The "school-to-prison pipeline" refers to the trajectory of young people who have spent time in more than one state or federal system, potentially ending in the criminal justice system.
These young people are referred to as multisystem youth and are one of the nation’s most vulnerable populations. They are overwhelmingly the most misunderstood, dehumanized, miscategorized group. Additionally, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) and LGBTQ youth are more likely than other groups to suffer adverse treatment due to overt discrimination and systemic racism.
Attorney and children’s advocate Kate Lowenstein, JD, MSW, spoke to the Lesley Institute for Trauma Sensitivity (LIFTS) about how the trajectory might be bent in a more positive way. She saw that children and young adults passing through various systems—such as welfare, foster care, and the justice system—“needed a good attorney and a good social worker, but those two professions really were not communicating.”
Lowenstein made her educational and professional focus a combination of these two worlds. She believes that as this coordination becomes more prevalent, constituents who work with this population can “begin this understanding of the intersectional experience of children, the intersection of our systems, and also how we interact with each other in order to help children.”
Getting into the system
What happens to children in the juvenile justice system prior to their arrests?
The Citizens for Juvenile Justice, a nonprofit organization working to improve the juvenile justice system in Massachusetts, collected data to answer this question. They found that of the dual status youth in the juvenile justice system—primarily male children of color—the Department of Children and Families had been involved in their lives by the time they were five years old. National data indicated these youth were removed from their homes and placed into foster care by age 12–15. These adverse childhood experiences compound and more likely lead youth on a path toward issues in school and with the legal system.
For a graphic representation of the obstacles that multisystem youth could face, see the iThrive Games Juvenile Justice System Project, featuring the board games Klout and The Run Around, developed in part by youth in detention.