The ACLU is committed to challenging the “school-to-prison pipeline,” a disturbing national trend wherein children are funneled out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems.

New research found that early strict discipline causes an increase in adult crime.

The statistics paint a bleak picture: students from marginalized groups are the greatest risk of being drawn into the school-to-prison pipeline.

The school-to-prison pipeline has gone “virtual” as a result of online schooling during the pandemic, warned a paper published in the Loyola Children’s Legal Rights Journal.

Over the past 20 years, advocates, students, educators, and researchers have coined the term “school-to-prison pipeline” (STPP) to describe how harsh school disciplinary policies and law enforcement policies intersect to feed young people into the criminal punishment system. This is part of a national trend that criminalizes rather than educates students — and one that disproportionately targets black students — as “tough-on-crime” policy has resulted in millions of mostly black and brown people winding up behind bars.