Mark Warren is a professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston and the author of “Willful Defiance: The Movement to Dismantle the School to Prison Pipeline.” That work netted Warren the 2025 Grawemeyer Award in education from the University of Louisville. He spoke with LPM’s Bill Burton about his work.
Bill Burton: Your book focuses on the work of building grassroots movement to end racially disproportionate school discipline policy and policing practices throughout the country, and you started with efforts that were being made in Holmes County, Mississippi. Why there?
Mark Warren: I tried to trace back, you know, where were the first people, the first communities, to identify something called the school to prison pipeline and challenge it. And that's, to me, that's the origins of the modern day movement. I mean, we can talk about historical racial justice movements and civil rights movements, but, you know, in the 90s, there was a shift, and I think people are aware, pretty well aware of mass incarceration. But along with mass incarceration and communities came what we call the school to prison pipeline in schools, and it was a set of policies and practices that started to suspend and expel students, particularly black and brown students and low income students, at very high rates for very minor behavioral issues, and also it led to the large scale positioning of police in schools and a set of practices like airport metal detectors and cages and a kind of prison like atmosphere in our schools.
BB: So you saw where it began in Mississippi, you've also highlighted where it's worked. In major cities like Los Angeles and Chicago, there's a national organization now as well. When you look closely at this, does it work better on a community by community basis, or is the national version something that is workable and sustainable?
MW: Well, what I found was that there's really kind of a symbiotic relationship between the local and the national organizing. So, you know, I think too many times we end up with national civil rights groups or advocacy groups based in Washington that solely focus on advocating at that level. This movement was multi level. It was organizing a lot locally, because in in many ways, public education is still primarily a local issue. However, what happens at the federal level also matters too. And so there was a campaign to get the Department of Education, this is back in 2012, 2013 to take up this issue. And it finally, through lots of level organizing and advocacy work, got the department education to issue a statement warned that declaring that there is such a thing as a school to prison pipeline, that it's racially discriminatory, that it's pushing children out of school and into the criminal justice system. They're not in school and learning. They're out in the street, interacting with police and then into the criminal justice system, and warning schools and offering support for trying to develop alternatives like restorative justice.
BB: What changes have you seen, whether it's where it began, in Holmes County, Mississippi, or in Chicago or LA, that show that things are slowly beginning to change, that this process is working well?
MW: So I think the the biggest changes over, you know, kind of a 10 year period of time from, let's say 2010 to the early 2020s, was the change in policy to start to remove suspensions and expulsions, what we call zero tolerance. So we saw in locality, out locality, and state after state, we saw policies being changed to reduce that, what we call exclusionary discipline, and try to implement restorative justice or Positive Behavior Interventions and Support. And we have, in fact, seen the suspension rates go down across the country, in general and in particular in places like Los Angeles, where there has been a lot of strong organizing.
BB: That's Mark Warren, the author of "Willful Defiance: The Movement to Dismantle the School to Prison Pipeline." Mark, thanks for your time, and congratulations on winning the Grawemeyer Award for education.
MW: All right. Well, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
This transcript was edited for clarity.
