Do Interactions With School Resource Officers Predict Students’ Likelihood of Being Disciplined and Feelings of Safety? Mixed-Methods Evidence From Two School Districts

Abstract

School resource officers (SROs) are common in schools, yet consequences of their presence are poorly understood. This study leveraged mixed-methods data from student surveys and group interviews across 25 schools to examine how the frequency of interactions and trust/comfort between students and SROs relate to disciplinary outcomes and feelings of safety. We found no evidence that, in this context, more frequent interactions or differing trust/comfort with SROs increased disciplinary consequences, perhaps because, as students report, SROs tended to not engage in formal discipline. We found that, although SROs were seen as increasing safety, interactions with SROs may have heightened students’ sense of danger, potentially mitigating any benefit to students’ overall feelings of safety. Implications for use of SROs are discussed.

Making Schools Safer and/or Escalating Disciplinary Response: A Study of Police Officers in North Carolina Schools

“…As schools increasingly transition from the punitive disciplinary model to more preventive and restorative approaches to discipline (Osher et al, 2010;Valdebenito et al, 2019), future research should explore whether the current training and day-to-day practices of SROs still fit these approaches. Such research could track in finer detail the daily interactions between SROs and their students and administrators (such as Curran et al, 2021) to identify specific helpful and/or harmful practices, with special attention to the connection between school safety and school discipline. Of course, this form of rigorous review and evaluation requires data not currently in existence.…”

Cops on Campus: The Racial Patterning of Police in Schools

“…Scholars have begun to note the importance of examining school policing beyond a binary measure of presence. For instance, Curran et al (2021) theorized that the effects of school policing depend on "whether an SRO is present . .…”

From School Halls to Shopping Malls: Multilevel Predictors of Police Contact In and Out of School

“…If officers more frequently respond in disorderly environments, for example to break up fights or remove disruptive students from classrooms, then the likelihood that students in these schools will experience police contact should increase. While calling on officers might be a quick solution, such criminalizing practices can erode students’ perceptions of legitimacy (for a review, see Hirschfield and Celinska 2011) and increase views of disorder (Curran et al 2021; Mayer and Leone 1999), thereby contributing to the problem.…”