This chapter tells the story of how and why one student who received a ticket for being late to school joined the fight against policies that criminalize students in Los Angeles Unified School District.

CADRE, an organization led by Maisie Chin, is a Human Right to Education Campaign. Between 2005 and 2013, CADRE played a lead role in using grassroots organizing and leadership development to create a seismic shift in public policy, debate, and narrative around school discipline, racial disparities, parents' roles, school climate, and closing the…

Social scientists are generally in agreement that spanking is not an especially effective method of discipline and is associated with a variety of behavioral and mental health problems in children. Interventions that have focused on disseminating this empirical research have met with some success in changing pro-spanking attitudes. However, given…

A California high school develops a Student Justice Panel to hear student concerns about violations of the student code, providing students with a way to not just have a voice but to effect change in how students are disciplined. Restorative justice gives students a feeling of fairness and responsibility for appropriate behavior. Restorative…

Nelson Mandela's adage, "I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends" captures the profoundly inclusive nature of restorative justice (RJ). The hallmark of RJ is intentionally bringing together people with seemingly diametrically opposed viewpoints--particularly people who have harmed with people who have been harmed--in a carefully…

Supposedly designed to improve student attendance, the aggressive truancy policing in Los Angeles (LA) has discouraged students from going to class and often pushes them to drop out and into harm's way. Truancy tickets play a role in the school-to-prison pipeline. Students are being brought up in an environment that is a pre-prisoning of youth. LA…