Vera Institute of Justice

Overview

Vera Institute of Justice President and Director Michael Jacobson submitted written testimony to a hearing titled “Ending the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” held on December 12, 2012 by the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, chaired by Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois. Jacobson discusses the existing literature showing that zero-tolerance school discipline policies and the negative outcomes they engender by criminalizing even minor disciplinary infractions disproportionately affect minority students. And he describes research Vera launched in January 2012 to examine the connection between school disciplinary policies—in particular, those that approximate a zero-tolerance approach—and crime and delinquency outcomes among youth exposed to them.