Schools and the Rise of Mass Incarceration in a Post-Brown World

Abstract

In this article Matthew B. Kautz theorizes schools as unique carceral institutions with the capacities to criminalize, surveil, discipline, and punish and demonstrates how they have mobilized these unique abilities to establish social control. By tracing the development of school disciplinary policy and practice following Brown v. Board of Education, the essay illuminates how policy makers produced politically salable narratives of criminality to rationalize the expansion of jails and prisons during a period of major economic restructuring. Engaging with this history, Kautz provides a different lens for considering contemporary education policy.