Content area
Abstract
Literature has shown that education and the juvenile justice system, including law enforcement, have increasingly grown to operate in tandem for more than 30 years (Kafka, 2011; Nolan, 2011). This paradoxical partnership, as well as subsequent policies, such as zero tolerance, and heightened surveillance practices are especially detrimental to Black and Latinx youth, and those from low-income communities (Bahena, Kuttner, Cooc, Currie-Rubin, & Ng, 2012; CDF, 1974, 1975; Gregory, Skiba, & Noguera, 2010; Warren, 2021). Literature on the so-called phenomenon of the school-to-prison has documented the “disturbing national trend wherein children are funneled out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems” (ACLU, n.d.). Yet, there is limited knowledge of how education is administered by educators and experienced by students who are incarcerated. This dissertation demonstrates how the carceral continuum – that disparately affects Black youth – operates within and beyond the scope of common school-to-prison logic through the examination of school/education in (a) juvenile justice setting(s). This dissertation explores how education is constructed and delivered, and how teachers’ and staff’s framing, understanding, and response to youth in juvenile justice educational settings interrupts and/or exacerbates inequities of the carceral continuum. This dissertation is significant and timely, especially in the era of “justice reform,” as it challenges the possibility of learning and positive youth development in confined spaces. Findings demonstrate that even when classroom experiments and other activities are possible, carceral logics – the way one’s body, thoughts, and actions are shaped over time by carcerality and imprisonment – cloud imagination and possibility. Staff and educators find themselves in paradoxical situations where they want to help support youth learning and development, but are often shaped by carceral logics that are reinforced by policies and practices that restrict them from engaging. Typically, we do not often think about how young people are learning while incarcerated. Much like adults who are imprisoned – society forgets about them or in some states, defund prison education (Hall, 2015; Petersilia, 2003). While many education scholars have gone into juvenile facilities via programs to work with students who are incarcerated, this study shows how a juvenile justice facility “educates” to understand the contradictions, paradoxes, and possibilities.
