Data and Code for: The School to Prison Pipeline: Long-Run Impacts of School Suspensions on Adult Crime

Schools face important policy tradeoffs in monitoring and managing student
behavior. Strict discipline
policies may stigmatize suspended
students and expose them to the criminal justice system at a young age. But
strict discipline also acts as a deterrent which may limit harmful spillovers
of misbehavior onto other students. This paper estimates the net impact of attending
a school with a history of strict discipline on achievement, educational attainment
and adult criminal activity. Using exogenous variation in school assignment
caused by a large and sudden boundary change and a supplementary design based
on principal switches, we show that schools with
higher suspension rates have substantial negative long-run impacts. Students
assigned to a school that has a one standard deviation higher suspension rate
are 15 to 20 percent more likely to be arrested and incarcerated as adults. We
also find negative impacts on educational attainment. The negative impacts of attending a high suspension
school are largest for males and students of color.<br>