During the past 10 years there has been serious interest on the part of scholars, policy makers, non-profits, state officials, and community members as to the relationship between schools and prisons in the United States. This talk explores the micro-processes by which public education as a state structure, functions and operates within the parameters of the prison system. The discussion will address the current school to prison pipeline literature/analysis and push for a more complex understanding of the relationship between schools and prisons in Southern California. Through ethnographic narratives and policy analysis I posit that rather than a pipeline, public education is an ideological and pragmatic extension of the organizational logic of the prison.
