Restorative justice efforts in school alienate female students
By Zaid Diaz-Arias
The pathway towards incarceration largely begins from the classroom. This phenomenon is referred to as the school-to-prison-pipeline and originated in the 1990s.
It has affected all students. However, recent studies indicate that the school-to-prison-pipeline discussion tends to exclude females.
Since the 1900s, racial disparities were discovered within the pipeline. Students of color were more susceptible to fall into this trend in comparison to white students. Consecutively, schools have begun putting forth restorative justice practices in an attempt to prevent students from ending up in prison.
Restorative justice practices are systems that proactively construct healthy relationships to prevent conflict in student’s lives that may lead to future incarceration. It’s increasingly being applied in individual schools and school districts. However, these practices, since their creation, have alienated female students.
Assistant Professor of the USC Social Work Dept. of Children Youth and Families, Elizabeth Kim, asserted that “Much like the criminal and juvenile justice systems where 75% in the system are males, expulsion and suspensions affect more males than females.”
“Because of this differential rate, female youth of color largely affected by racial disparities, are not as visible.”
This practice has had a focus on helping male students of color, due to their higher susceptibility to falling into the school-to-prison-pipeline. As a result, female students of color are left to fend for themselves. More times than not, merely falling into the ‘pipeline trend.’
According to Zuly Hernandez, a student from Foshay Learning Center, she witnessed two African American girls get into a fight. One was defending herself from the other, but ultimately both were suspended.
“Individual schools and school districts have evolved into not giving female students of color the light of day.”
Showing that the schools merely engage in zero-tolerance policies that cause psychological damage.
Anthony Flores-Alvarez from Manual Arts High School said that he also witnessed this unfair practice on female students, although it’s happened so many times that he cannot pinpoint an exact moment.
Centralizing on African American communities, black students are shown to be suspended three times more than white students. But when looking at males and females within that measurement, female students are significantly affected as well but are alienated from restoration efforts.
Efforts to correct this problem often fail to include black girls, who are six times more likely to receive an out-of-school suspension than their white counterparts.
The school-to-prison pipeline discussion often neglects the ways in which black girls are disproportionately and unfairly disciplined by the U.S. education system.
And according to Jaquira Díaz, assistant professor in the MFA program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the complexity of the problem and its effect on black and brown girls is only projected to increase from here on.
