Preparing for prison? The criminalization of school discipline in the USA

American schools increasingly define and manage the problem of student discipline through a prism of crime control. Most theoretical explanations fail to situate school criminalization in a broader structural context, to fully explain its spatio-temporal variations, and to specify the processes and subjectivities that mediate between structural and legal forces and the behavior of school actors. A multilevel structural model of school criminalization is developed which posits that a troubled domestic economy, the mass unemployment and incarceration of disadvantaged minorities, and resulting fiscal crises in urban public education have shifted school disciplinary policies and practices and staff perceptions of poor students of color in a manner that promotes greater punishment and exclusion of students perceived to be on a criminal justice 'track'.