Justice for All Youth: The Multi-System Criminalization of Youth Experiencing Homelessness in the State of Georgia, United States of America

Background and Purpose:

In the state of Georgia in the United States of America, youth experiencing homelessness face criminalization across multiple public systems that are designed to care for them, but instead churn them through a pipeline to jail and eventually, prison. The author coined the term “multi-system criminalization” to describe youth in this situation. While available in other states, data that shows the intersection between a student’s homeless status and school discipline is unheard of in Georgia, leaving the plight of youth who are without a stable place to live and therefore facing criminalization at school largely unstudied and unexplored. The purpose of this paper is to understand how state and federal laws impact the high rates of school discipline and juvenile justice system-involvement for youth experiencing homelessness; explore how Black and African American youth experiencing homelessness disproportionately face school discipline and incarceration; and explore data on this population of youth in Georgia, for the first time.

Methods:

Because of the lack of publicly available data, in late 2024, an Open Records Request was made to the Georgia Department of Education for data on the intersection between homeless status and school discipline, by race and ethnicity. Data shown in this paper is the first time such data is presented and discussed publicly. Descriptive statistical methods were used to examine the proportions of students experiencing homelessness and discipline by district and state and make comparisons to enrollment data. Special attention was also paid to disaggregating data by race and ethnicity to uncover disproportionate experiences of Black and African American Youth. A legal landscape scan was also conducted, to understand how the law in Georgia is contributing to multi-system criminalization and identify where improvements could be made.

Results:

• Approximately 12,018 students could be missing from Georgia’s total count of students experiencing homelessness in the state in 2022-23.
• While students experiencing homelessness were only 2.29% of Georgia’s total student enrollment in 2023, homeless students were 4% of the total number of students assigned to any disciplinary action - almost double.
• At the state level in 2023, Black and African American students were only 36% of the total students enrolled, but Black students were 65% of all students experiencing homelessness who were disciplined.

Conclusions and Implications:

The main goal of the study is to create public awareness on the multi-system criminalization of youth experiencing homelessness in Georgia in order to push for better data and accountability from school districts. The author also plans to create an interactive data dashboard with the data and findings, to make the results of the study more accessible to advocates in Georgia. Because no public data exists on the multi-system criminalization of youth experiencing homelessness in Georgia, this is the first time this issue is being brought to the public’s attention and will start important conversations about how public systems that are meant to support youth, are actually harming them.