Do School-Based Juvenile Justice Referrals Harm Student Outcomes?

This study investigates who is referred to the juvenile justice system for school-based offenses and what academic and behavioral effects follow. Using linked administrative data from North Carolina between 2007 and 2010, the authors compare similarly situated students—those with the same offenses—who differ only in whether they received a juvenile complaint. The study finds that referrals significantly reduce student achievement (by over 0.05 standard deviations in reading and math), increase absenteeism (by 2.6 days), and raise the likelihood of future juvenile complaints. Black, female, and economically disadvantaged students are more likely to be referred for the same infractions.

Full Citation and Link to Article

Lucy C. Sorensen, Andrea M. Headley, and Stephen B. Holt. “On the Margin: Who Receives a Juvenile Referral in School and What Effect Does It Have?” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 2025, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.70009

Extended Summary

Central Research Question

This study addresses a critical but understudied question in education and juvenile justice policy: Who gets referred to the juvenile justice system for school-based disciplinary incidents, and what are the causal effects of such referrals on students’ academic and behavioral outcomes? Specifically, the authors seek to understand the extent of discretionary decision-making in school-based referrals to the juvenile justice system and whether these referrals causally influence student outcomes like achievement, absenteeism, and future disciplinary involvement.

Previous Literature

The study builds on the growing literature on the “school-to-prison pipeline,” a term that describes how disciplinary practices in schools—especially punitive measures like suspensions and expulsions—can increase the likelihood of students becoming involved in the criminal justice system. Prior research has found strong associations between exclusionary school discipline and adverse academic and criminal justice outcomes. However, relatively little attention has been paid to referrals to the juvenile justice system as a distinct mechanism, separate from suspensions and expulsions. The few studies that do consider juvenile referrals typically rely on correlational data and cannot disentangle the effects of the referral from those of the underlying behavior or contextual factors.

Existing work highlights significant racial disparities in school discipline. Black students, in particular, are more likely to be suspended, expelled, or referred to law enforcement than White peers, even for similar infractions. These disparities persist after controlling for student behavior and other characteristics. Yet, a gap remains in understanding how these patterns translate into juvenile justice involvement and how they affect students’ educational trajectories.

Data

The researchers use a rich administrative dataset that links individual student-level school discipline records with juvenile justice complaint and court records from North Carolina between 2007 and 2010. The education data come from the North Carolina Education Research Data Center and include detailed information on disciplinary infractions, school characteristics, and student demographics. Juvenile justice data were obtained from the North Carolina Department of Public Safety and contain complaint-level records, including outcomes like diversion, dismissal, or adjudication.

The study focuses on students in grades 3 through 10 who received at least one disciplinary citation during the study period. The final analytic sample includes over 1.57 million disciplinary incidents involving approximately 348,000 students across more than 2,600 schools. The authors identify whether each incident was referred to the juvenile justice system and construct outcome variables such as academic test scores, absences, and future disciplinary involvement.

Methods

The study employs a quasi-experimental design that compares students who received a juvenile complaint for a given school-based offense to students who committed the same type of offense but were only disciplined within the school. The analysis controls for prior academic achievement, past disciplinary history, and other observable student characteristics. Several modeling strategies are used to improve causal identification:

1. Baseline regression models include offense type fixed effects and control variables to estimate average treatment effects of juvenile justice referral.

2. School-grade-year fixed effects models compare students within the same school, grade, and year to account for institutional factors.

3. Student fixed effects models use within-student variation across years, comparing the same student in years with and without juvenile complaints.

4. Incident fixed effects models compare students involved in the same disciplinary incident but receiving different disciplinary consequences.

To isolate the discretionary nature of referrals, the authors construct two key measures:

• School propensity to report incidents to the police

• Police agency propensity to refer cases to juvenile court

These propensities are estimated using empirical Bayes shrinkage methods, which separate organizational behavior from contextual offense severity. The study also includes a falsification test using prior-year outcomes to check for reverse causality and examines effects separately for subjective offenses like “disorderly conduct” and for more serious offenses.

Findings/Size Effects

The study yields several major findings.

1. Disparities in Referral Likelihood: Even after controlling for offense type and disciplinary history, female, Black, and economically disadvantaged students are significantly more likely to be referred to juvenile justice. For example, Black students are 7.1% more likely than White peers to be referred for the same offense, and students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds are 12.3% more likely. The disparity is particularly large for subjective infractions like disorderly conduct.

2. Academic Achievement Effects: Students who are referred to the juvenile justice system experience significant reductions in academic performance. On average, these students score 0.054 standard deviations lower in reading and 0.056 standard deviations lower in math than similar peers who were disciplined within the school. These effects represent 13% to 21% of a full year’s learning in reading and 12% to 18% in math.

3. Attendance Effects: Juvenile referrals increase absenteeism by 2.6 days per school year on average. These absences are a meaningful signal of school disengagement and may also reduce learning time, compounding the academic losses.

4. Future Disciplinary Outcomes: Students who receive a juvenile complaint are much more likely to be involved in future juvenile justice actions, with 0.09 additional complaints on average. The effect on future school-based offenses is mixed—some models show a reduction, possibly due to increased absences, while others do not find significant deterrence. Notably, referrals do not consistently reduce future suspensions.

5. Heterogeneity by Offense Type: When the analysis is restricted to subjective, minor offenses like disorderly conduct, the negative effects on academic and behavioral outcomes are slightly larger. For serious “reportable offenses,” the effects are smaller and less consistently significant. This suggests that discretionary referrals for ambiguous offenses may be particularly harmful.

6. Role of Discretion: The likelihood of juvenile complaint is significantly affected by school- and police-level propensities, independent of student behavior. For example, students in schools with high referral propensities and jurisdictions with aggressive police referral patterns are over twice as likely to receive a complaint as those in more lenient environments.

7. Robustness and Falsification: Falsification tests reveal no systematic relationship between prior-year outcomes and current-year referrals, bolstering confidence that observed effects are not due to unmeasured selection. Additional robustness checks show similar findings across model specifications.

Conclusion

This study provides compelling evidence that school-based referrals to the juvenile justice system have substantial negative consequences for students’ academic and behavioral outcomes, even when compared to similarly situated peers who receive only in-school discipline. These effects are concentrated among students referred for minor or subjective infractions and among students from historically marginalized backgrounds. The findings highlight the significant role that discretionary decision-making by school personnel and police officers plays in shaping students’ educational trajectories.

The results suggest that even a single juvenile referral can lead to lower academic performance, increased school disengagement, and greater likelihood of future justice system involvement. These consequences contribute to persistent educational and racial inequalities. Given the scale and severity of these impacts, the authors argue that policymakers and school leaders should revisit disciplinary practices and adopt reforms that reduce reliance on juvenile justice referrals, particularly for non-violent or subjective offenses. Interventions focused on restorative practices, bias training, and limiting police presence in schools may help to break the cycle of marginalization and justice system involvement for vulnerable youth.