Criminal Justice Policy is Education Policy

Our View

Criminal justice policies and practices have a direct bearing on student outcomes in K-12 education today. Educators who seek to narrow achievement gaps between African-American and white children should consider advocating for curbing discriminatory arrest and incarceration practices.

In a new report by the Economic Policy Institute, “Mass Incarceration and Children’s Outcomes,” we review research across criminology, sociology, economics, health and epidemiology and conclude that parental incarceration leads to diminished outcomes for children, including depressed school performance and graduation rates.

Children with parents who have been imprisoned are more likely to drop out. They tend to have worse GPAs. Their behavior deteriorates, and they are more likely to be suspended or even expelled. They are more likely to have developmental delays and develop learning disabilities. Their mental health suffers and their anxiety tends to increase, as does their depression. They can develop post-traumatic stress disorder.

Children of incarcerated parents are more likely to face physical health problems such as asthma, high cholesterol and migraines. Indeed, children who grow up under stressful conditions have more sympathetic nervous activity — the system that stimulates our fight-or-flight response or what we do in reacting to a threat — including elevated blood pressure. They have more activity in their hypothalamic pituitary axis, which regulates cortisol, a hormone released in response to stress. This disrupts their prefrontal cortex activity, sympathetic nervous activity and metabolic system, leading to worsened health.

Discriminatory Justice

It may be tempting to think these conditions simply reflect children’s socioeconomic backgrounds. However, the statistical sophistication of studies we’ve reviewed all but eliminates the plausibility that these depressed outcomes are due to anything other than parental incarceration.

On any school day, one in 10 African-American children has a parent behind bars. Black parents, especially black fathers, are incarcerated at an exceptionally high rate. African-American children are six times as likely as white children to have had an imprisoned parent. This is the case even though crime and especially violent crime have declined overall and young African-American men are no more likely to use or sell drugs than young white men. Yet young African-American men are nearly three times as likely as white men to be arrested for drug use or sale. Once arrested, they are more likely to be sentenced, and once sentenced, their jail or prison terms are typically 50 percent longer.

Such practices directly affect K-12 student achievement and graduation rates. Yet President Trump has advocated expanding one such discriminatory practice known as “stop and frisk.” This is not federal policy and the president has no authority over it. It is a local practice.

Many more children are harmed by the incarceration of parents in state than in federal prisons. In 2014, more than 700,000 prisoners nationwide were serving sentences of a year or longer for nonviolent crimes. More than 600,000 of these were in state institutions. This makes state and local criminal justice reform no less realistic for educators focused on narrowing the achievement gap, even as reform faces hostility from federal officials.

Educator Advocacy

Educators have great reach to change criminal justice policies that will improve how children do in school. They can inform parents, students and communities about the harmful effects of parental incarceration on children and can press their local and state elected officials for criminal justice policy reforms.

Schools cannot be expected to overcome with teaching what is the likely result of discriminatory imprisonment. For administrators and educators intent on narrowing cognitive and noncognitive gaps in outcomes between African-American and white children and improving graduation rates, advocating for substantial reductions in the number of parents behind bars should become a priority.