How school discipline primes the school to prison pipeline for young blacks

The link between students being involved with exclusionary disciplinary policies such as suspension and expulsion and their later involvement with the criminal justice system as an adult is relatively well known. But is there a racial component to this school to prison pipeline? In new research, Racheal Pesta used national data to examine the relationship between students' race and their suspension and expulsion, educational achievement, delinquent behaviors, and later criminal offending. She finds that for both black and white students, being expelled or suspended increases the chance of dropping out by more than 300 percent, but that black youth who drop out of school are 40 percent more likely to engage in criminal behavior in adulthood, while for whites dropping out does not increase the odds of criminal offending.