Crime and punishment: the role of student body characteristics in schools’ disciplinary behaviours

Abstract

ABSTRACTDiscretion in schools’ discipline choices can provide an efficient and effective misconduct management structure, but could lead to discipline based on unrelated factors. Consequently, schools’ disciplinary decisions can significantly limit students’ access to education by removing students from familiar learning environments. We investigate schools’ disciplinary decisions for serious misconducts and show that punishments are more severe in schools that do not report misconducts to local law enforcement agencies. Moreover, we show that schools that report fewer misconducts to law enforcement impose more severe punishments when the student body is characterized as having a higher proportion of minority students, lower socioeconomic status students and a higher proportion of students who are below the 15th percentile of standardized test scores. These results suggest that between-school punishment differentials are associated with student body traits.