1. Many of the young men and women in the juvenile justice system never were in the pipeline to college. They were not derailed from the right track; they never got on it. 
  

2. Intervention is important in early childhood while the brain is still growing and behavioral patterns are being formed. A lot of a child’s future life story is written by the third or fourth grade. 
  

3. Many Black and Latino children are behind when they enter kindergarten. 
  

4. Mental health and emotional problems are a major gateway to the Prison Pipeline. When school, family or community resources aren’t there to help, these children are dumped into the juvenile justice system. 
  

5. Children who have not learned self-control by the age of eight are at high risk of delinquency and incarceration. Teachers know who they are, but there is no structure for getting help. These children are more likely to be suspended.  
  

6. Children know by about the third grade whether they are part of the mainstream or of another, more marginal world. Those who are routinely disciplined or struggle with schoolwork mentally drop out at this point. They actually leave school in the ninth grade, the major exit ramp from the path to college. The ninth grade is also the school year when many youth commit their first criminal offenses. 
  

7. The behavior teachers see as disruptive and disrespectful may be difficult to manage but knowing the children makes their behavior understandable and reveals other ways to work with them. 
  

8. Truancy—being out of school—is the number one predictor of delinquency. When teenagers drop out of school, they put themselves at the bottom of the economic ladder, probably for life, and are much more likely to be detained and incarcerated, especially if they hang out on risk saturated street corners. 
  

9. Zero tolerance school discipline policies don’t improve school achievement or teach a lesson to the offender; they contribute to the Pipeline to Prison by pushing students out of school. 
  

10. School systems are criminalizing school misbehavior, with police officers stationed at schools arresting students for behavior that used to be handled in the principal’s office. 
  

11. America’s deeply ingrained philosophy that just getting tough is the way to stop misbehavior rarely works, especially with children. The political pendulum swings from more to less punishment but the paradigm itself is worn out and a new one has not taken its place. 
  

12. Despite the image of super predators and dangerous hallways, most students suspended from school and most juveniles in detention did not commit violent offenses or put the safety of others at risk. 
  

13. Anger runs like a river through the stories of virtually all the children profiled and of many of their parents. 
  

14. Teenagers will seek respect wherever they can find it. 
  

15. Young people may be serviced and diagnosed but they also need real relationships, not just required ones. Thousands of children grow up without a single adult, apart from a mother or grandmother, taking a sustained interest in guiding them and sharing their joys and sorrows. 
  

16. The juvenile justice system is clogged with cases that don’t belong there. Judges and veteran public defenders say that perhaps 30 percent of cases that now are brought to court used to be resolved within families, neighborhoods or schools. 
  

17. Youth prisons don’t have to be abusive to be effective. Community- and family-based programs are more effective in changing a juvenile’s course. 
  

18. The deeper a youth gets into the Prison Pipeline, the harder it is to get out. Not only do they have fewer choices, they don’t see the choices that do exist. 
  

19. Even with sincere resolve to change and stay out of trouble, it is difficult to separate from an existing network and identity. Youth coming back from incarceration need a lot of support. 
  

20. Racial disproportion runs through every system—the children behind in kindergarten, those who are suspended and expelled, those who drop out and don’t graduate, and those who go to juvenile detention and adult prison. It is possible to identify decision points when disparate treatment takes place.