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Unintended Consequences: The Impact of "Zero Tolerance"

First page of PDF with filename: kentucky.pdf
  • Date
  • February 2003

A series of events in the mid-1990s brought unprecedented attention to youth crime in the United States, particularly Kentucky. Like other states, Kentucky adopted "zero tolerance" and other exclusionary policies in their public schools. These changes in law and policy have had significant consequences, some of them unintended, for Kentucky's children.

This study focuses on three questions:

  1. What is the scope of the juvenile crime problem in Kentucky's public schools?
  2. How have Kentucky's public schools reacted?
  3. Have any particular groups been disproportionately affected by the adoption of new school discipline policies?

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