Girls of color face harsher school discipline than white peers, study finds

Girls of color are disproportionately impacted by school discipline policies and excluded from current efforts to address the school-to-prison pipeline, according to a new report authored by UCLA School of Law Professors Kimberlé Crenshaw and Jyoti Nanda, along with UCLA Law alumna Priscilla Ocen, a professor at Loyola Law School.

The report, "Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced, and Underprotected," is based on a review of national data and personal interviews with young women, and makes recommendations for policies and interventions that address the challenges facing girls of color.  

The report was developed out of a critical dialogue about the various ways that women and girls of color are channeled into pathways that lead to underachievement and criminalization. The dialogue began at a 2012 UCLA School of Law symposium, "Overpoliced and Underprotected: Women, Race, and Criminalization," which brought together formerly incarcerated women, researchers, lawyers and advocates to investigate patterns of surveillance, criminal supervision and incarceration among women and girls of color.

"Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced, and Underprotected" was released by the African American Policy Forum and the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies at Columbia Law School.

Other UCLA researchers working for the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles have found racial disparities in the way school suspensions are done.

Read more about the report, "Black Girls Matter," here.