Criminological perspectives on school exclusion and youth offending

ABSTRACT

This article explores the relationship between school exclusion and youth crime and considers what criminological research can add to our understanding. The article first explores the history of the ways in which the criminological implications of school exclusion have been conceptualised, including the link between exclusion and young people’s offending, and the so-called ‘school-to-prison pipeline’. There is a long history of work in the UK and the US that explores how processes of school exclusion contribute to youth crime, the trajectory from the label of ‘troublemaker’ to more serious deviance, and how disciplinary polices can themselves lead to criminalisation. As we show, the relationship is complex and establishing causality is difficult. We then consider more recent work on how school exclusion contributes to the vulnerability and exploitation of marginalised young people. Finally, we argue for understanding young people’s lives, their educational experiences, and their involvement in offending, holistically and ‘in the round’, taking account of all their relationships and activities and employing contextual approaches to addressing these problems.

KEYWORDS:

• Exclusion
• youth offending
• school-to-prison-pipeline
• child criminal exploitation
• contextual safeguarding

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jasmina Arnez

Jasmina Arnez is an ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Centre for Criminology, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford. Her research interests relate to youth justice, inequality, and alternative responses to youth crime. She is currently preparing a monograph, 'Negotiating youth deviance and parenting: Exploring the effects of social class in professional interactions' for Routledge Criminology and Criminal Justice (forthcoming, 2021) based on her doctoral thesis. Jasmina is also conducting research on risk assessment in the youth justice setting and its intersection with personal characteristics.

Rachel Condry

Rachel Condry is Professor of Criminology in the Centre for Criminology, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford. Her work focuses broadly on the intersections between crime and the family which has included a number of projects on prisoners' families, youth justice, and family violence. She is co-investigator on the Excluded Lives study based in the Department of Education, University of Oxford, which aims to advance a multi-disciplinary understanding of the political economies of school exclusion across the UK. Rachel edits the book series Routledge Studies in Crime, Justice and the Family; she is co-editor of the Howard Journal of Crime and Justice; and Associate Editor of The Journal of Criminology.