End of the Line: Tracing Racial Inequality from School to Prison

Building on an interpretive case study of a public school at a prison in New Orleans, this paper examines the punitive culture of public education and points to its role in extending both the minority achievement gap and mass minority incarceration. The work documents how racial minorities, and African American males in particular, are criminalized by school disciplinary policies and shows how these policies foreshorten educational careers and increase risk for incarceration. The paper concludes by turning to a school site in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans where a grassroots student organization has resisted the correctional school disciplinary model and has advocated for more positive educational investments.