How Lawyers Can Help End the School to Prison Pipeline

In this poignant and relevant course, Dr. Artika R. Tyner highlights concrete ways lawyers can facilitate the end of the school-to-prison pipeline. She explains the current realities of juvenile detention, dispels myths about incarceration, and notes how schools themselves exacerbate the problem.

One key factor she stresses is how those who are incarcerated in childhood are more likely to face incarceration as an adult. Lawyers must model behavior by limiting biases and asking hard questions about the law, especially in the case of children who cannot advocate for themselves. The first step for lawyers is to question the way things are run and strategize ways to change. Dr. Tyner discusses restorative justice and how that approach focuses on rehabilitation and the judicial system. For example, a restorative justice approach focuses on rehabilitating rather than punishing.

Dr. Tyner delineates how systemic change must occur in order to stop this heinous phenomenon and how lawyers are the first step in challenging the school to prison pipeline.