Education's prisoners: A critical ethnographic study of the relationship among schooling, the political economy, and the prison industrial complex

Fieldwork using the methodology of critical ethnography was conducted at juvenile court and detention center. The dissertation sheds light on the complicated relationship among the educational system, the political economy, and the prison industrial system in the United States. Working within the tradition of Critical Theory, the research posits a more than accidental connection among these phenomena. The life stories of the participants and their perspectives on their social circumstances provide a tool for deepening and questioning our understandings of these matters. In addition to its substantive findings, this dissertation allows us to see in human terms how structures and forces in society contribute to the outcomes, of school failure and incarceration that have been measured in percentages and correlations. The dissertation suggests ways of improving classroom experiences and improving the life chances of young people.; Among the findings of the study are that resistance and reproduction theories continue to be relevant in explaining school failure but may have been overstated in some earlier studies, that many of the young men are drawn towards negative behaviors, particularly as directed towards women, resulting from their efforts to be accepted by their male peer group, that the young people in the study desire an approach to teaching and learning that helps them to reflect on and work to improve the conditions in their communities, that they desire teachers who will relate to them and care for them on a personal level, that police harassment of the young people in the study was widespread and may actually push them towards criminal activities.; Ultimately, having mapped out the complex nature of the forces that contribute to educational failure and correlated incarceration, the dissertation identifies a long-term strategy for improving, and in fact saving, the lives of young people living on the economic margins of U.S. society.