast objectivist and sociocultural approaches to risk and then outline a relational theory of risk. We then apply these concepts to illustrate how risk operates as an ideological principle organizing carceral practices throughout the educational system in the U.S.

Risk and risk management are increasingly becoming a characteristic of modern industrial societies, especially given the advent of technology and globalization (Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1990, 1991). Risk is understood as “the potential for realization of unwanted, negative consequences of an event” that may be brought upon by circumstance, technology, and decision-making (Rowe, 1975, p. 24). In practical terms, risks may emanate from the environment, political conflict, and the economy. Individual lifestyle and interpersonal choices (e.g., dietary habits and workplace relationships) also involve potential threats to one’s well-being. In the case of punishment and discipline, educational institutions are concerned with mitigating criminal risks and financial sanctions for not following mandated security measures (Lupton, 2013). The extent to which societies and individuals have come to identify risks is directly related to how risk is understood.

The study of risk is informed by several disciplines—economics, mathematics, sociology, psychology, and history (Althaus, 2005). Among extant scholarship, there are three main categories of risk perspectives (Lupton, 2013). First, the technico-scientific perspective assumes that objective hazards and threats exist and can be measured. Engineering, statistics, epidemiology, and economics are concerned with calculating the risk probability from the technico-scientific approach. Second, the cognitive psychology perspective accepts the objective existence of risk and focuses on how individuals subjectively evaluate and respond to it. In psychological models, “the hazard is taken as the independent variable and people’s response to it as dependent” (Douglas, 1985, p. 25). In education, an example of an objectified understanding of risk is using students’ background characteristics and academic performance to identify them as “at-risk.” Another instance is the use of police as a proactive response to crime that is perceived to be ever more present in educational settings.

Both the technico-scientific and cognitive psychology approaches take the notion of objectively real risk as the starting point, neglecting people along with social and cultural factors. The third perspective, the sociocultural, addresses risk from a social constructionist, rather than a realist, paradigm (Lupton, 2013). Researchers operating from a sociocultural perspective attempt to account for how different individuals, social groups, and organizations may perceive potential risks from the same situation differently (Hilgartner et al., 1992). In contrast to the notion that risk exists objectively in nature, the sociocultural perspective posits that risks are “always created and effected in social systems” and that the magnitude of a risk is directly related to the “quality of social relationships and processes” (Beck, 1992, p. 4). More so than attempting to establish the ontology of risk (“What is risk?”), the sociocultural perspective is concerned with epistemology and risk as a social phenomenon (“How do people understand something as a risk?”). Within the sociocultural perspective, we draw from and apply a relational theory of risk to theorize the rationale for carceral practices in the educational system (Boholm & Corvellec, 2011).

A Relational Theory of Risk

A relational theory of risk recognizes that identifying and responding to risk is a contingent process. Boholm and Corvellec (2011) argue that risk results from situated cognition that is grounded in specific circumstances. The theory emphasizes specificity as actors’ perspectives on and interpretations of risk can vary considerably, even though the same external phenomena are being addressed (Boholm, 2003, 2009). Depending on the situation, a relationship of risk may be established “linking two objects, a risk object and object at risk, in a causal and contingent way so that the risk object is considered, in some way and under certain circumstances, to threaten the valued object at risk” (p .176). This statement is captured in the following diagram (Boholm & Corvellec, 2011, p. 179)

[Risk object] \to (Relationship of risk) \to [Object at risk]

In referencing objects throughout this paper, we adopt Boholm and Corvellec’s (2011) understanding to expand beyond the material sense and include “any kind of physical, cultural, or social artifact that can be delineated and singled out,” including natural, manufactured, cultural, and social phenomena (p. 177).

The first component of a relational theory of risk is the risk object, something that is identified as dangerous, a hazard. More obvious dangers are physical, such as a fast-spreading infection among students, staff, and faculty or the use of toxic materials in buildings. Risk objects may also be ideas and actions. Cultural representation (e.g., conflicts over free speech) and behaviors (e.g., drug use) have been considered dangers that educational institutions attempt to manage. Of import is that risk objects do not simply exist but are produced within a specific social context. Boholm and Corvellec (2011) remark that constructing a risk object involves selection and conceptualization, which refers to how certain characteristics of the risk object are highlighted while others are downplayed. The risk object is culturally constrained yet also fluid. Take, for instance, the figure of an active school shooter. This was not always considered a threat by educational leaders, students, and their families. With more incidents of school shootings, however, there is a national trend toward training and prevention. Just as new dangers arise, new vulnerabilities become visible.

Objects at risk, the second component of the relational theory of risk, are any object that might face a loss of value as a result of coming into contact with the risk object. Objects at risk are constructed around “value, loss, vulnerability, and need for protection” (Boholm & Corvellec, 2011, p. 180). Therefore, scholars are concerned with the damage (Kaplan & Garrick, 1981) or putative harm (Hilgartner et al., 1992) to the object at risk. In other words, “for an object to be considered ‘at risk,’ it must be ascribed some sort of value” by those assessing it (Boholm & Corvellec, 2011, p. 177). The association of raised values of an object is culturally constructed and informed by overarching societal beliefs and values as well as local context. In education, objects at risk may include institutional rank, financial stability, quality instruction, and student safety. While these are broadly recognized as positive indicators, Corvellec (2010) argues that within specific organizations, managerial practices inform what is of value. This perspective accounts for variation in policies pertaining to objects at risk across schools, colleges, and universities. What is considered dangerous and what is deemed valuable is subject to change over time and place.

The third and final element is the relationship of risk connecting the risk object and object at risk. The relationship of risk is “the relationship an observer establishes between a risk object and an object at risk, the former being held to threaten the value of the latter” (Boholm & Corvellec, 2011, p. 180). The relationship of risk is socially constructed and informed by cultural beliefs. According to Hilgartner et al. (1992), objects are not “simply waiting in the world to be perceived or defined as risky” (p. 41). Instead, identifying relationships of risk requires an understanding of the “networks of risk objects and causal linkages that people do construct” (p. 42). In line with this point, Boholm and Corvellec (2011) assert that “the identities of risk objects, objects at risk, and relationships of risk are continually reframed and redefined” (p. 182). One source of reframing and redefinition is how institutions, such as education, engage in risk governance, excluding risk objects, while preserving and protecting objects at risk.

The relational theory of risk presented here demonstrates that risk is not an objectified harm that is ever-present and looming. Risk portends catastrophe or loss, and the relationship of risk signifies a “phenomenon that may happen sometime in the future” (Lupton, 2013, p. 10). However, this “unrealized potentiality” is contingent upon how the risk object and object at risk are defined, which is subject to change across time and context (Rigakos & Law, 2009, p. 80). Likewise, carceral practices in education have evolved over time, representing an increased interconnection between criminal justice logics and the education system. Given the increase in political oversight, accountability mandates, and public scrutiny, educational institutions are pressured to maintain their financial, political, and social value. In the next section, we provide concrete examples of each element of the relational theory of risk to demonstrate common linkages in the K-12 and higher education sectors regarding the increased reliance on carceral practices to assess and manage risk.

Objects At-Risk: From Students to the School

To be “at-risk” means to be exposed to harm or danger. In the K-12 and postsecondary education sectors, at-risk students are those individuals who experience academic difficulties, come from a socially disadvantaged demographic, or both (James, 2012; Pizzolato, 2003). Several factors are associated with at-risk students, such as lower socioeconomic status, involvement in the foster care system, low literacy rates, employed while attending school, and being the first in one’s family to attend college (Berger et al., 2015; Choen, 2002; Herbers et al., 2012; Sirin, 2005). The at-risk descriptor is typically associated with racially minoritized, low-performing, low-income, or housing-insecure students. These are, without coincidence, also the students that tend to experience disparate discipline and criminalization.

In applying a relational theory of risk, we seek to understand why educational institutions enact harsher disciplinary practices on racially minoritized students. To do this within our framework, we shift the at-risk position from marginalized students to the educational institutions that serve them. From the standpoint of school discipline, students who are punished are understood to be causing harm to something or someone of value. Educational institutions assess harm or danger through explicit and implicit processes such as disciplinary referrals, counseling students out, involuntary transfer to alternative schools, and the racial profiling of college students by campus police (Huerta, 2018; Jenkins et al., 2020; Skiba et al., 2008; Torre, 2013). Educational institutions engage in practices to reduce potential harm to organizational values, including reputation or academic ranking. Such practices are made legible through our recognition that school organizations commonly function from an at-risk position (Posselt, 2016). Disparate discipline and criminalization of students, then, is a form of risk management. If we were to maintain students as the objects at risk, then that would require us to designate schools and their disciplinary practices to be risk objects. However, this does not do the theoretical work of explaining why racially minoritized students are disciplined at disproportionate rates. Instead, we choose to shift the at-risk subjectivity to the schools, colleges, and universities that house marginalized students, and we argue for a reframing of the institution as the object at risk. This reframing does not intend to victimize education institutions but rather make plain how the values and interests of these institutions work to rationalize and even bring about harsh disciplinary practices for already-marginalized students.

Objects at risk embody recognized value. The societal importance placed upon educational institutions is both moral and measured, the latter being important to this discussion. The value of educational institutions can be assessed through accountability standards, reputation, prestige legitimacy, and financial worth (Winston, 1999). These interests jointly serve students in many ways, such as establishing high achievement standards and securing revenue to improve educational programming and student life. Although educational institutions are ultimately in place to be of service to student consumers, schools, like all organizations, also have a vested interest in protecting the existence of the organization (Johns, 1999). K-12 and postsecondary institutions both face liability for academic and financial performance targets, with the institution at stake of being closed (Hillman et al., 2014; Tieken & Auldridge-Reveles, 2019), taken over by a governing authority (Wong & Shen, 2003), or losing its accreditation for not adhering to regional and national standards (Bardo, 2009). For K-12 and postsecondary schools alike, performance targets are tied to the legitimacy and value of the institutions, which influence school ratings (Murray & Howe, 2017), peer rankings (Altbach, 2006), and government funding (Miao, 2012). These interests are in constant flux and need to be managed by educational institutions.

The interest of organizational self-preservation might not always align with student consumer interests (Johns, 1999). Further, all students do not benefit from these organizational interests. We argue that educational institutions are also involved in surveying which students are a threat to the interests of legitimacy, accountability, reputation, prestige, or financial worth of the institution (Posselt, 2016; Stevens, 2009). Through this surveying process, we contend that students from racially minoritized groups are more likely to be viewed as risky (risk objects) in that they might not maintain the institutions’ academic standards or fit into the cultural and social order of the school (Posselt, 2016; King et al., 2013). Moreover, they are more likely to be over-disciplined and criminalized because of perceived or reals threats of danger to peers, educators, or the organizational culture (Casella, 2003b; Gregory & Thompson, 2010; Noguera, 2003). In this framework, disciplinary and exclusionary structures serve as a way to mitigate harm to the institution by removing the student, or, at the very least, serve to rationalize why some students perform poorly by labeling them as behaviorally challenged or inadmissible to selective postsecondary programs.

Risk Objects

Risk objects represent a hazard, a danger, that has been identified with a particular social relationship and setting. In educational settings, conventional risk objects include threats to collective and individual safety such as crime, environmental catastrophe, incidents of mass violence, physical assault, and fighting. In addition, unethical behavior (e.g., academic dishonesty), deviance from order and authority (e.g., disrespect toward a teacher, student demonstrations), and threats to organizational performance (e.g., low school test scores) introduce unconventional harms that disrupt intended institutional functioning and aims. We suggest that educational institutions localize risk onto the bodies, behaviors, and cultural representations of students—they are the risk objects that endanger the value and stability of an educational institution. Building from the ideas of policing and rule management, some students are perceived to be incapable of maintaining the expected social and cultural order within education. Within an educational institution, authority, order, and academic performance are among the principles that administrators and faculty strive to maintain through teaching and behavior management with students. When students endanger order, authority, and the pursuit of institutional goals, they are risk objects posing financial, legal, and reputational harms to the institution.

Carceral practices monitor and punish undesirable behavior performed by students in schools (Hirschfield, 2010). Such practices are developed due to negative perceptions of what students may do, their cultural backgrounds, and the surrounding community. While external forces and actors perpetuate harm, measures designed to protect students from external threats to their safety often turn on them as well; concerns over student behaviors motivate institutional surveillance, punishment, and discipline. While efforts to contain risks may be justified on an abstract level (e.g., aggregated rates of crime, policy rationales), students are directly affected, and student data reveals inequitable outcomes (Peguero & Shekarkhar, 2011; Skiba et al., 2011; Theriot, 2009). Policing at all levels of the educational pipeline is a clear example of how students become positioned as threats to the stability of the institution. For example, Jacobsen (2015) documented how college students expressed that campus police officers unnecessarily harassed them. These students expected to be protected from outsiders but not be the subjects of policing themselves. Although law enforcement officials, campus police officers also maintain campus conduct through monitoring non-criminal student behavior. Student activism is one form of expression that has historically been repressed by campus police and administrators, including through committees that surveil the activities of student activists (Maira & Sze, 2012).

At the K-12 level, the transfer of public school security to the authority of the New York Police Department was based on an argument linking community violence and crime to student safety (Costikyan et al., 1996). What resulted was the doubling of NYPD presence in schools over time and the criminalization of student behavior (Mukherjee, 2007). Nolan (2011) documented how Black and Latinx students in one under-resourced high school were disproportionately targeted by NYPD, leading to a loss of learning time in favor of punishment (Legewie & Fagan, 2019). While students are the intended beneficiaries of educational institutions, the investment in raising student performance and outcomes is matched by carceral structures that address the consequences of undesirable behavior. From lower test scores to disorderly conduct, students are constructed as harmful to the educational environment meant to serve them.

Although we broadly assert that students are considered risk objects and thus the targets of carceral practices, students are not a universal, homogenous group. Our focus on racially minoritized students recognizes the disproportionality and inequity that the carceral system exacerbates and reproduces. Risk management is not abstract or impartial because risk objects are created through identity categories such as race (Agyepong, 2018; Annamma, 2017). Drawing from this logic, the maintenance of order and discipline cannot be objective because the risk objects that threaten stability are identified in part through social identity labels (Ericson & Haggerty, 1997). Institutional decisions to surveil, repress, and punish students consider identities part of the selection process that produces risk objects. Moreover, carceral practices draw upon and reinforce institutionally constructed identities. At the K-12 level, scholars have repeatedly shown the overrepresentation of Black and Latinx students in K-12 suspensions and expulsions(Annamma et al., 2014; Gregory et al., 2010). Qualitative research in higher education illustrates how racially minoritized students are targets of campus policing at various institutional types, including predominantly white and open-access institutions (Dache-Gerbino & White, 2016; Dizon, Forthcoming; Smith et al., 2007). Scholarship on the college student conduct process similarly suggests that racial discrimination has a significant role in conduct outcomes and how racially minoritized students experience conduct adjudication (Arao, 2017; Kaminski, 2018; Neumeister, 2019).

How racially minoritized students are constructed as risk objects implicate broader racial ideologies embedded in social institutions. The “super-predator” image, coined by political scientist John Dilulio and used by Hillary Rodham Clinton during a 1996 political speech (Truesdale-Moore, 2009), has had enduring consequences in education and the development of carceral practices. Dilulio (1995) resuscitated the culture of poverty thesis to describe crime and violence in predominantly Black metropolitan communities. Although he claimed “kids of whatever race, creed, or color are most likely to become criminally depraved when they are morally deprived,” the super-predator stereotype clearly associated criminality with Blackness, youth, and poverty (para. 23). The super-predator was created as a risk object to the safety and security of white middle- to upper-class Americans. The power of such a racist trope is its flexibility to be applied widely as a stereotype for all Black communities and groups close in proximity, such as other communities of color from low-income neighborhoods. Boholm and Corvellec (2011) propose that once constituted, risk objects can be refashioned into new interpretations, definitions, and contexts. In K-12 schools, the super predator influenced the rise of zero tolerance discipline policies (Bell, 2015). In higher education, Arao’s (2017) interviews with Black male undergraduates revealed that students felt that the Black male criminal stereotype shaped conduct outcomes in disciplinary hearings, whereas white peers relayed more positive and less punitive experiences with conduct offices. The positioning of racially minoritized students as the risk objects targeted by carcerality is tied into the larger social construction of race in the U.S. The practices and representations that have resulted in a racial hierarchy are reproduced through carceral mechanisms in educational institutions.

Relationships of Risk in Education

A relational theory of risk illuminates organizational interests by necessitating identifying what is valuable to educational organizations while simultaneously identifying what or who is positioned as a risk to that value. A relationship of risk requires both a causal connection between the risk object and the object at-risk—in which the former threatens the latter—and yet is marked by uncertainty. The question of “what if?” underlies a relationship of risk. What if a formerly incarcerated individual is admitted to this college? What if students are allowed to wear hats and any color of clothing to school? What if someone comes onto campus who does not study or work there? What if too many students are failing standardized tests? Aversion to the potential harm to institutions in these questions serves as part of the motivation for disciplinary and exclusionary policies and practices in educational institutions. Such organizational structures work to preserve the interests of educational institutions by creating distance—figuratively and literally—from “risky” students. We suggest four ways in which carcerality constructs relationships of risk in education: punishment, exclusion, normalization, and racial marginalization. The fourth relationship, racial marginalization, is mutually reinforced by organizational efforts to maintain color-blind and racially neutral ideologies but reinforce negative racial outcomes and behaviors.

First, relationships of punishment are observed in how racially minoritized students are sanctioned. Carceral practices are legitimized through rationale that presents student conduct codes and disciplinary procedures as race neutral. For instance, zero tolerance approaches gained traction after the mass shooting at Columbine High School and were originally proposed to reduce the risk of violence in schools as much as possible. However, the most stringent policies were primarily adopted by schools serving predominantly racially minoritized students, even though the most extreme forms of gun violence were increasingly taking place in predominantly white schools (Hirschfield, 2008). In higher education, student conduct offices are products of both traditions and the courts. The practice of in loco parentis from the founding of the first colleges to the 1960s had established faculty and later, deans, as legitimate authorities charged to ensure students were developing moral character in alignment with the norms of their institution (Dannells, 1997). Due to legal challenges, students were accorded more rights, but the courts also reinforced the right of institutions to enforce regulations and sanctions. Evidence of racial-gender disparities exists throughout the conduct process—from the beginning of the conduct process, during the process itself, and the eventual sanction assigned to the student (Kaminski, 2018; Neumeister, 2019).

Second, exclusionary practices based on relationships of risk hinder opportunities to learn. Suspensions have long been tracked as a disciplinary sanction that disproportionately affects racially minoritized students (Children’s Defense Fund, 1975; Gregory et al., 2010; Peguero & Shekarkhar, 2011; Skiba et al., 2002, 2011). Through an ethnographic study, Gray (2019) points out young Latino males subjected to various spaces outside of the classroom for suspensions, such as the principal’s office and an in-school suspension room. Suspensions, as a punishment, remove students from an opportunity to engage with peers, teachers, and in the classroom. In higher education, emerging work on exclusionary practices has focused on access to higher education for students with a criminal record, including those who have been formerly incarcerated (Castro & Magana, 2020; Johnson, 2015). Castro and Magana (2020) argue that despite the prevalence of college application questions that require the disclosure of criminal history (Stewart & Uggen, 2020), there is virtually no empirical evidence that such a policy increases campus safety. Instead, the practice reinforces the perception that people with criminal histories pose a threat to the campus community (Dickerson, 2008). Moreover, formerly incarcerated individuals are often not eligible, in some states, for financial aid, which implies how some state governments add to the barrier to access higher education (Custer, 2018).

Third, relationships of normalization are predicated on identifying ways in which student identities and behaviors deviate from social norms. Derived from Foucault’s (1977) notion of normalizing judgments, relationships of normalization use mechanisms to punish violations of unwritten rules. For instance, in the K-12 sector, research has shown that schools tend to assign harsher punishments to lower-performing students than to higher-performing students (Figlio, 2006; Figlio & Getzler, 2006; Gregory & Thompson, 2010; Musto, 2019; Welsh & Little, 2018). Rather than being the target for increased support, students who struggle academically are punished for not meeting non-conduct related standards. Race is a clear dimension of normalization as racially minoritized students are disciplined differently than white students (Musto, 2019). On college campuses, Black college men are routinely stopped and questioned about their student status because campus police officers first assume that they are outsiders and must be removed (Jenkins et al., 2020; Smith et al., 2007). Dache-Gerbino and White (2016) explore how the presence of campus security at a majority-minority institution begs the question of whether students are seen as “college students or criminals” (p. 49).

The fourth relationship of risk reinforces racial marginalization and mutually underlines punishment, exclusion, and normalization. Racial inequities in how risk is managed through carceral practices logically flow from the reality that the U.S. education system is situated within the context of a racialized nation that has historically considered racially minoritized peoples as risks to be managed (Goldberg, 2002; Wolfe, 2016). Schools, like all organizations, are not race-neutral but rather constitute and are constituted by racial processes and are thus racialized organizations (Ray, 2019). Examples of these racial processes include formal opposition to racial desegregation (Bullock & Rodgers, 1976), continued de facto segregation (Bonastia, 2012; Ewing, 2018), and the persistence of racist ideologies (Desai & Abeita, 2017; Miles, 2020). Black, Latinx, Asian, and Native students are viewed as second-class citizens and as risks to be managed. Racist notions of belonging and value are built into the operations of schools, past and present, and are now evident in disciplinary practices.

Conclusion

Throughout this paper, we trouble the notion that carcerality within education institutions is a “natural and legitimate” occurrence (Foucault, 1977, p. 298) and instead assert that carceral practices have risen out of desires to preserve organizational interests and legitimacy. We extend the body of theoretical literature on discipline within education by shifting the at-risk subjectivity from marginalized students to the schools that exclude and criminalize them. Disciplinary practices function as mediators of the risk relationship between students and schools, wherein schools treat racially minoritized students as harmful objects to be managed instead of learners who have the right to a robust and responsive educational environment.

Educational institutions might not intentionally desire to discipline minoritized students at a disproportionate rate. However, evidence has shown that schools have prioritized the organization’s interests when presented with racially minoritized students who do not perform as highly or conform to racialized behavior expectations (Halberstadt et al., 2018). These students require additional resources for mental health or special education or simply exist as racialized Others (Omi & Winant, 2014). Such prioritization has proven dangerous for racially minoritized students, with material consequences for their academic and life outcomes (Casella, 2003a, 2003b; Weisburst, 2019). Ironically, and because the risk relationship is fluid, education risk management in the form of carcerality leads to students being thrust into the at-risk position. In this way, historically marginalized students might be understood to be at risk not due to their demographic or academic characteristics, but rather due to how education institutions respond to such characteristics. Interpreting the relationship between schools and students through the relational theory of risk helps to lay bare the organizational logics that foundationally contribute to carceral structures within education. In the absence of critical engagement with these foundations, educational institutions—being adaptive organizations (Koberg, 1986)—will likely reproduce racial exclusion in other less documented ways, even while complying with forward-moving policy.

Author Biographies

Jude Paul Matias Dizon is a doctoral candidate in Urban Education Policy at the University of Southern California. His research examines the intersection of carcerality and racism in higher education.

Taylor Enoch-Stevens is a doctoral candidate in Urban Education Policy at the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on how school funding decisions shape school disciplinary cultures.

Adrian H. Huerta is an assistant professor of education in the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern California. His research focuses on boys and men of color, college access and (in)equity, and gang-associated youth.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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