The correlation between students who are removed (suspended or expelled) from school and those who end up in prison at some point in their lives. Students who are removed from school, either temporarily or forever, also drop out of high school at much higher rates than students who are never removed from a classroom setting. People who fall outside this fringe group of perceived misfits may wonder why the school-to-prison pipeline should matter to them.

Outside of caring about the quality of life for other individuals, which is something that is not teachable, the school-to-prison pipeline matters in more tangible ways. Each federal prisoner costs taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars. What isn’t measurable is the indirect impact those incarcerations have on the economy because these prisoners are not contributing to the workforce. Sure, we may pay the salary of prison employees or the CEOs of large prison privatization corporations, but we are missing out on the positive impact these prisoners could have on our economy.