Despite having special education rights under federal law, currently or formerly incarcerated students rarely have access to the promised education or to legal counsel to assist with obtaining it. Without access to education or access to justice, older court-involved students with disabilities continue to be marginalized and experience the worst outcomes. Though complex, this problem is solvable.
It requires filling the data gap on older court-involved youth, focusing on post-incarceration, beyond the traditional idea of the “school-to-prison pipeline.” Instead, SJP focuses on disrupting the "deep end" of the school-to-prison pipeline that funnels older court-involved students with disabilities from the juvenile justice system directly into the criminal justice system.
