Suspensions and Referrals to Law Enforcement of African American Students Pre and Post Restorative Justice

The purpose of this study was to compare the number of suspensions and referrals to law enforcement from traditional consequences administered to students in a large urban school district in southeastern United States for the school year 2013 to 2014 to the number of suspensions and referrals to law enforcement from consequences rendered after the implementation of restorative justice practices in the 2015 to 2016 school year, as reported to the Civil Rights Office of Data Collection (CRDC, 2016). There was statistical evidence that schools had policies and/or practices in place that had a discriminatory bias towards racial groups when school discipline was administered (USDOE, 2016). Restorative justice processes worked to guide the conduct of individuals issuing the discipline and those needing to be disciplined (Rawls, 1971). Crosstabulations were used to determine if there were differences in students\u27 behaviors in a large urban school district, categorized by race, gender, and socioeconomics for those who received traditional discipline practices in 2013-2014 compared to those who received discipline during the implementation of restorative justice practices in 2015-2016. A decrease in discipline infractions was the standard used to define a successful outcome for this alternative discipline. Restorative justice allowed discipline to be proactive when implemented with fidelity (Adler, 2011). Findings in this large urban school district, suggested that African American students continued to receive discipline infractions at a disproportionate rate after the implementation of restorative justice. Utilization of this alternative discipline proved to be successful in decreasing the number of single and multiple out-of-school suspensions and referrals to law enforcement