Criminality of Black youth in inner‐city schools: ‘moral panic’, moral imagination, and moral formation

Abstract

Schools provide a context or moral space for youth to develop their identity; however, with the racialized ideology, language and practices that promote Black youth criminality, criminalized schools become a racialized, classed, and gendered moral space that feeds into the school‐to‐prison pipeline. The criminalization of schools refers to a combination of reactive disciplinary policies, surveillance, metal detectors, unwarranted searching and lockdowns that reflect the contemporary criminal justice system within the school environment; the combination of policies send youth on a trajectory that leads to prison. The school‐to‐prison nexus intersects with class and race, targeting Latino, undocumented immigrants, and other populations. The purpose of this article is to explore the intersection between media representations of youth crime, school disciplinary policies, and adolescent moral formation in the context of schools where youth are criminalized. This study is guided by the following questions: In what ways does media's construction of youth crime perpetuate a moral panic that largely influences youth of color? How does this depiction of Black adolescents shape the collective imagination about the morality of Black adolescents and policies within public schools?

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