Abstracts Category : Other

Race, resegregation and the school to prison pipleline in Mecklenburg County

by Joseph Graham

This thesis explores the relationship between out of school suspensions and court-involvement for youth in Mecklenburg County. Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the concept of implicit bias serve to inform this examination, interpretation, and analysis of the school to prison pipeline. The research study includes the Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools suspension records from 2006-2013 for 21,690 youth and Mecklenburg County Sheriffs Office data from those same years and same youth plus for 7,349/21,690 youth, their delinquency records. This sample was thus, divided into two groups: Non-Court-Involved (14,341) and Court Involved (n=7,349). Descriptive statistics indicate that African-American students are 3-8 times more likely to be disciplined by the use of out of school suspensions than their fellow White students. The results show that African-Americans miss 11 days more of school because of OSS than their White counterpart. In addition, the results indicate that approximately every 25 days of out of school suspensions accumulates to 1 arrest. The African-Americans in the Court-Involved group average 22 days of suspension. One specific contribution of this study is the unique collaboration and data sharing between the schools and sheriffs office to examine and address this issue. The study results are consistent with similar research about school discipline and juvenile justice. Moreover, these findings can be used to increase awareness of the racial and ethnic disparities in educational disciplinary practices and policies in the Charlotte Mecklenburg School System and potentially, beyond.