Introduction

The conversation on the school-to-prison pipeline among boys of color is complex and involves understanding how the 4 C’s— classroom, cops, courts, and community— interface to create a pipeline. However, what has been underconceptualized is whether and how notions of masculinity and boyhood that emerge within these institutions may operate as an invisible connective tissue across these institutions. In other words, the manner in which the bodies of Black and Latino males are viewed, interacted with, and treated within these institutions provides a rationalizing frame for how the actions within institutions occur. In this special issue, we theorize that, to understand the ways in which the school-to-prison pipeline operates for boys of color, there needs to be theoretical exploration through empirical work of what notions of masculinity are promoted and detracted within these institutions during boyhood. This interdisciplinary special issue of Boyhood Studies provides a conceptual exploration of how male bodies of color are constructed within and across these institutions, e.g., suspensions (schools), arrests (police), sentencing (courts), and violence (communities) in order to establish the pipeline as concretized through “normative” or oppressive notions of masculinity and boyhood.