Literacy-Based Prison Construction

distrust of authority. With the rise of metal detectors, surveillance cameras, and patdowns
in schools, students interact with police during a formative period that shapes
their life-long attitudes and life trajectories. Schools become the new frontiers of brokenwindows
policing, with a focus on social control and punitive measures instead of on
education and growth.
The symbiotic relationship between urban neighborhoods, public education, and the
criminal-justice system is pervasive throughout the country.
For some kids—especially those in our nation’s biggest cities—attending a wellresourced
school in a well-resourced neighborhood is the only way out of an existence
where their every move is subject to police control.
Despite a surge in attention to neighborhood effects in big cities, my research shows
that schools are more powerful engines of social stratification than neighborhoods.
Urban high schools, in particular, play a major role in how students perceive and
experience authoritative figures, whether teachers in school or police officers on the
street. For some kids—especially those in our nation’s biggest cities—attending a wellresourced
school in a well-resourced neighborhood is the only way out of an existence
where their every move is subject to police control.
I have studied the intersection between the systems of public education and criminal
justice and the impact on the lives of urban youth for nearly 15 years. This research
moves beyond New York and Chicago’s borders, where I have focused my work, to
other areas where opportunity is determined by zip code.
My findings reveal that it is race combined with gender, class, age, demeanor, and
place that determines who is—and is not—ensnared in the ever-expanding web of
police control because the social concentration of the justice system’s impact is not
evenly, or randomly, distributed. According to my survey research and interviews with
students, people of color in more diverse schools are more likely to recognize that they
are discriminated against, because they see the ways they are being treated differently.
In urban schools all across the country, what will the next generation have to contend
with? We must figure out ways to reverse these troubling trends by working toward
fulfilling the promise of our nation’s public institutions to meet the needs of its most
vulnerable citizens. This is the standard by which we should gauge our realization of the
ideals of American democracy and justice.
How do we proceed?
First, we must incorporate the perspectives of young people who are often the target of
studies as true participants in shaping policy. Often, those deemed to be the “problem”
have the greatest insights into powerful solutions.
Second, a commitment to fairness and procedural justice must be central to the
organization of our nation’s public-school and criminal-justice systems in alignment with
these institutions’ missions to educate and protect their constituents. Students should
not be feeling they are only being surveilled and controlled in their schools.
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