School Discipline as a Turning Point: The Cumulative Effect of Suspension on Arrest

Objectives: To examine how school discipline may serve as a negative turning point for youth and contribute to increased odds of arrest over time and to assess whether suspensions received across multiple years may present a “cumulative” increase in odds of arrest. Methods: Using four waves of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we use a longitudinal hierarchical generalized linear model (HGLM) to explore how school suspensions contribute to odds of arrest across time while controlling for a number of theoretically important dimensions such as race, age, delinquency, and gender among others. Results: Results show that youth who are suspended are at an increased risk of experiencing an arrest across time relative to youth who are not suspended and that this effect increases across time. Further, with each subsequent year the youth is suspended, there is a significant increase in odds of arrest. Conclusion: Supporting prior work, we find that youth who receive a suspension are at an increased odds of contact with the criminal justice system, and increases in the number of suspensions received contribute to significant increases in odds of arrest. Findings demonstrate that suspensions present a form of cumulative effect over time.