The School to Prison Pipeline: Long-Run Impacts of School Suspensions on Adult Crime

By Andrew Bacher-Hicks, Stephen B. Billings, David J. Deming. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2019

128 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Schools must balance student behavior management with the potential negatives of strict discipline. These policies can deter misbehavior but may stigmatize students and expose them to the criminal justice system early. We assess the impact of attending a strict discipline school on achievement, educational attainment, and adult criminal activity. Using data from a boundary change and principal switches, we find that higher suspension rates have significant negative long-term effects. Students at such schools are 15–20 percent more likely to be arrested and incarcerated as adults. Negative impacts on educational attainment are particularly pronounced for males and students of color. (JEL H75, I21, I28, J15, K42)

Subfields: Education, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/68faf804055033a7561c29d50d37f1a5d13f506e

Citations in the corpus

• The Long-Term Effects of Universal Preschool in Boston (2021, unknown): “Bacher-Hicks, Billings, and Deming (2019) and Rose, Schellenberg, and Shem-Tov (2022) argue that short-term effects of teachers and schools on noncognitive outcomes predict longer-term effects on criminal behavior.”