Abstract

Excerpted From: Talley Bettens, The Risks and Consequences of Innocence in School Discipline: Implications for Policy and Research, 30 Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 260 (August, 2024) (5 Footnotes/References) (Full Document)

Since the 1980s, schools across the United States have become increasingly punitive in their responses to student misconduct, leading to the “criminalization of school discipline”. The widespread use of zero-tolerance policies (ZTPs) in schools led to marked increases in rates of exclusionary discipline (i.e., student removal from school in the form of in-school suspension, out-of-school suspension, expulsion, or transfer to alternative schools), student arrests, and police officers in schools. Yet, such practices have been widely criticized for leading to many unintended consequences including, directly and indirectly, increasing a student's likelihood of later involvement with the legal system--a phenomenon referred to as the “school-to-prison pipeline” (STPP), the effects of which disproportionately affect students of color. Research on the STPP has led to calls for reform in zero-tolerance discipline policies and recent shifts to restorative justice practices, yet schools continue to use exclusionary discipline and station police on campus and, thus, a punitive climate persists.

The purpose of this article is to unite two distinct literatures: the risks and consequences of school criminalization and the risks and consequences of wrongful convictions of youth. Scholarship surrounding the causes of wrongful convictions has expanded substantially since 1989 when DNA was first used to exonerate the innocent in the United States. This work has consistently found one type of evidence to be particularly strong in leading to convictions of the innocent: false confessions. Increased awareness and appreciation of the fact that innocent people confess to crimes they did not commit has led to calls for safeguards to prevent these miscarriages of justice . Specifically, scholars and policymakers advocate for the move away from widely used accusatorial methods of interrogation, including the Reid Technique. Such accusatorial methods are based on presumptions of guilt and are notorious for increasing the risk of false confessions. Furthermore, research and numerous case studies demonstrate that adolescents are at a heightened risk of false confession and wrongful conviction.

School criminalization and wrongful convictions share the similar consequence of leading numerous youths to have otherwise avoidable contact with the legal system. But despite this important commonality, these two bodies of work have yet to be integrated. That is, the scholarship on wrongful convictions has yet to thoroughly examine the role that schools may play in leading to the conviction of innocent youth; while the school criminalization literature has largely overlooked the potential that innocent students are disciplined. In synthesizing these literatures, this article presents two main arguments. First, widespread punitive discipline policies have led to a climate in schools where students' guilt is presumed, and this presumption puts innocent students at risk of being wrongfully disciplined and, in cases referred to law enforcement, wrongfully convicted. Second, the consequences associated with innocent students being wrongfully disciplined necessitate that future research and policy consider the potential of innocence when examining school discipline practices.

This article will first review the implementation, effectiveness, and consequences of school discipline practices. How student misconduct is investigated is also examined, showing that school officials often question students with accusatorial interrogation methods and presume students' guilt. Next, I discuss how these presumptions of guilt can put innocent youth at risk of false confession and wrongful discipline or conviction--the consequences of which can be severe and long-lasting. Finally, implications are offered for both policy and research aimed at (a) minimizing punitive school disciplinary practices that contribute to the STPP and (b) protecting innocent youth in school from wrongful discipline or conviction.

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Recent decades have seen extensive scholarly and legal work on two distinct phenomena: the criminalization of school discipline contributing to the STPP and false confessions contributing to the wrongful conviction of youth. In connecting these phenomena, this review presents a novel perspective on how school criminalization practices can create a climate where students' guilt is presumed; they are cast as criminals, are not guaranteed the legal safeguards aimed at protecting the innocent, and are frequently interrogated by school authorities with the same accusatorial techniques used by police with adult criminal suspects. Presumptions of guilt in schools and frequent school--police collaboration lead to a heightened risk of innocent youth, especially youth of color, falsely confessing and subsequently being wrongfully disciplined or convicted. Future policy and research must consider ways to mitigate these risks, as the costs associated with innocent students being wrongfully disciplined are too high to overlook.

Talley Bettens, Department of Criminology, Law and Society, George Mason University