Abstract
The topic of school discipline and punishment has received growing attention. Much of this work explores the rise of exclusion-based policies, increasingly punitive practices, and a buildup of security in schools. Explanations for this often focus on large-scale incidents, the perpetuation of social inequalities, students’ perceived racial/ethnic threat, and shifts in modern governance. Little work, however, has considered the financial aspects influencing schools to adopt criminal justice-based disciplinary practices. This article expands the literature by offering a multilevel investigation that contextualizes a “criminalized school discipline” within economic conditions over the last 30 years. In particular, this article delineates how four economic trends have influenced this trend. These include changes within the postindustrial labor market, federal incentives and markets prioritizing greater school security, tightening financial resources amid budget cuts, and the criminalization of the youth consumer economy. Though prior explanations lend noteworthy explanations for the rise of a punitive disciplinary code in schools, they overlook important economic effects. Investigating these financials conditions will help unpack the complex nature of school discipline while uncovering noteworthy policy implications for how youth are reacted to and punished.
Introduction
Over the past two decades, schools across the USA have adopted a host of new practices and policies to prevent and respond to student misbehavior. These include the use of security cameras, zero tolerance policies, metal detectors, drug-sniffing dogs, and the full-time presence of uniformed police officers. By importing policies once reserved for formal policing, there has been an increase in surveillance over students and tighter links between the educational and criminal justice systems (Hirschfield, 2008; Hirschfield and Celinska, 2011; Kupchik, 2010). The recent expansion of law enforcement practices, policies, and personnel in schools has been fueled by a punitive turn toward responding to youthful misbehavior in general (Butts and Mears, 2001; Fagan, 2008; Feld, 1999).
Recent data from the School Survey on Crime and Safety reveals that schools across the country have increased their use of security measures, despite sustained decreases in student misbehavior (Kim et al., 2010). In 2010, roughly 61 percent of all public schools utilize surveillance cameras to monitor student activity, a noteworthy increase from the 19 percent in 1999. Data also show that two-thirds of schools are currently equipped with electronic notification systems; a security measure that went unreported until 2005. Additionally, just over one-in-ten schools reported the use of metal detectors; nearly one-quarter perform some form of random drug sweeps; over nine-in-ten schools have controlled access to the building; and over two-thirds utilize uniformed police or school resource officers (SROs).
In addition to security instruments, schools have utilized harsher forms of punishment to manage and discipline student misconduct. During the 2009 school year, two-fifths of all schools took serious disciplinary action, translating into 433,800 events. Of these, three-quarters resulted in a suspension for five or more days; one-fifth resulted in transfers to a specialized school; and just under one-in-ten led to expulsion. Though the overall percentage of schools using serious disciplinary actions has declined since 1999, there is no significant difference in the form or frequency of punishments utilized. Evidence also suggests that youth are even being referred to the juvenile justice system for minor, in school, infractions (Febelo et al., 2011).
The national rise of criminal-based practices amounts to what has been termed ‘the criminalization of school discipline’ (Hirschfield, 2008; Hirschfield and Celinska, 2011). While most scholars utilize the term ‘school criminalization’ to discuss initiatives that associate and punish student misconduct as a criminal offense, Hirschfield and Celinska (2011) expand this concept. More specifically, they define the criminalization of school discipline as: the shift toward a crime control paradigm in the definition and management of the problem of student deviance. Criminalization encompasses the manner in which policy makers and school actors think and communicate about the problem of student rule-violation as well as myriad dimensions of school praxis including architecture, penal procedure, and security technology and tactics (2011: 80).
Without doubt, issues of safety and discipline have been persistent concerns for schools—anxieties tightly linked to those of delinquency, juvenile justice, and future criminality. Though the criminalization of school discipline has increased with time, a quick review of the literature reveals that schools have a long history of embracing strict disciplinary codes. Research reveals that even during the 1930s and 1940s, schools were quick to punish minor infractions such as talking out of turn or littering (Goldstein et al., 1984; Stouffer, 1952). Prior to the liberalization of school policies, scholars suggests that school discipline may have been as important as today’s use of the formal justice system in creating and perpetuating social, economic, and political inequalities (Ferguson, 2000; Lareau, 2011; Platt, 1977). Therefore, the concern here is not with school discipline or its punitive turn but rather that the distinction between school discipline and criminal justice has blurred.
More importantly for this effort is to make sense of a criminalized school discipline by considering the shift to neoliberal policies alongside a combination of circumstances including federal initiatives, school budgets, and cultural struggles. Though it is clear that school discipline and security is in part a function of fear and racial exclusion, there are financial influences that underlie these practices that warrant further examination. Just as Melossi (2012: 380) wrote in his first editorial in Punishment and Society, the “relationship between punishment and economic crisis may be worthy of more attention.” This article, then, echoes this call by examining how the incorporation of criminal justice strategies into school discipline corresponds to both short- and long-term economic realities of schools. To accomplish this, this work outlines various economic factors over the last 30 years that have influence educational institutions toward punitive criminal justice-based practices. Specifically, this article considers how the financial contexts of the post-industrial labor market, financial incentives for school policies, tightened educational budgets, and criminalization of market-based habits among youth contribute to the crime control and security practices in schools.
Existing accounts for contemporary school discipline
One of the most cited explanations for the rise of punitive disciplinary practices revolves around fear. It is often argued that modern societies have been gripped by a profound sense of insecurity due to a heightened consciousness of crime. Beck (1992) and Giddens (1990, 1991) contend this fear has become a generalized concern which has rearranged social institutions and contemporary governance. Consequently, crime control practices have increasingly focused on predicting, identifying, and managing threatening and irrational behaviors (Ericson, 2007; Simon, 2007). More recently, scholars have found that these practices have transformed discipline and punishment within schools (Kupchik, 2010; Simon, 2007). Simon (2007), for instance, discusses how politicians capitalizing on general fears of crime in efforts to gain support for new crime control policies. Specifically, he argues that—after the fall of the New Deal political order—politicians capitalize on crime insecurities by framing all citizens as victims or potential victims. This, in turn, (re)mobilize popular support for new legislation that is often more punitive and invasive. Thus, Simon’s argument offers a partial understanding for the convergence of criminal justice and school discipline (Hirschfield, 2008; Kupchik, 2010; Kupchik and Monahan, 2006; Lyons and Drew, 2006; Wacquant, 2001). No doubt, this situates school practices within decades-long structural and cultural shifts toward increasing reliance on formal punishment (Garland, 2001).
Other explanations accounting for school practices consider long-term trends of the larger political economy. Hirschfield (2008), for example, highlights how the postindustrial economy influences school operations in two distinct ways. First, as industrial jobs within cities diminished and urban areas were abandoned by the white middle class, there was a notable shift in funding (Kozol, 1991). That is, limited public funds were diverted from city schools—especially in what became urban zones of concentrated disadvantage—to rural areas, where working-class whites were hired to build and staff prisons. Second, as high-income employment opportunities became scarce within the cityscape, schools began to prepare minority youth who live in these areas for their likely futures of low-wage employment or prison through harsh treatment. Also, Kupchik and Monahan (2006) discuss how school discipline and security support postindustrial labor needs by exposing students across socioeconomic strata to the demands of the contemporary labor market, such as constant surveillance, rigid accountability, limited expectations of a safety net, and relationships marked by instability and inequality.
In addition to shifts in disciplinary practices, schools are also experiencing increased social, economic, and political pressures resulting from policies like the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), Youth Crime Watch, Safe Schools Act (Simon, 2007), and the more recent Race to the Top initiative. Schools are now under constant scrutiny to increase student performance and ensure safety. In efforts to accomplish these ends, schools implement and strictly enforce firm behavioral and academic standards that have produced a number of unintended consequences. Though primarily established to enhance the school environment, these initiatives indirectly promote new forms of school governance and intensified forms of punishment (Gottfredson, 2001; Kupchik, 2010; Nolan, 2011; Robbins, 2008).
Whether accelerated by internal events such as school shootings or external factors like reported rates of youth violence, it is clear that crime—as a potential part of the school imaginary—has become a chief organizing principle shaping educational operations. Today, the distinction between school discipline and formal punishment has become less clear given the influx of criminal justice practices (Kupchik, 2010). Although zero tolerance policies, metal detectors, police officers, surveillance cameras, and drug-sniffing dogs signify the criminal justice system, they have increasingly become part of the school’s natural environment. Of course there are schools and segments within education that do not reflect these macro trends toward greater security and governance. However, given institutional pressures, public demand, political rhetoric, or ideological leanings, evidence suggests that the criminalization of school discipline has affected most schools across the nation. Specifically, no matter the socio-economic or demographic composition of students, a majority of schools have adopted similar harsh, exclusive security-based strategies (Kupchik, 2010; Lyons and Drew, 2006). The widespread use of crime control practices and policies signals the growing legitimacy of using criminal justice strategies to manage and control youth in educational settings. It appears that crime, fear, insecurity, and larger shifts in governance have paved a new avenue for governmental expansion which mobilizes additional crime control efforts that have recently targeted students.
The following builds on these accounts by further investigating the financial context of school discipline and security. Though scholars like Hirschfield (2008), Kupchik and Monahan, 2006, and Simon (2007) establish that the political economy shapes school discipline and security, these studies offer only a limited treatment of the subject. In particular, they only provide overviews of the imprint of decades-long trends toward postindustrialism and neoliberal policies. This article expands this discussion by considering the specific financial arrangements into which schools operate, with attention to how criminal justice practices become tightly coupled with disciplinary practices. The goal is not to explain why we have certain policies, since, as the prior research illustrates, the explanations of such a widespread social phenomenon are complex and deserve a more detailed investigation than can be offered here. Instead, the following expands the existing discussion of school discipline and security by illustrating how specific financial arrangements accelerate and reshape practices that are currently in place in schools.
Economic configurations, school discipline, and criminal justice
Labor market and disciplinary trends
Prior literature has noted ways in which students’ educational experiences are shaped by, and prepare them for, their eventual entrance into the labor market. Echoing social reproduction theory, this work proposes that schools help perpetuate social and economic inequalities by equipping different classes of youth with skills aligned with their expected position in the labor force (Tyack 1974). Perhaps most notably, Bowles and Gintis (1976) demonstrate that schools often prepare youth for their eventual labor roles in order to reflect capitalist demands for the workforce (see also, Bourdieu and Passeron, 1999). That is, they illustrate that shifts in school operations correspond with the changing demands of capital enterprise. As a result, the varied educational experiences among youth from differing social strata reflect their expected roles in the labor market (Apple, 1982; Parsons, 1959; Tyack, 1974; Willis, 1977).
More recently, scholars have suggested that contemporary educational reforms have emerged with the rise of a neoliberal state (Bartlett et al., 2002; Davies and Bansel, 2007; Kupchik and Monahan, 2006; Peters, 2002; Sinclair et al., 1996). Through implementation of formal standards, emphasis on efficiency, and measures of economic accountability, neoliberal practices within schools seek to produce individuals that are both socially compliant and economically productive (Davies and Bansel, 2007; Hursch, 2000). In efforts to achieve these goals, Davies and Bansel (2007: 256) argue that contemporary rationales of governance have “strongly reinforced the undermining of the teacher’s authority that has been established with progressivism, shifting authority away from both students and teachers to state curriculum and surveillance authorities”. Thus, rather than promoting educational equality, the educational system is taxed with supporting the economy by categorizing, preparing, and socializing students into their expected role in the postindustrial labor market (for educational inequality, see Kozol, 2005).
Additionally, Kupchik and Monahan (2006) discuss how contemporary school discipline and security socialize students into a set of postindustrial demands they will face after graduation. Consider a few examples of how this occurs. First, the growing use of drug testing within schools normalizes the likelihood that job opportunities may require urine screening. Second, educational monitoring systems—such as surveillance technology—prepare students for work environments in which their activity, computer usage, and productivity levels are monitored. Third, because they eliminate any discussion of context or degree of severity of misbehavior (Lyons and Drew, 2006), zero-tolerance disciplinary policies are fundamentally undemocratic and prime youth for jobs marked by authoritarian supervision (see Ayers et al., 2001; Casella, 2003). Lastly, harsh punishment practices such as prolonged suspension for minor misbehaviors prepare youth for a workplace in which low-level workers bear the risk for a company’s failure. Thus, a school climate relying on harsh consequences for misbehavior, close surveillance strategies, and little opportunity for student governance or grievance socializes students into the dominant aspects associated with the postindustrial job market such as employment instability, expectations of flexibility, workplace monitoring, and distribution of risks downward to low-level employees (Hardt and Negri, 2000; Harvey, 1990; Martin, 1994; Kupchik and Monahan, 2006).
Recent work reveals that the practices and policies associated with contemporary school discipline are more likely to affect low socioeconomic status and racial/ethnic minority students. This work reveals that relative to white students, minority students are more likely to be affected by the “school to prison pipeline” (Kim et al., 2010), punished in schools more harshly (Gordon et al., 2000), suspended more often (Losen and Martinez, 2013), and subject to more invasive security measures (Irwin et al., 2013). Consistent with a critical functionalism framework of education, these effects may reflect the expectation that low income and racial/ethnic minority youth are to take on low-level jobs that entail strict supervision.
Existing research, however, offers little discussion of how these policies are imposed on students and why. Although new disciplinary practices have been linked to greater mechanisms of control that perpetuate existing inequalities, perhaps these measures are intended to help youth get by in an increasingly competitive job market. For instance, Kupchik (2010: 141) describes how rigid school discipline—or teaching to the rules—is often intended by staff to be a form of “tough love.” Specifically, he notes that both administrators and instructional staff genuinely care about their students. Oftentimes however, teachers and school officials turn to strict enforcement to teach valuable lessons, assuming that disciplining them will better prepare them for the “real world.” It appears that school personnel increasingly punish students for trivial forms of misconduct in efforts to build professional capital, to reflect likely occupational conditions, and to help them maintain future employment.
This line of thought evokes the insights of Rusche and Kirchheimer (1938) for how penal conditions relate to the mode of production and the labor market. Specifically, they argue that the demand for laborers establishes the social value of human life, which in turn determines penal conditions. When demand for labor is high, workers lives’ have high social value and penal conditions improve. However, in times of surplus labor and high unemployment, workers are less valuable and penal conditions intensify (Adamson, 1983; Melossi and Pavarini, 1981). This insight becomes more important when considering the high unemployment rates facing the USA after the 2007 economic fallout. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national unemployment rate in 2009 reached its highest value since the early 1980s—a time marked by severe legal sanctions, mass incarceration, and an intensifying criminal justice.
Based on this framework, the national trend toward criminalizing school discipline may very well be related to economic downturns that greatly affect the political economy. As evidence demonstrates, the default for schools to adopt intensified disciplinary measures has become more common. Not only might students’ perceived potential value be lower in economic downturn, but staff may try to punish students severely in an effort to “help” students in an increasingly competitive job market. Given this, during times of economic fallout, schools may be more prone to utilize more severe and more widely distributed forms of discipline and security.
Financial incentives and expanding markets
Another financial aspect underlying school discipline concerns available initiatives providing economic support for the use of security measures. Prior research suggests the increasingly punitive nature of school discipline amounts to a level of disinvestment of youth; such statements often link a lack of funding for urban schools to increased policing (Lyons and Drew, 2006). However, the material products associated with school discipline—such as surveillance cameras, metal detectors, drug-sniffing dogs, police officers, and other security goods—are expensive to acquire, implement, and operationalize. Rather than interpreting this as disinvestment, this shift redirects financial resources away from academic services and toward crime control strategies.
Victor Rios (2011) offers a unique understanding of this growing issue in his research describing policing in the lives of poor minority males. He demonstrates that there exists a “youth control complex” in which “schools, police, probation officers, families, community centers, the media, businesses, and other institutions systematically treat young people’s everyday behaviors as criminal activity” (Rios, 2011: xiv). In this sense, the state has not disinvested; instead, it has invested heavily in the regulation and control of youth by enlisting criminal justice tactics rather than developmental social services. This orientation, he argues, often leads institutions—such as education systems—to disregard youths’ “organic capital” comprised of their existing social and cultural capital.
In that same vein, Simon (2007) illustrates how discourses of crime and victimization have become so prominent for policymaking in schools and other institutional spheres that money is redirected toward prevention and policing and away from other remedial-based programs. Because politicians mobilize popular fears and insecurities about crime, those initiatives concerned with crime control receive support while those concerned with social welfare and development do not. Mounting evidence demonstrates this new logic of societal “investment,” in the form of greater levels of formalized punishment, comes at the cost of reducing the social capital of individuals, families, and communities (Tonry and Petersilia, 1999). This argument certainly applies to education as increased spending in criminal justice displaces financial resources from programs charged with developing youth’s capital (Hagan and Dinvitzer, 1999).
However, little is known about how schools are subtly led toward discipline and security practices through federal financial incentives. Though the federal government contributes but a small portion to educational budgets, these funds are still important as economic capital becomes a limited resource and a source of competition. Given the financial difficulties facing states across the USA, even small amounts of funding may prove crucial to avoid layoffs and a decline of services. More importantly still, these federal funds communicate social, political, and cultural messages about desired activities.
Over the past decade, the ‘Secure Our Schools Act’ (SOS) has been an important federal source of state aid that goes directly to school security efforts. The SOS Act was created in 2000 through an amendment to the 1968 Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, and is operated through the Department of Justice’s Community Oriented Policing Service (COPS) program. According to the most recent report, the COPS office has invested $913 million in schools through programs such as SOS, COPS in Schools, School-Based Partnerships, and the Safe Schools Initiative. For the 2011 fiscal year, the SOS program distributed over $13 million in grant funds. Between 2007 and 2011, an average of just under $15 million per year was invested into schools. Under this initiative, school agencies could apply for up to $500,000 in federal funds to be used for programs such as metal detectors, security assessments, and coordination with police. The program goals are as follows: The SOS grant program encourages law enforcement agencies and school districts to partner together to advance school security and safety through the prevention of school violence. Through this program, applicants may request funding for violence prevention initiatives, equipment, technology, training, and security assessments at schools and on school grounds (U.S. Dept. of Justice 2011).
Similarly, one cannot ignore how expansive crime control markets have also blurred the distinction between school discipline and criminal justice. In his writings on the prison industrial complex, Donzinger (1996: 85) warns against conditions in which “fear of crime drives investment” and “crime control is a source of profit.” Certainly, the increased presence of safety and security mechanisms within schools across the nation helped spur, and was partially driven by, a lucrative crime control industry (Casella, 2006). Just as Christie (2000) notes the extent to which crime control has become a cornerstone in the economic structure, scholars like Casella (2006) have uncovered how security markets have transformed public schools into technological fortresses. And as a heightened consciousness of school violence grips the popular imagination, one cannot help but to evoke Christie’s insight on an expanding security industry: There is no lack of raw material; crime seems to be in endless supply. Endless are also the demands for the service, as well as the willingness to pay for what is seen as security (1993: 13).
These trends are somewhat ironic given the lack of research finding that these practices prevent school crime, and the abundance of research suggesting that improvements to school social climate instead are effective at promoting safe schools (Cook et al., 2010). Yet practices that might improve the social climate—such as enhancing student engagement, addressing students’ emotional needs, and supporting teacher classroom management skills—do not factor into this funding program. As a result the federal government suggests to schools which types of initiatives they ought to pursue in their effort to maintain safety, and these suggestions bear little resemblance to research on how to best maintain safety. Instead, they are ideologically rooted in the quest for increasing the presence of police and other criminal justice-oriented security mechanisms.
Despite its potential impact, no research has explored the actual effects of programs like the SOS Act. Perhaps these federal initiatives utilize financial incentives to encourage school administrators and local policymakers to adopt punitive crime control practices. Though criminal justice-based policies appear financially backed through federal incentives, improvement programs such as special education and vocational training have been limited due to monetary reductions from the Department of Education. Such financial shifts may be provoking schools to adopt a penal mentality toward suppressing student misbehavior.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Indicators of School Crime and Safety, there were a number of security measures that increased between 2000 and 2010. Most notably, the number of schools reporting the use of one or more security cameras to monitor school grounds increased from 19 to 61 percent. Schools also reported increases in the use of: controlled access to the building during school hours; controlled access during school hours; metal detector checks upon entrance; requirements for students and faculty to wear badges or picture IDs; random dog sweeps to check for drugs; the provision of telephones in classrooms; requirement that students wear uniforms; and drug testing among student athletes and extracurricular activities (Robers et al., 2013). Additionally, the US Department of Justice reported that the number of SROs increased 38 percent between 1997 and 2007 (Petteruti, 2011). According to Petteruti (2011), this growth of SROs was supported by the allotment of 68 million dollars through the “COPS In Schools” and “Secure Our Schools Program”.
Consequentially, as schools increase their forms of discipline and control, it appears that minor acts are redefined so that more students are punished more harshly for trivial forms of misconduct. According to Robers et al. (2013), of the serious disciplinary actions taken by public schools during 2007–2008, the most common were suspensions for five days or more. Additionally, they report that eighty-two percent of these suspensions were in response to minor insubordinate acts. Still further, Petteruti (2011) notes that while violent incidents in schools have decreased since the early 1990s, arrests and referrals to the juvenile justice system by SROs have increased. They further argue that the increased presence of SROs has resulted in more students being punished for defiant rather than dangerous behavior.
As outlined above, evidence suggests that federal funding influences school crime prevention efforts. However, little is known whether this effect varies across social strata. On the one hand, wealthier districts have greater social capital, may be more likely to employ more personnel with grant-writing experience, and are in a better position to show effectiveness of existing efforts. Each of these attributes place wealthier schools at a competitive advantage in securing external funds. On the other hand, underprivileged districts may be forced toward funding initiatives that emphasize greater security measure given tighter economic conditions. Though districts that serve poor students likely need more funding than wealthier districts (Kozol, 1991), they are in a weaker position to attract this funding. No matter a school’s structural location, it appears that federal financial incentives spur policies which increase discipline and security across social strata—thus, making the criminalization of school discipline an overarching national trend.
Prioritization and tightening budgets
This section narrows the focus from federal based incentives to school-level financial decisions by exploring the allocation of intraschool funds. Accomplishing this will help uncover which programs and resources are considered essential and given priority over others. The prior section offers some initial indications: incentives seem to guide schools into taking a comprehensive approach to security while practices that might improve the social climate and student engagement go unfunded. As discussed below, while security based practices have increased, evidence suggests that school curricula, remedial programs, and retention of high qualified teachers have all been negatively affected as a result of recent budgetary cuts.
Given the latest economic recession, there can be little doubt that US educational institutions have experience tightened financial resources or budget cuts. When examining the NCES’s Revenues and Expenditures for Public Elementary and Secondary Education, it appears state funding has decreased since the 2007–2008 fiscal year (Cornman, 2013). Though schools also receive federal and local revenue streams which have increased, state funding consistently comprises almost half of district budgets. As key funding sources tighten and school operations continue to increase (Cornman, 2013), schools must decide between competing programs and initiatives, each of which carries financial costs. The calculus of which programs to support may largely be shaped by federal initiatives like the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, which forces schools to prioritize standardized tests or risk losing even more funding. Schools are thus under additional pressure to accomplish more and compete in high stakes competition despite having less means to do so.
Governmental mandates starting in the 1990s sought to promote equality in the US educational system. Armed with political support and financial backing, programs such as the NCLBA were enacted to diminish—if not eliminate—racial gaps in educational outcomes among students. However, an overwhelming body of scholarship (briefly discussed below) finds that—despite political rhetoric and economic funding promoting racial equality in school—the NCLBA was in ineffective resolution that produced number of unintended consequences. Additionally, institutional pressures to respond to student misconduct and violence through crime control measures seem to have challenged the pursuit of equality in education. The NCLBA also brought about a pedagogical shift in school education throughout the USA. The reality that schools must perform at higher levels due to increased economic, social, and political pressure has significantly modified school programming. Consider the following by Vincent (2005: 142): In order for schools to meet AYP [adequate yearly progress] and avoid sanctions, students must meet proficiency levels in reading and math. By narrowly restricting proficiency to these subjects, the NCLBA [No Child Left Behind Act] elevates them above all other considerations in gauging academic performance. In response, schools dependent on Title I funding are structuring their curriculum to align with test standards. Meanwhile, at the state level, the Act pressures education officials to undermine their commitment to providing a comprehensive education by focusing resources on mandated tested standards while ignoring other subjects in the curriculum … Classes in art, music, foreign language, and history too often first feel the axe of budget cuts.
As educational priorities have shifted, keeping highly qualified teachers has also become a growing issue. The McKinsey and Company found that after the first year of teaching, 14 percent of teachers leave their field and 46 percent leave before their fifth. Among the reasons for leaving, nearly 80 percent of teachers report poor salary as a leading motivation. Similarly, Guarino and Loughran’s (2006) meta-analysis uncovered that salary dissatisfaction was associated with high turnover and a low commitment to teaching. Consequentially, school systems have experienced difficulty maintaining high standards among instructors.
A related issue is that school counselors and evidence-based programs may be neglected in favor of school security and rote instruction. For instance, in a recent report by the Justice Policy Institute (2011), researchers found a 2009–2010 student-to-school-counselor ratio of 459-1, far higher than the 250-1 ratio recommended by the American School Counselor Association. Regarding schools’ decisions about what programs to fund, the report argues that “for the salary of a single SRO, a jurisdiction could hire one teacher and pay for approximately 20 percent of a second teacher” (2011: 28). Rather than continuing to invest in invasive security measures, the report argues for a number of other practices to improve school environments and educational standards such as: reducing class sizes, providing support and training concerning behavior management, focus on building quality relationships, hiring more counselors, and identify students with disabilities early in order to provide individualized education.
As an example of such an evidence-based intervention, consider the School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) program. PBIS utilizes preemptive approaches that define, encourage, and teach appropriate student behavior to create a positive school environment. When teachers follow the PBIS program they reward students for positive behaviors rather than relying solely on punishment as a motivator. Additionally, they attempt to build mentoring relations with students while relying on gradually escalating punishments for repeated misbehavior rather than suspending students for minor of first-time infractions. Despite constructive programs like PBIS, it appears that remedial, rehabilitative, positive-behavioral, and evidence-based educational programs are less commonly chosen than harsh discipline and security (Kupchik, 2010). Though intended to facilitate safe learning environments, initiatives centered on security and discipline promote new, more invasive, forms of authority within schools that produce negative effects (Gottfredson, 2001; Kupchik, 2010; Nolan, 2011; Robbins, 2008).
Despite attempts to improve national academic achievement scores, schools with tightened budgets have fewer means to achieve this standard and may be penalized given their structural location rather than educational effort. That is, new models of accountability often overlook the differences in economic and educational resources within respective schools; thus, making it more difficult for those that may benefit from additional funding to meet preset achievement standards. Consequentially, structurally disadvantaged schools may therefore be more inclined to apply for initiatives emphasizing security and discipline. This can further disadvantage students by shifting the overall school environment from an institution of education to an institution of strict discipline.
As noted above, the nation’s economic downturn coupled with new accountability measures have produced a number of negative effects on the school curriculum. However, it seems that budget cuts to security and discipline may lead to differing outcomes. On the one hand, school districts may be forced to offset financial cutbacks by eliminating other educational resources to enhance security features. On the other hand, tightened budgets could lead to the elimination of various security mechanism currently utilized within schools. In the context of economic decline and need for safety, it appears school officials are forced to choose between security and disciplinary features or remedial, rehabilitative, or positive-behavioral programs.
Criminalizing youth consumer culture in school
Though the “consumer culture” has largely been overlooked when examining school discipline, a sizable literature notes the power of the commercial market to reconfigure the social world (Baudrillard, 1998; Campbell, 2005; Featherstone, 1987, 2007; Hall et al., 2008; Hayward, 2004; Presdee, 2000). More specific for this article, scholars argue that it is crucial to realize the connection between youth culture and the consumer economy to fully understand contemporary society and crime related phenomena (Hayward, 2004; Lury, 2011; Slater, 1997). Therefore, this final section explores how contemporary disciplinary practices are influenced by the consumer economy among youth.
Over the past two decades, literature has noted that institutions charged with maintaining order and securing safety have demonstrated their limits to do so (Garland, 1996). Attempts to alleviate this shortcoming have manifested in greater levels of informal and formal sources of control (Garland, 1997; O’Malley, 1996; Rose, 1999; Stenson, 1999). Theorists have argued that these responses have contributed to the rise of a penal state (O’Malley, 1999; Rose, 2000), the use of actuarial thinking in criminal justice (Feeley and Simon, 1992), and a mounting “culture of control” taking hold throughout society (Garland, 2001). Evoking Foucault’s notion of “governmentality,” it is argued that individuals now face an unprecedented apparatus of control that includes the more everyday forms of governance that exist outside state parameters.
In addition to alleviating escalating fears and insecurities of crime, these efforts toward greater levels of control have blocked many avenues for excitement, stimulation, and ontological expression (Ferrell et al., 2008; Hayward, 2004; Presdee, 2000). Consequentially, Presdee (2000) proposes that individuals are often driven to the seductive margins of society where transgressive behaviors provide what a culture of risk aversion prohibits. He furthers that the deviant reaction against intensified forms of social control offers a primary source of pleasure and exhilaration. Bauman (1997: 23) likewise discusses the distinctive characteristic of individuals to constantly seek out new sensations and experiences never obtained. More specifically, he writes Most of us are socially and culturally trained and shaped as sensation-seekers and gatherers, rather than producers and soldiers. Constant openness to new sensations and greed for ever new experience, always stronger and deeper than before, is a condition sine qua non of being amenable to seduction.
Though advanced capitalism diversifies the consumer landscape, contemporary rationales of control seek to create uniformity through widespread governance. This perspective becomes insightful when alternative cultural scripts unpinning youths’ expressions may be met with harsh disciplinary practices. Within school contexts, studies have found that school authorities discipline students into obedience by placing restriction on self-expressions (Ferguson, 2000; Martin, 1998; McLaren, 1986). Ferguson (2000), examining the disciplinary practices applied to black male youth, contends that school staff view their style and demeanor as “oppositional bodies,” representing an outright act of defiance. She finds, consistent with other scholars, that the cultural styles of minority students peeve school authorities and provoke the use of various punishments that both alienate and marginalize (Bernstein, 1986; Bowditch, 1993;Delpit, 1995; Farkas, 1996). As a result, racial/ethnic minority students are placed under constant surveillance, which increases the regulation of their dress, speech, demeanor, and experiences. Ferguson (2000) concludes that schools employ specific patterns of regulation based on their perception of students’ cultural expressions.
Kupchik (2010: 64) additionally notes that—when describing the punitive turn in school discipline—the majority of punished incidents within the sampled schools involved acts of “defiance”: the “disruption of class/campus, defiance of authority, and violation of school procedures.” He discusses how seemingly minor acts, such as carrying/using a cell phone while in school, elicited a mandatory minimum of three day suspension. Nolan (2011) similarly argues that students utilize their goods, apparel, and bodily dispositions as fundamental means of self-expression. However, students must carefully walk a fine line between self-authorship and becoming the subject of school punishment. Specifically, the same act of self-expression can also provoke tighter regulations or harsher school punishments. While a specific hat may enhance one’s identity and gain respect from peers, it may also represent a defiant act against school authority and be punished as such. She also finds that while style for youth carries great significance for the construction of youths’ identity, it often represents a threat to school authorities. That is, styles interpreted as alternative should be reformed and bodies seen as oppositional should be punished into proper comportment.
Related, Morris (2005) uncovers how disciplinary practices correspond to students’ perceived cultural and identity capital. Here, style is often theorized as a visible measure of personal capital. Morris (2005) complicates this view by illustrating that minority students have been socialized into various cultural expressions by the communities in which they live (Harding, 2010). Although reflecting norms of their community, these expressions often counter prevailing school values. He illustrates that school educators often identify students lacking capital due their posturing, dress, speech, and style. Once students are selected out, disciplinary measures are used to regulate their body into proper comportment by enhancing their image, transmitting proper social capital, correcting their dispositions, or assimilating them into dominant norms. More critically, Morris (2005) finds the regulation of style was an easy way for the school to exert authority and wield punishments on youth. By diminishing students’ ability to express their identity, these regulations—ironically—transformed the expression of identity through style into acts of opposition.
This research often assumes that schools react to and punish student misconduct in instrumental ways. Whether intended to maintain white middle-class norms, respond to gang influence, or promote a positive learning environment, school discipline is mainly understood as a forced reaction to various student problems. These studies are limited to examining how school discipline impacts youths’ educational experiences, overlooking the way in which schools actively orient their disciplinary practices towards youths’ cultural expressions. Additionally, this literature overlooks how fears about new youth trends among school staff provide a power mechanism to bring about harsher disciplinary rules and punishments.
These anecdotes reflect larger trends occurring within schools across the USA. That is, minor transgressions, although providing youth with expressive and ontological rewards within the consumer economy, receive increasingly punitive punishments given new mechanisms of discipline. While the capitalist market seeks to expand through the endless promotion and celebration of emerging youth trends, contemporary rationales of control pursue to curb these inhibitions in efforts to create uniformity through widespread governance (Hayward, 2004). Authorities of control, now firmly embedded within the school environment, are forced to react to ever changing market habits among youth. New trends and commercially backed behaviors are perceived by school authorities as threatening and punished accordingly. Here, market sponsored trends become perceived as problems that must be reacted to, if not outright criminalized. That is, the same outlet offering a means for identity formation, social mobility, and ontological expression, also provokes new rationales of governance and modes of control. Herein lies a great irony; the consumer economy that provokes individualism and celebrated expressivity among youth ushers in and provides a constant source for new mechanisms of control seeking to discipline an expanding range of youth behaviors.
Discussion
This article examines the criminalization of school discipline alongside various economic arrangements. Not only does educational instruction reflect post-industrial capitalist demands, evidence also suggests the use of criminal justice-based practices in schools corresponds to historically specific economic arrangements. That is, during times of financial adversity, schools may be adopting and utilizing more severe and widely distributed forms of punitive punishments that align with the formal justice system. Additionally, federal financial incentives—through offering economic relief—subtly influence schools toward practices and policies emphasizing greater levels of security over students. More critical than offering economic relief, these initiatives spur punitive crime control practices by communicating how schools should operate. Also, when facing financial restraints and budget cuts, schools may be forced to prioritize tighter security measures and educational efforts oriented toward standardized tests. As a result, strict discipline policies and a narrowed pedagogy are prioritized over evidence-based and rehabilitative programs. Finally, as transgressive behaviors backed by the youth consumer economy become widely appealing, educational authorities are forced to constantly react to commercial-based habits among students. Consequentially, the ever-changing youth trends within the consumer culture become a source of insecurity for school authorities that are met with insecurity and punished accordingly. These large-scale trends highlight that school discipline and punishments may be as much a product of economic arrangements as they are fear, social exclusion, and modern governance.
Despite these insights, it is important to note mounting efforts against the excessively harsh disciplinary practices within schools over the last couple of years. In December 2012, the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing regarding the highly debated “school-to-prison pipeline”—a national trend in which youth become enmeshed in the criminal justice system as a result of punitive practices within school. This hearing, hosted by the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Office of Civil Rights, and Human Rights, emphasized the damaging effects of harsh school punishments. More recently, Attorney General Holder and Secretary Duncan responded to the growing school-to-prison pipeline by supporting the Supportive School Discipline Initiative. This initiative is intended to utilize program evaluations and evidence-based practices to develop practices in accordance with civil rights laws, promote positive disciplinary options, keep students in classrooms, improve school climates, and further educational practices.
Building on this, one direction for future research regarding school security and punishment concerns the growing scrutiny over excessively harsh school discipline. As national-level investigations led by the American Civil Liberties Union and Office of Civil Rights continue, schools are under more pressure to re-evaluate practices associated with racial disparities in punishment, the school-to-prison pipeline, and failing school environments. It appears that over the last few years, school officials and legislators have begun reforming policies regarding how to address student misconduct. Consequentially, research will be instrumental in documenting, evaluating, and uncovering these reforms given current economic arrangements. More specifically, future research may focus on what policy reforms are being implemented, what form they take, whether they lead to positive outcomes, and how they impact students and school environment.
Additionally, it appears the Great Recession along with budget cuts from the federal to local levels have impacted various security measures within schools. This comes with the recent elimination of programs such as the Title IV Safe and Drug-Free Schools initiative and the Secure Our Schools grant. These funding sources provided financial support for safety training, surveillance cameras, disciplinary professionals, and other security-based technologies. As funding continues to decline, school districts have been forced to either fund these security improvements using local revenue streams or eliminate them from their operating costs. While indicators point to economic improvement federally, the data reveal that educational revenues from state and local sources have not increased at the same pace as school expenditures. Though total operating costs have increased 47 percent from 2000 to 2011, state and local funding has only increased 31 and 39 percent, respectively. Just as economic prosperity during the 1990s helped spawn harsh disciplinary practices, it appears new financial conditions—marked by decline—may be influencing the form and content of school security and punishment.
Therefore, another direction for future research would examine how reductions in financial funding for security measures sway educational policies and practices. Though increased funding initiatives appear to escalate punitive measures, as discussed above, little is known about how decreases in budgets will influence school discipline. Will districts attempt to offset the revenue lost from federal incentives to enhance security measures? Will educational-based resources be sacrificed to ensure safety through security? Or, will schools be forced to eliminate various security features given tightened budgets? Failing to investigate how financials conditions influence schools to adopt criminal justice-based disciplinary practices leaves hidden policy implications that effect how students are reacted to and punished. By considering these financial elements through empirical analyses, future research may be better equipped to unpack the complex nature of school discipline and punishment.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Dr. Aaron Kupchik and the many ‘‘on the ground’’ that spent hours talking with me, reading parts of this manuscript, and providing critical feedback. This work greatly benefited from their efforts and, for that, a very special thanks to all involved.