School exclusionary practices are routinely used in response to undesired behaviors in the school environment and have been shown to have resulted in unintentional or collateral consequences for youth, including increased risk of arrest, offending behavior, and incarceration. Little research has been done on how school exclusion impacts interaction with prosocial peers and involvement in prosocial opportunities. This study applies the labeling perspective’s knifing off concept to examine whether prosocial exposures and deviant peer associations mediate the relationship between school suspension, arrest, and offending behavior. Using data from the LONGSCAN study, we examined whether suspension led to changes in prosocial peer association and activity involvement, increases in deviant peer association, and ultimately arrest and offending behavior. Results provided support for the labeling perspective’s hypotheses, finding school suspension was indirectly associated with both arrest and offending behavior via decreases in prosocial exposures and increases in deviant peer associations. Findings suggest policy makers should consider alternatives to school suspension where possible to avoid collateral consequences like reductions in prosocial exposures and deviant peer associations and should consider applying restorative approaches following a suspension experience to reintegrate youth into prosocial communities.

学校排斥做法通常用于应对学校环境中的不良行为，并已证明会对青年造成无意或附带后果，包括增加被捕、犯罪行为和监禁的风险。关于学校排斥如何影响与亲社会同龄人的互动以及参与亲社会机会的研究很少。本研究应用标签视角的切入概念来检验亲社会暴露和越轨的同伴交往是否在停学、逮捕和违规行为之间起到中介作用。使用来自 LONGSCAN 研究的数据，我们检查了停学是否会导致亲社会同伴协会和活动参与的变化、异常同伴协会的增加以及最终逮捕和冒犯行为。结果为标签观点的假设提供了支持，发现学校停学通过亲社会暴露的减少和越轨同伴协会的增加与逮捕和冒犯行为间接相关。调查结果表明，政策制定者应在可能的情况下考虑停学的替代方案，以避免附带后果，例如减少亲社会接触和越轨的同伴协会，并应考虑在停学后采用恢复性方法使青年重新融入亲社会社区。