Police—Schools Liaison and young people's image of the police: An intervention evaluation

Abstract

This paper evaluates the impact of Police-Schools Liaison on young people's views and attitudes about the police and offending. It reports the first, large-scale, independent evaluation of this social intervention. The evaluation (based on 1245 secondary-school pupils) compares views of the police in schools with (target) and without (control) a full-time Schools Liaison Officer (SLO). Although attitudes to the police are marginally positive, they become less so over one year. There is no evidence that Schools Liaison input into the target schools slows or halts this decline, or that it affects perceptions of the seriousness of offences, and the likelihood of identification associated with crime. This weak impact is, at least in part, attributable to the low reported rates of direct contact, and the judged atypicality of the SLO. Target-school pupils judged their SLO positively, but as distinct from the 'police in general'. Their view of the SLO had a direct impact on their liking of the police in general, but there was no effect for contact. We conclude that Police-Schools Liaison has only limited positive effects, as predicted from critiques of the traditional 'contact hypothesis'.

Betwixt and between: the perceived legitimacy of campus police

“…Eleven independent variables were chosen based on prior literature from municipal/state police, campus police, as well as CP interviews, in order to identify significant perceived legitimacy levels (Bordner & Peterson, 1983;Garcia & Cao, 2005;Griffith et al, 2004;Hopkins et al, 1992;Hurst, Browning, & Browning, 2000;Miller & Pan, 1987;Murphy & Worrall, 1999;Reisig and Giacomazzi, 1999;Reisig & Parks, 2000;Sloan, 1992;Weitzer & Tuch, 1997;White and Menke, 1982;Worrall, 1999;Zamble & Annesley, 1987). These 11 independent variables were: 1) Does the respondent live on campus; 2) Is the respondent a fraternity or sorority member; 3) Is a member of the respondent's family a police officer; 4) Respondent's home city (urban/rural); 5) Respondent's race/ethnicity; 6) If the respondent had contact with a by a police officer (campus or municipal) was the contact negative (perceived as treated unfairly); 7) If the respondent new someone who had contact with the police (campus or municipal) was the contact negative positive (perceived as treated unfairly); 8)…”

“…The original Hopkins et al (1992) study incorporated eight adjectives (four positive and four negative) on a 1-7 point Likert scale to determine levels of positive and negative stereotyping of SLOs. Hopkins et al (1992) explained that the adjective scale was also used to identify students' perceptions of police in general. Consequently, the adjective scale is more than just a measurement of stereotyping.…”

“…The scale that was used for this study is a modified scale of Hopkins et al (1992) and Jackson (2002) that was used to identify student stereotyping of police officers that are assigned to public schools i.e. student resource officers (SROs) and SLOs.…”

“…Consequently, race/ethnicity was re-coded into 0- Lastly, an adjective scale was included in the regression model. The original scale was developed by Hewston et al (1992) and used to identify student stereotype perceptions of School Liaison Officers (SLO). As discussed in the methods section of this project, the adjective scale was based on four positive and four negative adjectives and respondents were asked to identify his or her levels (seven point Likert scale) of each adjective based on his or her perception of SLOs.…”

“…An adjective scale developed by Hopkins et al (1992) was used to identify student stereotyping of SLOs at 13 public schools. The original Hopkins et al (1992) study incorporated eight adjectives (four positive and four negative) on a 1-7 point Likert scale to determine levels of positive and negative stereotyping of SLOs.…”