Black females represent the fastest growing segment of the
juvenile justice population. Black females also experienced the
most dramatic rise in middle school suspension rates in recent
years. Six-year old girls have been arrested in Georgia and
Florida for having a tantrum in class. A 13-year old girl near
Chicago was charged with a felony theft offense after finding
her teacher’s glasses and seeking to return them to her, and a
Los Angeles high school girl was slammed to the floor of her
school and arrested after dropping a piece of cake on the floor.
From these and other incidents in recent years, it has become
increasingly clear that punitive disciplinary practices and
other criminalizing policies that fuel what we understand as a
“school to prison pipeline” impact the girls as well as the
boys. However, a deeper look reveals that perhaps the “pipeline”
analogy is too linear a framework to capture the education-
system pathways to incarceration for black girls. In discussions
with young women who have drop