Reducing behavioral infractions through school disciplinary policy has been a major research and policy priority in the U.S. within the last two decades. Much of the best available research seeks to identify the impact of a policy change on behavior, holding constant other conditions. However, nothing is held constant in practice, and generating policy without considering how a broader dynamic system of mechanisms is impacted can lead to unintended consequences. Applied theory can help us explore these considerations and foresee such consequences.

I present a theoretical model that is based on salient mechanisms in relevant empirical literatures. With this model I explore how the consequences of disciplinary policy for the dynamics of behavioral infractions depend on certain interrelationships between these mechanisms (punitive vs positive discipline, peer effects, deterrence, attitude transferrence, attitude towards authority and self concept, etc.) that are usually studied separately and statically (not over time) in the literature. As we will see, in a dynamic setting, these mechanisms can lead to tradeoffs, tipping points, and phase transitions that could help explain the policy resistance and mixed results of school disciplinary practices. They can also illuminate conditions under which appropriate policy changes can lead to disproportiontely large changes in the school disciplinary climate. An in-depth bifurcation analysis reveals that these counter-intuitive dynamics are more likely to be present in predominately African-American schools.