Abstract
Introduction
The school-to-prison pipeline (STPP), a framework which describes mechanisms and pathways within the education system that drive students toward involvement in the criminal-legal system, has seen increasing attention from youth researchers, professionals, and advocates in recent years. However, the experiences of transgender individuals and trans-related policies in schools have largely been absent from explorations of the STPP. To begin addressing this gap, this study explores the relationship between anti-trans experiences in school and adverse criminal-legal system outcomes among a sample of 138 Black/African American transgender women (ages 18–65).
Methods
Data were derived from a life course survey of transgender women in Atlanta and Chicago conducted between August 2014 and September 2017. Only participants who were Black/African American were included in the analytic sample (n = 138). Bivariate and logistic regression analyses were conducted to explore the relationship between education factors (high school/GED completion, anti-trans school victimization, anti-trans school expulsion/denial of enrollment, and denial of gender-appropriate facilities) and criminal-legal system factors (incarceration, anti-trans police mistreatment, and discomfort seeking police assistance). Analyses were conducted for both the full sample and youth subsample of 83 participants (age 30 or younger).
Results
Among the overall sample, logistic regression models revealed that anti-trans school expulsion/denial of enrollment was associated with a greater odds of anti-trans mistreatment by police (p = .026, OR = 5.091). Denial of gender-appropriate facilities in school was also associated with anti-trans mistreatment by police (p = .034, OR = 3.873). Among the youth subsample, anti-trans victimization in school was associated with a greater odds of incarceration (p = .021, OR = 3.717). Anti-trans school expulsion/denial of enrollment was also associated with a greater odds of incarceration (p = .046, OR = 9.460).
Conclusions
These associations suggest that anti-trans school experiences warrant consideration as factors in the school-to-prison pipeline. Future research that traces the pathways between anti-trans school environments and outcomes in the criminal-legal system would be valuable.
Policy Implications
Policy interventions that combat anti-trans school victimization and institutional discrimination may be critical to disrupting the STPP for Black/African American transgender women.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Albelda, R., Badgett, M. V. L., Schneebaum, A., & Gates, G. J. (2009). Poverty in the lesbian, gay, and bisexual community. Los Angeles: The Williams Institute.
Arum, R., & Beattie, I. R. (1999). High school experience and the risk of adult incarceration. Criminology, 37(3), 515–540.
Arum, R., & LaFree, G. (2008). Educational attainment, teacher-student ratios, and the risk of adult incarceration among U.S. birth cohorts since 1910. Sociology of Education, 81(4), 397–422.
Bachman, R., Randolph, A., & Brown, B. L. (2011). Predicting perceptions of fear at school and going to and from School for African American and White Students: the effects of school security measures. Youth & Society, 43(2), 705–726.
Bockting, W. O. (2014). The impact of stigma on transgender identity development and mental health. In B. P. C. Kreukels, T. D. Steensma, & A. L. C. de Vries (Eds.), Gender Dysphoria and disorders of sex development: progress in care and knowledge (pp. 319–330). New York: Springer.
Bockting, W., & Coleman, E. (2007). Developmental stages of the transgender coming out process: Toward an integrated identity. In R. Ettner, S. Monstrey, & E. Eylered (Eds.), Principles of transgender medicine and surgery (pp. 185–208). New York: The Haworth Press.
Bockting, W. O., Robinson, B. E., & Rosser, B. R. S. (1998). Transgender HIV prevention: a qualitative needs assessment. AIDS Care, 10(4), 505–525.
Bowleg, L. (2008). When black+ lesbian+ woman≠ black lesbian woman: the methodological challenges of qualitative and quantitative intersectionality research. Sex Roles, 59(5–6), 312–325.
Bradshaw, C. P., Mitchell, M. M., O’Brennan, L. M., & Leaf, P. J. (2010). Multilevel exploration of factors contributing to the overrepresentation of black students in office disciplinary referrals. Journal of Educational Psychology, 102(2), 508–520.
Burris, M. W. (2011). Mississippi and the school-to-prison pipeline. Widener Journal of Law, Economics, and Race, 3, 1–25.
Burdge, H., Hyemingway, Z. T., & Licona, A. C. (2014). Gender nonconforming youth: discipline disparities, school push-out, and the school-to-prison pipeline. In San Francisco, CA: Gay-straight Alliance network and Tucson. AZ: Crossroads Collaborative at the University of Arizona.
Carpenter, L. F., & Marshall, R. B. (2017). Walking while trans: profiling of transgender women by law enforcement, and the problem of proof. William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law, 24(1), 5–38.
Cavares, J. (2018). Straddling the school-to-prison pipeline and gender non-conforming microaggressions as a Latina lesbian. Journal of LGBT Youth, 15(1), 52–69.
Christensen, L. L., Fraynt, R. J., Neece, C. L., & Baker, B. L. (2012). Bullying adolescents with intellectual disability. Journal of Mental Health Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 5(1), 49–65.
Christle, C. A., Jolivette, K., & Nelson, C. M. (2005). Breaking the school to prison pipeline: identifying school risk and protective factors for youth delinquency. Exceptionality, 13(2), 69–88.
Conron, K. J., & Wilson, B. D. M. (Eds.). (2019). A research Agenda to reduce system involvement and promote positive outcomes with LGBTQ youth of color impacted by the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Los Angeles: The Williams Institute.
Crews, G. A., & Montgomery, R. H. (2001). Chasing shadows: confronting juvenile violence in America. Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall.
Day, J. K., Perez-Brumer, A., & Russell, S. T. (2018). Safe schools? Transgender youth’s school experiences and perceptions of school climate. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 47(8), 1731–1742.
Day, J. K., Snapp, S. D., & Russell, S. T. (2016). Supportive, not punitive, practices reduce homophobic bullying and improve school connectedness. Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, 3(4), 416–425.
DaCosta, K. (2006). Dress code blues: an exploration of urban students’ reactions to a public high school uniform policy. The Journal of Negro Education, 75(1), 49–59.
De Pedro, K. T., Shim-Pelayo, H., & Bishop, C. (2019). Exploring physical, nonphysical, and discrimination-based victimization among transgender youth in California public schools. International Journal of Bullying Prevention, 1(3), 218–226.
Edelman, E. A. (2014). Walking while transgender: necropolitical regulations of trans feminine bodies of colour in the nation’s capital. In J. Haritaworn, A. Kuntsman, & S. Posocco (Eds.), Queer Necropolitics (pp. 172–190). New York: Routledge.
Ehman, L. H. (1980). The American school in the political socialization process. Review of Educational Research, 50(1), 99–119.
Flanagan, C., Stoppa, T., Syversten, A. K., & Stout, M. (2010). Schools and social trust. In L. R. Sherrod, J. Torney-Purta, & C. A. Flanagan (Eds.), Handbook of research on civic engagement in youth (pp. 307–329). Hoboken: Wiley.
Flanagan, C. A., & Stout, M. (2010). Developmental patterns of social trust between early and late adolescence: age and school climate effects. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 20(3), 748–773.
Friedman, M., Grawert, A. C., & Cullen, J. (2017). Crime trends: 1990–2016. New York: Brennan Center for Justice.
Garofalo, R., Deleon, J., Osmer, E., Doll, M., & Harper, G. W. (2006). Overlooked, misunderstood, and at-risk: exploring the lives and HIV risk of ethnic minority male-to-female transgender youth. Journal of Adolescent Health, 38(3), 230–236.
Gilmore, S. E. (2016). Education and its discontents: the decriminalization of truancy and the school-to-prison pipeline in Texas. The Scholar: St. Mary’s Law Review on Race and Social Justice, 18(2), 229–240.
Glickman, D. J. (2016). Fashioning children: gender restrictive dress codes as an entry point for the trans* school to prison pipeline. Journal of Gender, Social Policy, and the Law, 24(2), 263–284.
Goldsmith, A. (2005). Police reform and the problem of trust. Theoretical Criminology, 9(4), 443–470.
Grant, J. M., Mottet, L., Tanis, J. E., Harrison, J., Herman, J., & Keisling, M. (2011). Injustice at every turn: a report of the national transgender discrimination survey. Washington, DC: National Center for Transgender Equality.
Greytak, E. A., Kosciw, J. G., & Boesen, M. J. (2013). Putting the “T” in “resource”: the benefits of LGBT-related school resources for transgender youth. Journal of LGBT Youth, 10(1–2), 45–63.
Hart, L. (2014). With inadequate protection under the law, transgender students fight to access restrooms in public schools based on their gender identity. Northern Kentucky Law Review, 41(2), 315–337.
Hill, B. J., Rosentel, K., Bak, T., Silverman, M., Crosby, R., Salazar, L., & Kipke, M. (2017). Exploring individual and structural factors associated with employment among young transgender women of color using a no-cost transgender legal resource center. Transgender Health, 2(1), 29–34.
Himmelstein, K. E., & Brückner, H. (2011). Criminal-justice and school sanctions against nonheterosexual youth: a national longitudinal study. Pediatrics, 127(1), 49–57.
Hirschfield, P. J. (2008). Preparing for prison? The criminalization of school discipline in the USA. Theoretical Criminology, 12(1), 79–101.
Hosmer, D. W., & Lemeshow, S. (2000). Applied logistic regression (Second ed.). New York: Wiley.
Hutchinson, E. (2010). Dimensions of Human Behavior: The Changing Life Course (4th Edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Hutzell, K. L., & Payne, A. A. (2012). The impact of bullying victimization on school avoidance. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, 10(4), 370–385.
Hyman, I. A., & Perone, D. C. (1998). The other side of school violence: educator policies and practices that may contribute to student misbehavior. Journal of School Psychology, 30(1), 7–29.
James, S. E., Herman, J. L., Rankin, S., Keisling, M., Mottet, L., & Anafi, M. (2016). The report of the 2015 U.S. transgender survey. Washington, DC: National Center for Transgender Equality.
Kosciw, J. G., Greytak, E. A., Zongrone, A. D., Clark, C. M., & Truong, N. L. (2018). The 2017 National School Climate Survey: the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth in our nation’s schools. New York: GLSEN.
Kowalski, R. M., & Limber, S. P. (2013). Psychological, physical, and academic correlates of cyberbullying and traditional bullying. Journal of Adolescent Health, 53(1 Suppl), S13–S20.
Lundberg, E., & Abdelzadeh, A. (2019). The role of school climate in explaining changes in social trust over time. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 63(5), 712–724.
Makkonen, T. (2002). Multiple, compound and intersectional discrimination: bringing the experiences of the most marginalized to the fore. Turku: Institute for Human Rights, Åbo Akademi University.
Mallett, C. A. (2017). The school-to-prison pipeline: disproportionate impact on vulnerable children and adolescents. Education and Urban Society, 49(6), 563–592.
McNeely, C. A., Nonnemaker, J., & Blum, R. W. (2002). Promoting student connectedness to school: evidence from the National Study of adolescent health. Journal of School Health, 72(4), 138–147.
Mickey, R. M., & Geenland, S. (1989). The impact of confounder selection criteria on effect simulation. American Journal of Epidemiology, 129(1), 125–137.
Mitchell, M. M., & Bradshaw, C. P. (2013). Examining classroom influences on student perceptions of school climate: The role of classroom management and exclusionary discipline strategies. Journal of School Psychology, 51(5), 599–610.
Mitchum, P., & Moodie-Mills, A. C. (2014). Beyond bullying: How hostile school climate perpetuates the school-to-prison pipeline for LGBT youth. Washington DC: Center for American Progress.
Mogul, J. L., Ritchie, A. J., & Whitlock, K. (2012). Queer (in)justice: the criminalization of LGBT people in the United States. Boston: Beacon Press.
Morrison, B. (2011). Restorative justice in schools. In E. Elliot & R. Gordon (Eds.), New directions in restorative justice (pp. 26–52). Abingdon: Routledge.
Morrison, B. (2007). Restoring safe school communities: a whole school response to bullying violence and alienation. Sydney: Federation Press.
Murchison, G. R., Agénor, M., Reisner, S. L., & Watson, R. J. (2019). School restroom and locker room restrictions and sexual assault risk among transgender youth. Pediatrics, 143(6), e20182902.
Musu, L., Zhang, A., Wang, K., Zhang, J., & Oudekerk, B. A. (2019). Indicators of school crime and safety: 2018 (NCES 2019-047/NCJ 252571). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, and Bureau of Justice Statistics, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice.
Nance, J. P. (2015). Over-disciplining students, racial bias, and the school-to-prison pipeline. University of Richmond Law Review, 50, 1063–1074.
Nguyen, N. (2015). Chokepoint: regulating US student mobility through biometrics. Political Geography, 46, 1–10.
New York Civil Liberties Union & the American Civil Liberties Union. (2007). Criminalizing the classroom: the over-policing of New York City schools. New York: New York Civil Liberties Union and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Office of the Surgeon General. (2001). Youth violence: a report of the surgeon general. Rockville: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Pettit, B., & Western, B. (2004). Mass imprisonment and the life course: race and class inequality in U.S. incarceration. American Sociological Review, 69(2), 151–169.
Peterson, R. L., & Skiba, R. (2001). Creating school climates that prevent school violence. The Social Studies, 92(4), 167–175.
Public Agenda. (2004). Teaching interrupted: do discipline policies in today’s public schools foster the common good? Brooklyn: Public Agenda and Common Good.
Pufall-Jones, E., Margolius, M., Rollock, M., Tang Yan, C., Cole, M. L., & Zaff, J. F. (2018). Disciplined and disconnected: How students experience exclusionary discipline in Minnesota and the promise of non-exclusionary alternatives. Boston: Center for Promise.
Randa, R., & Wilcox, P. (2010). School disorder, victimization, and general v. place-specific student avoidance. Journal of Criminal Justice, 38(5), 854–861.
Romero, L. S. (2018). The discipline gap: what’s trust got to do with it? Teachers College Record, 120(11), 1–30.
Russell, S. T., Toomey, R. B., Ryan, C., & Diaz, R. M. (2014). Being out at school: the implications for school victimization and young adult adjustment. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 84(6), 635–643.
Schumann, L., Craig, W., & Rosu, A. (2013). Minority in the majority: community ethnicity as a context for racial bullying and victimization. Journal of Community Psychology, 41(8), 959–972.
Servoss, T. J., & Finn, J. D. (2014). School security: for whom and with what results? Leadership and Policy in Schools, 13(1), 61–92.
Skiba, R. J. (2014). The failure of zero tolerance. Reclaiming Journal, 22(4), 27–33.
Skiba, R. J., Arredondo, M. I., & Williams, N. T. (2014). More than a metaphor: the contribution of exclusionary discipline to a school-to-prison pipeline. Equity & Excellence in Education, 47(4), 546–564.
Skiba, R. J., Michael, R. S., Nardo, A. C., & Peterson, R. L. (2002). The color of discipline: sources of racial and gender disproportionality in school punishment. The Urban Review, 34(4), 317–342.
Snapp, S. D., Hoenig, J. M., Fields, A., & Russell, S. T. (2015). Messy, butch, and queer: LGBTQ youth and the school-to-prison-pipeline. Journal of Adolescent Research, 30(1), 57–82.
Snapp, S. D., & Russell, S. T. (2016). Discipline disparities for LGBTQ youth: challenges that perpetuate disparities and strategies to overcome them. In Inequality in school discipline (pp. 207–223). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Snell, C., Bailey, C., Carona, A., & Mebane, D. (2002). School crime policy changes: the impact of recent highly-publicized school crimes. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 26(2), 269–285.
Spade, D. (2015). Normal life: administrative violence, critical trans politics, and the limits of law. Durham: Duke University Press.
Swahn, M. H., Bossarte, R. M., Palmier, J. B., & Van Dulmen, M. H. (2013). Psychosocial characteristics associated with frequent physical fighting: findings from the 2009 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Injury Prevention, 19(2), 143–146.
Tanner-Smith, E. E., & Fisher, B. W. (2016). Visible school security measures and student academic performance, attendance, and postsecondary aspirations. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 45(1), 195–210.
US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights. (2014). 2013–2014 civil right data collection. Washington, DC: US Department of Education.
US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights. (2018). 2015–2016 civil right data collection. Washington, DC: US Department of Education.
Van Maele, D., Forsyth, P. B., & Van Houtte, M. (2014). Trust and school life: the role of trust for learning, teaching, leading, and bridging. New York: Springer Science and Business Media.
Wald, J., & Losen, D. J. (2003). Defining and redirecting a school-to-prison pipeline. New Directions for Youth Development, 99, 9–15.
Wallace, J. M., Goodkind, S., Wallace, C. M., & Bachman, J. G. (2008). Racial, ethnic, and gender differences in school discipline among U.S. high school students: 1991-2005. The Negro Educational Review, 59(1–2), 47–62.
Weiler, S. C., & Cray, M. (2011). Police at school: a brief history and current status of school resource officers. The Clearing House, 84, 160–163.
Wilson, H. (2014). Turning off the school-to-prison pipeline. Reclaiming Children and Youth, 23(1), 49–53.
Wun, C. (2016). Against captivity: black girls and school discipline policies in the afterlife of slavery. Educational Policy, 30(1), 171–196.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Jhetari Carney, Evelyn Olansky, Jamal Jones, Nicole Pitts, Brian Dew, Darnell Motley, Alicia VandeVusse, Leonie Oostrom, Trevor Bak, Meghan Williams, and Jennifer Rowley for their support with this project. We also thank our community partners who assisted greatly with our recruitment efforts: Someone Cares of Atlanta, TILTT, LaGender, Juxtoposed Center for Transformation, Chicago House, Howard Brown Health, and Taskforce Prevention & Community Services.
Funding
Funding was provided by the third author’s Good Samaritan Endowment.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Ethical Approval
All procedures performed in this study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Institutional Review Boards of Georgia State University and University of Chicago and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Informed Consent
Informed consent was obtained from all participants.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rosentel, K., López-Martínez, I., Crosby, R.A. et al. Black Transgender Women and the School-to-Prison Pipeline: Exploring the Relationship Between Anti-trans Experiences in School and Adverse Criminal-Legal System Outcomes. Sex Res Soc Policy 18, 481–494 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-020-00473-7
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-020-00473-7