A Downward Spiral? Childhood Suspension and the Path to Juvenile Arrest

Abstract

There is growing concern that suspensions trigger a ‘‘downward spiral,’’ redirecting children’s trajectories away from school success and toward police contact. The current study tests this possibility, analyzing whether and in what ways childhood suspensions increase children’s risk for juvenile arrests. Combining 15 years of data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study with contextual information on neighborhoods and schools, I find that suspensions disproportionately affect children already enduring considerable adversity. Even so, suspensions appear to redirect children’s trajectories, more than doubling their risk of arrest. Although suspended children experienced greater escalations in behavioral problems than their peers, post-suspension behavioral changes explained relatively little of the association between early suspension and later arrest. Instead, the most consequential way suspended children diverged from their peers was their heightened risk for repeated school sanction. Suspended children’s risk for repeated school removal explained 52 percent of the association between childhood suspension and juvenile arrest.