On the margin: Who receives a juvenile referral in school and what effect does it have?
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management · 2025 · Lucy C. Sorensen、Andrea Marie Headley、Stephen Holt
中文摘要
与少年司法系统的接触对被拘留的青少年乃至更广泛的社会都产生重大影响。关于“从学校到监狱的管道”(school-to-prison pipeline)的现有研究往往聚焦于停学等学校纪律处分措施,而较少关注学校向少年司法系统转介对学生的影响。我们利用北卡罗来纳州的新颖行政数据,将三年的个体教育与违纪记录同少年司法系统记录相链接,以识别因校园内违法行为而被转介至少年司法系统对学业和行为结果的影响。我们发现,即使在违法行为类型和情形相同的情况下,与仅在校内受到处罚的学生相比,被转介至少年司法系统的学生学业成绩更低、缺勤增加,且未来更可能出现违纪行为并与少年司法系统发生接触。我们表明,这些少年司法转介并非不可避免,而是反映了学校管理者与执法部门作出的一系列自由裁量选择。此外,我们发现,即使违法行为类型和情形相同,女学生、黑人学生和经济处境不利的学生也更有可能收到转介。
Abstract
Abstract Involvement with the juvenile justice system carries immense consequences both to detained youth and to society more broadly. Extant research on the “school‐to‐prison pipeline” has often focused on school disciplinary practices such as suspension with less attention on understanding the impact of school referrals to the juvenile justice system on students. Using novel administrative data from North Carolina, we link 3 years of individual educational and disciplinary infraction records to juvenile justice system records to identify the effect of juvenile justice referrals for school‐based offenses on academic and behavioral outcomes. We find that, even for the same offense type and circumstance, relative to students only punished internally in the school, students referred to juvenile justice experience lower academic achievement and increased absenteeism, and are more likely to be involved in future disciplinary infractions and juvenile system contact. We show that these juvenile referrals are not inevitable and instead reflect a series of discretionary choices made by school administrators and law enforcement. Moreover, we find that female students, Black students, and economically disadvantaged students are more likely to receive referrals even for the same offense type and circumstances.