Every year, thousands of California’s young people fall into a well-documented trap: school struggles lead to suspensions, suspensions double the odds of arrest, and a single arrest dramatically cuts a young person’s chance of graduating high school or enrolling in college. Once incarcerated, the damage deepens. Dropping out of high school becomes more assured, employment prospects narrow, and the likelihood of adult criminal involvement increases sevenfold.
This school-to-incarceration pathway is one travelled at alarmingly high rates by Black, Latino, and American Indian youth. Fewer Chutes, More Ladders, a new report from Forward Change commissioned by the California Office of Youth and Community Restoration (OYCR), maps both sides of this equation: the predictable sequence of setbacks that push young people toward the juvenile legal system, and the 22 evidence-based programs and system reforms that have proven to help break the cycle. The research makes clear that these outcomes are not inevitable. They are the product of system failures we know how to fix.
The report identifies interventions that work across the full continuum, from early literacy and attendance programs that keep students engaged, to alternative discipline practices that reduce suspensions, to reentry supports that help young people returning from detention reconnect with school and community. What unites these approaches is a shift from punishment to investment, and from siloed responses to cross-agency coordination. For policymakers, agency leaders, and practitioners shaping how California and the nation serves its most vulnerable youth, this report offers both the evidence base and the practical roadmap to act.
Forward Change developed this report for the California Office of Youth and Community Restoration. The research draws on an extensive synthesis of the empirical literature and 70 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders across California’s juvenile justice and education systems. These interviews explored how issues identified in the research play out in California’s specific policy and practice landscape. The result is a comprehensive, state-of-the-art synthesis of what drives the school-to-incarceration pipeline and what works to disrupt it.