A Researcher–Practitioner Agenda for Studying and Supporting Youth Reentering School After Involvement in the Juvenile Justice System

Abstract

Across the United States, the rapid spread of “zero-tolerance” policies has generated a pipeline of youth from schools into prisons. Once youth reenter their community and home school, they often struggle to reintegrate. There is relatively little research about school reentry for juvenile justice–involved youth, and yet these students are at risk of low academic achievement, dropping out of school, and recidivism. We propose a conceptual framework for understanding the school reentry process, and then we use that framework to review existing research and suggests areas for future research. We discuss the areas where we found some research and those where we found little to no research. We suggest areas for future research and collaboration with practitioners.

Keywords

at-risk students descriptive analysis educational policy equity social context

Each year, hundreds of thousands of youth under the age of 18 become involved with the juvenile justice (JJ) system in the United States, often due to exclusionary disciplinary actions at their schools—the “school-to-prison pipeline” (STPP; Krezmien et al., 2010; Skiba et al., 2002). In 2015 over 48,000 youth were in JJ residential facilities across the United States, meaning they were awaiting a hearing in juvenile or criminal court, disposition, or transfer to another jurisdiction or were in postadjudication placement (Hockenberry, 2018). Once youth who have been in residential placement leave the justice system and reenter their community and home school, they often struggle to reintegrate. Many are not connected with the services they need to address their complex needs and/or the challenges that led to them to be removed from their home school in the first place. These include mental health issues, physical and sexual abuse (Chesney-Lind & Shelden, 2014), low academic achievement (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2011), and a public school system that youth experience as hostile (Vaught, 2017). Once released from incarceration, an estimated 44% of youth return to school (Cavendish, 2014). The remaining youth are turned away from or drop out of school (Bullis et al., 2004; Cavendish, 2014; Cole & Cohen, 2013; Cusick et al., 2009; Goldkind, 2011; Hirschfield, 2009; Hjarlmarsson, 2008; Kirk & Sampson, 2013). A large proportion of these youth also returns to the JJ system (Cusick et al., 2009; Sickmund & Puzzanchera, 2014).

Because of the myriad challenges these youth face, they need additional school-based supports to reintegrate. However, we know little about how and under what conditions schools can support youth school reentry. Limited research suggests that schools, as part of the broader context to which youth return, have the potential to play a protective role against recidivism. For example, ties to institutions such as schools and places of employment can reduce crime (Sampson & Laub, 1990, 2003) and the likelihood of recidivism (Kubek et al., 2020). This suggests that returning to school after alternative placement or incarceration may, under the right conditions, improve outcomes for these youth. Researchers also note, however, that schools’ climate often stigmatize returning youth, complicating reintegration (Belkin, 2017; Cole & Cohen, 2013; Mathur & Clark, 2014; Weaver & Campbell, 2015).

The purpose of this essay, then, is to argue for and outline a research-practitioner agenda that builds on and adds to what we know about the STPP and school reentry for JJ-involved youth.¹ We make this argument while also acknowledging that such research is necessary because educators and policymakers have not sufficiently addressed the STPP, meaning that each year more youth are incarcerated and must face the prospect of community and school reentry. For this reason, we seek not to detract from the important work of decreasing the number of JJ-involved youth but rather to investigate school reentry as a way to improve the experiences and outcomes for those youth who do become involved in the justice system.

This article is organized as follows. First, we draw upon research on the STPP to explain briefly the education-related factors that contribute to incarceration of youth, and then we describe the population of JJ-involved youth in the United States. After that, we offer a conceptual framework for understanding the school reentry process and explain how it is substantively different from the STPP. Finally, we use the framework to highlight where additional research and collaboration between researchers and practitioners are needed.

From School to Prison, and Back

Following the so-called wars on drugs and crime in the 1980s, schools changed how they responded to student misbehavior. States, districts, and schools, particularly those serving high proportions of students of color (Curran, 2019), increasingly passed laws and created disciplinary policies that were implemented in such a way that students of color (Curran, 2016; Fabelo et al., 2011; Gregory et al., 2010; Kupchik, 2009; Laura, 2014; Mallet, 2016; National Research Council, 2001; Simmons, 2017; Skiba et al., 2002), students in special education (Annamma et al., 2014), and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning youth (Mittleman, 2018b) increasingly and disproportionately were excluded from school. As an example, 3.5 million K-12 students were punished with out-of-school suspension in the 2011–2012 school year alone. Of these students, almost a third were African American, almost a quarter had special learning needs, and over 10% were English learners (Losen et al., 2015; Mittleman, 2018a). These “zero-tolerance” policies limited educators’ discretion in the meting out of consequences for certain offenses (Hirschfield, 2008) and often required the issuance of “tickets” to and even the arrest of students for developmentally normal misbehavior (Mallet, 2016).

At the same time, districts and schools took additional steps to increase their own surveillance of students and the severity of punishments. For example, schools hired new resource officers, whom teachers and administrators increasingly relied on to address student behaviors that were developmentally normal and that they previously had resolved and whom the law empowered to arrest students (Kupchik & Ward, 2014; Mallet, 2016; Noguera, 2012; Theriot, 2009). Districts and schools also created codes of conduct that oftentimes prohibited hairstyles, dress, and behaviors common among students of color (Morris, 2016; Skiba et al., 2011). These codes of conduct gave educators additional discretion, and a recent analysis of exclusionary discipline incidents in Arkansas found that almost 80% of the infractions reported to the state were relatively minor and likely involved substantial educator discretion (e.g., disorderly conduct, insubordination; Anderson & Ritter, 2017). The study also found that African American students were more likely than White students to be punished for minor, subjective infractions with exclusionary discipline (Ritter & Anderson, 2018). Together, these measures have put students on trajectories, which often start at a very young age (Shollenberger, 2015), that increase their risk of contact with JJ system (Hirschfield, 2008; Krezmien et al., 2010; Mallet, 2016; Mittleman, 2018a; Monahan et al., 2014; Mowen & Brent, 2016; Theriot, 2009) and even of adult arrest (Wolf & Kupchik, 2017).

Defining the Population

The STPP led to a spike in the number of youth becoming involved in the JJ system. Though the number of juvenile court cases has been declining ever since the late 1990s (in 1997, the peak year, juvenile court systems handled almost 2 million cases nationwide), in 2015 there still were almost 900,000 juvenile court cases (Hockenberry & Puzzanchera, 2018). Of those cases in 2015, males and youth of color were disproportionately represented at 72% and 57%, respectively. What’s more, 52% of these youth were under the age of 16 (Hockenberry & Puzzanchera, 2018).

Approximately 25% of all adjudicated youth are ordered to spend time in a residential facility (Sickmund & Puzzanchera, 2014).² In 2015, that included just over 48,000 youth (Hockenberry, 2018). The number of youth referred to a residential facility has declined by over 40% since 2007, though minority youth (69% of all youth) and African American males (42% of all youth) in particular continue to be overrepresented in these facilities. Indeed, African American youth are 6 times more likely than White youth to be placed in a residential facility once detained (Hockenberry, 2018). And though females account for only 15% of youth in residential facilities, the rate of residential incarceration among girls has been rising in recent years, and Native American and African American girls are overrepresented relative to the overall youth population (Sickmund et al., 2015). Youth who become involved in the JJ system are more likely than their peers to face additional challenges. For example, between a quarter and a third have identified special learning needs as defined by federal law (Grigorenko et al., 2015).

The STPP and School Reentry

In some ways, the school reentry process is an extension of the STPP, but in several important ways they are quite different. Previously incarcerated youth encounter multiple unique challenges during community and school reentry. These challenges differentiate the experiences of youth who are persistently and disproportionately disciplined (e.g., youth who have received out-of-school suspensions multiple times; see Fabelo et al., 2011) from those who have been incarcerated in a residential facility and then return to school. For example, spending time in a residential facility increases youth’s risk of recidivism (Liberman et al., 2014), with one report estimating that 85% of incarcerated youth reoffend compared to 56% of adjudicated youth who have not spent time in residential placement (Snyder & Sickmund, 2006).

Once these youth are released, very few return to school at all. For example, in a study of over 4,000 incarcerated youth in Florida, Cavendish (2014) found that only 44% of youth in their sample returned to school. Those who do return to school are more likely to drop out of school than students who have not been incarcerated (Hirschfield, 2009; Kirk & Sampson, 2013). Some youth who attempt to reenroll in school are denied reenrollment (Belkin, 2017; Cole & Cohen, 2013), which can violate the terms of their probation and mean they may be ordered back to a residential facility (Cole & Cohen, 2013). For those youth who manage to reenroll, they often are even further behind because of the residential placement and the inconsistent (Steele, Bozick, & Davis, 2016) and often poor (Annamma, 2014, 2018; Laura, 2014; Vaught, 2011, 2017) quality of the education youth receive in the facility. Moreover, youth who have spent time in a residential facility often are stigmatized by teachers and administrators at their school when they do return (Belkin, 2017; Cole & Cohen, 2013).

Conceptualizing the School Reentry Process

Before we argue for a specific research agenda around the school reentry process, we need to define a framework for how to understand, study, and ultimately improve it. We begin by arguing that the process is both complex and embedded. It is complex because these youth are involved with multiple systems and agencies (Belkin, 2017; Cusick et al., 2009; Kubek et al., 2020; Thomas et al., 2015); have multiple needs, including academic (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2011), social-emotional, addiction, and mental health needs (Altschuler & Brash, 2004); and often return to communities where they may receive some support but also are likely to face opportunities to recidivate (Abrams, 2006; Abrams & Snyder, 2010). The process is embedded because the involved agencies and individuals do not interact in a vacuum; rather, they are subject to laws (e.g., schools are subject not only to district policies but also to state and federal laws) and they function within a broader political and cultural context that shapes policies and the ways in which the youth are viewed. This context includes federal, state, and local laws as well as district and campus policies (e.g., codes of conduct) and practices but also social norms and implicit biases that likely affect how different students are treated (e.g., Gilliam et al., 2016; Gullo, 2017; Mittleman, 2018b).

Given the complex and embedded nature of the process, we draw upon and extend existing work to offer a framework for future research and reform efforts. Specifically, we begin with Gregory and colleagues’ (2017) recent framework for evaluating school-based programs that seek to improve disciplinary practices and outcomes. They argue that for an intervention to improve disciplinary outcomes, it must address the intrapersonal, interpersonal, instructional, and systems levels of schools. By intrapersonal, they are referring to educators’ beliefs and attitudes, though we argue that for school reentry, this should be broadened to describe any characteristics internal to the individual. Interpersonal refers to the quality of group and individual interactions, and we contend that this includes interactions among students, teachers, counselors, and administrators. Instruction refers to the academic rigor and the cultural relevancy and responsiveness of the instruction. Finally, systems level refers to the access students have to behavioral supports and the availability of collaborative approaches to resolving conflicts, such as restorative justice, as well as programs or policies that aim to provide those supports. Their framework encapsulates much of the internal complexity of schools and the ways in which schools can seek to interrupt the STPP.

School reentry, as we have argued, cannot be conflated with the STPP because of the additional institutional complexity and embeddedness. We seek to extend their school-based framework by accounting for the complexity and embeddedness that characterize the school reentry process. We want to clarify that while we argue that these concepts can help us understand, research, and address the school reentry process, we are not arguing that individual studies must address all aspects of the process. Rather, we contend that researchers should examine where in the reentry process more research is needed and how their work contributes.

Institutional complexity

By nature, the reentry process is complex because it involves multiple agencies. Organizational theorists describe institutional complexity as the multiple, competing demands from constituents to which organizations must respond (Pache & Santos, 2010). Institutional complexity is particularly challenging in fields that are highly decentralized (Pache & Santos, 2010), such as education (Weick, 1976). In the conceptual model we are proposing here, we use “institutional complexity” to refer to the overlap of multiple institutional contexts with which returning JJ-involved youth have contact. In brief, upon release from a residential facility, most youth are required as part of the conditions of their probation to return to school. As researchers and practitioners working with JJ-involved youth returning to school, we must attend to not only what happens inside the school doors but also the interactions among the other institutional contexts in which these youth are involved. Those contexts include the JJ system and the multiple social service and child welfare service agencies that may also provide services to or supervise returning youth. A fourth context that is not institutional per se but is instrumental is the youth’s community: their family, friends, neighbors, and other community members. Figure 1 depicts the overlap among these contexts, with students at the center.

Figure 1.

Institutional complexity.

Institutional embeddedness

The term “embeddedness” has a long history. It has been used to describe the relationship between different spheres of life, such as the economic and social (Granovetter, 1985). In organizational theory, institutional embeddedness refers to the “interconnections between a population and its institutional environment” (Baum & Oliver, 1992, p. 540). In practice, embeddedness acts as a constraint on individual decision making and behavior (Dacin et al., 1999). Here, we use “institutional embeddedness” to refer to the fact that each institutional context involved with the school reentry process has multiple levels, and the layered nature of those contexts acts to constrain the behavior of each level. For example, schools are embedded within districts and states. As such, they are subject to district policies as well as state and federal education and other laws. Similarly, JJ and social welfare agencies are represented at the local (often county), state, and federal levels.

The study of school reentry, then, must investigate not only the multiple institutional contexts involved but also the multiple layers within each of those contexts. We therefore add to Gregory and colleagues’ (2017) framework by including three additional levels in which schools are embedded and that constrain the school context and all related components (systems, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and instructional): the school district, the state, and the federal government. Figure 2 depicts the embeddedness of schools.

Figure 2.

Institutional embeddedness.

Defining a Research Agenda

In this section, we leverage the conceptual model described in the previous section to highlight gaps in existing research about school reentry and to propose an agenda for research and collaboration between researchers and practitioners.

Intrapersonal Level

Most research on school reentry for JJ-involved students has focused at the intrapersonal level, primarily on student-level explanations of school reentry outcomes, such as recidivism, high school completion, and academic achievement. Factors that have received attention include student race (Blomberg et al., 2011; Bullis et al., 2004; Keeley, 2006; Sametz & Hamparian, 1987), the severity of crimes committed (Johnston, 2009), and academic factors, such as special learning needs (Bullis et al., 2004; Keeley, 2006) and previous achievement (Balfanz et al., 2003; Johnston, 2009; Keeley, 2006) as well as time in school (Sametz & Hamparian, 1987). We are aware of only one student-level study that focuses on student voice and experiences during the reentry process (Garwood, 2015), though Vaught (2017) touches on youth anxiety about release from prison. More research is needed on returning students. For example, we need more research that builds on the work of Mitra (2014), which argues that incorporating students’ voices into school reform efforts can lead to more meaningful school change. We also need rigorous work that extends the efforts of Mittleman (2018a) to isolate causal relationships in the STPP to the school reentry process. Finally, research on other individuals involved in school reentry is limited, and so there is much more to learn more about the beliefs and attitudes of the teachers, counselors, and leaders who work with returning youth.

Interpersonal

We found very little research at the interpersonal level, which focuses on interactions among individuals, including students, teachers, school staff, and school leaders. For instance, one study found no relationship between school leadership styles and student outcomes for adjudicated high school students (Fisher, 2015). Research needed at this level should address interactions among peers during the school reentry process as well as the caring relationships students form with school-based adults, including teachers, counselors, leaders, and mentors. The latter hold promise for enhancing students’ resilience, social-emotional health, and academic outcomes (Austin et al., 2016). Many returning youth, however, do not have these relationships, and so research is needed on the ways in which practices, policies, and programs can support their formation. Future work also can build on research examining social workers (Goldkind, 2011) and school leaders (DeMatthews et al., 2017; Mansfield et al., 2018), with a focus on their beliefs, attitudes, and practices relating to school reentry.

Instructional

Instruction refers to the culturally relevant practices that teachers and leaders can adopt as a way to engage students, manage classrooms, and lead schools. This is another area where we found no research relating specifically to school reentry but where future work can build on existing work that aims to address the racial discipline gap as well as the achievement gap. For example, research out of California highlights a causal link between teaching ethnic studies to eighth-grade students and improved attendance and academic achievement (Dee & Penner, 2017). Similarly, Khalifa and colleagues (2016) articulate the ways in which school leadership can adopt culturally relevant behaviors and practices with the goal of improving school environments for historically oppressed students.

Systems

We found relatively little research at the systems level that specifically addresses the school reentry process. Two studies describe the role that school leaders play in creating and maintaining a school climate that stigmatizes youth (Belkin, 2017; Cole & Cohen, 2013) and denying these students reenrollment after release (Cole & Cohen, 2013), but neither study addresses these issues with any depth. We look to existing research on school-based systems of support to offer recommendations for future research. For example, behavioral support systems, such as positive behavioral interventions and supports (Gage et al., 2019; Solomon et al., 2012) and restorative discipline (e.g., Gregory et al., 2016; Mansfield et al., 2018), hold much promise for interrupting the STPP and likely will be important to our understanding of how best to help students with school reentry. As such, this is an area ripe for close collaboration with practitioners so that we can design, test, and study school-based interventions aimed at creating systems of support for returning youth.

Institutional Complexity

Research on the overlap of agencies highlights a lack of communication and information sharing regarding JJ-involved youth generally (Balfanz et al., 2003; Belkin, 2017; Cole & Cohen, 2013; Kubek et al., 2020; Lewis et al., 1988; Richardson et al., 2013; Spegel, 2016), and transition planning specifically (Watkins, 2007), among the involved agencies. Agencies may have competing and conflicting priorities and policies that complicate the reentry process (Belkin, 2017). At the same time, improved communication and cooperation alone may not be sufficient to improve outcomes for students (Curci, 1995).

More research also is needed on the institutional complexity of school reentry. We see isolated cases of interagency collaboration, such as the formation of the Harris County Youth Collective and the creation of transition plans across California between JJ agencies and school districts. At the same time, we know relatively little about these efforts, why there are so few, and how research can support new partnerships. Some of this research necessarily will be exploratory, but we also need to apply diverse theoretical tools to tease out a richer understanding. As an example, organizational theory can help explain why agencies do not collaborate and under what conditions they might. Similarly, critical theory can be used to give voice to students and families who are navigating the maze of agency rules and requirements. Advances in educational psychology also can be applied to design and test new interventions that leverage the capacities of multiple agencies and the community to support returning youth (e.g., Beausoleil et al., 2017). Finally, political and policy theories can be applied to explain the origins, implementation, and consequences of changes to laws, policies, and practices, particularly as those laws affect more than one agency, such as laws that require interagency coordination and planning.

Institutional Embeddedness

Finally, we did not find research relating to the institutional embeddedness of school reentry. As with complexity, future research should leverage organizational and sociological theories to analyze what it means for youth to navigate reentry in schools that are embedded within districts, states, and the federal government. Policy research can point to ways that key figures can enhance communication and cooperation across agency levels (e.g., Honig, 2006), identify policies and practices that inhibit school reentry, and recommend ones that will facilitate the process.

Summary

Our review of the literature using the framework we have proposed highlighted several places where more research is needed as well as opportunities for collaboration with practitioners. At the intrapersonal level, most research focuses on students but does not incorporate student voice or examine students’ experiences. There also is very little research on the beliefs and attitudes of teachers, school leaders, or others. We found only one study addressing the interpersonal level, meaning that there is a great need for research on the interactions between returning students, their peers, and the adults around them as well as programs that support positive interactions. At the instructional and systems levels, more research is needed on how teaching that is more culturally relevant, rigorous, and relevant and disciplinary practices that are more restorative can facilitate school reentry. In terms of institutional complexity, more partnerships are needed and more research applied to those partnerships (or the lack thereof) also is needed. Finally, we need more research that digs into the embeddedness of school reentry, focusing on the interaction between agency levels.

Conclusion

We embarked on this project with the goal of articulating a research agenda on the school reentry process and advocating for collaboration with practitioners to address the challenges returning youth face. This agenda is by no means complete; other factors and levels of analysis may play an important role, as well. Indeed, our hope is that by articulating this agenda, new questions will be added as research in this area grows and we learn more. It also is our hope that researchers and practitioners will partner to take on this challenge. Collectively, as a field, we need to—and can—develop a more complete and nuanced understanding of school reentry and leverage this knowledge to develop effective and culturally responsive approaches to support youth so they return to, stay in, and graduate from high school.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Virginia Snodgrass Rangel

Notes

Authors

VIRGINIA SNODGRASS RANGEL, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Houston, 3657 Cullen Blvd., Farish Hall 112G, Houston, TX 77204; vrangel3@uh.edu . Her research focuses on juvenile justice school reentry; the K-16 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics pipeline; and policy implementation.

SASCHA HEIN, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Education and Psychology at the Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195 Berlin, Germany; Sascha.Hein@fu-berlin.de . His research focuses on the education and mental health of youth involved in the juvenile justice system as well as early childhood development and education in humanitarian contexts.

CHARLES ROTRAMEL is the CEO of Houston reVision, 6856 Bellaire Blvd., Houston, TX 77074; charles@houstonrevision.org . His work focuses on mentoring, case management, and positive peer activities for disconnected youth throughout Harris County.

BEA MARQUEZ, MBA, is the manager of the Dual Status and Adjudicated Youth Office in the Houston Independent School District’s Social Emotional Learning Department. In her work, she focuses on supporting the enrollment of students exiting the justice system, transitioning them with academic and social emotional support into their home schools, and collaborating with community programs to provide diversionary alternatives to prevent more students from entering the judicial system.

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