Unavoidable Choices: Young Men of Color Perspectives on the Role of School in Pathways to Delinquency

Background and Purpose: Advocates and researchers often pinpoint zero-tolerance policies and exclusionary discipline practices as principal school mechanisms leading students into the school-to-prison pipeline. While research has established several links between school policies and practices and juvenile justice system involvement among boys of color, little is known about how young men of color themselves view the school mechanisms associated with their own delinquency.  To better understand and interpret their perspectives, this paper examines the primary and secondary schooling experiences of young men of color, ages 19 to 24, with histories of juvenile incarceration. The primary research question is: How do formerly incarcerated young men of color perceive the role of school in their own history of delinquency and incarceration?

Methods:Using a life history narrative approach, in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 formerly incarcerated young men of color. The participants were residents of Los Angeles County and were African American (n = 6), Hispanic (n = 9), and Filipino (n = 2).  At the time of the interview, the average age of the participants was 21.7, 14.7 at the time of their first incarceration, and 18.3 at their last incarceration.  Eight participants had not finished high school, 10 had prior gang involvement, two were associated, and five were still actively associated or involved with a gang. Fifteen participants were recruited purposively as alumni of a community organization serving formerly incarcerated youth and two were recruited from a separate community-based organization. Researchers transcribed each interview and coded the transcripts line by line, using an inductive analytic approach.  Open codes were developed into conceptual categories based on instances in the data where participants discussed their schooling experiences and perceptions of their pathways toward delinquency.

Results:Participants did not typically perceive school mechanisms as a primary influence on their engagement in delinquency. Rather, they attributed the origins of delinquent behaviors to what they deemed as “unavoidable choices,” often unrelated to school, and a normative process involving truancy, poor academic performance, gangs, and pre-delinquent activities such as fighting, graffiti, and substance abuse. Although nearly all participants regret their past behaviors, many identified school as a setting where their risk-taking behaviors were shaped and enacted in order to assimilate to their peer culture, respond to competing economic needs, and because of accumulating academic deficits.  As the participants risky behaviors increased, school often served as a social setting, and their behaviors subjected them to exclusionary school policies and practices, including incarceration.

Conclusion:  Despite a strong literature base relating school policies and practices as catalysts to juvenile justice system, involvement, this group of young men largely attributed their trajectories to their own choices. Nevertheless, they understood their choices as “unavoidable” given their developmental stage and school context and culture. Future research should further examine urban school context, culture, and processes, specifically school responses to the social exchanges of boys of color to inform culturally relevant, gender and age specific interventions.