Journal of Education & Social Policy

School-to-Prison Pipeline: Impact of School Discipline on African American Students
Abiodun Raufu

Abstract
This paper synthesized existing literature on school-to-prison pipeline in assessing the vulnerability of African American students to the criminalization of school discipline. It examined how disproportionality in school discipline has contributed to the over-representation of African American students in the juvenile justice system and why it partly explain the academic achievement gap between White and African American students. It sought to show that the cumulative obstacles placed before African American students by the multiplicity of factors such as institutionalized prejudice, poverty and the disproportionality in school discipline puts them at adis-advantage against white students and contend that a lasting solution will require digging beyond the surface by fixing the socioeconomic conditions that makes this unhealthy disparity to exist in the first place.

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