Defunding School Resource Officers: a New Commitment to Student Safety

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to outline the history of school-based policing, namely, the deployment of School Resource Officers (SROs), and examine the evidence of this program's impacts on school safety and on students in the USA. We offer a review of the literature documenting the costs and effects of SROs in US schools. More than two decades of research have not yielded evidence that police enhance school safety, but it has repeatedly been documented that embedding police in schools results in serious harms to minoritized students, especially those who are Black, disabled, LGBTQ, or low income. This review of the research makes clear that SROs have not delivered school safety and have caused considerable harm to marginalized students. It must therefore be a priority of the new administration to end schools' reliance on law enforcement to manage the students in their care and reinvest in the proven support that school-based social work affords to our youth.

Recommending Reform: A Critical Race and Critical Policy Analysis of Research Recommendations About School Resource Officers

“…Only four articles (5%) recommended ending SRO programs (Benitez et al, 2022; Layton & Addo, 2021; Turner & Beneke, 2020; Walker et al, 2022), far fewer than those recommending a general reduction in use. These recommendations referred to a vision of schools without SROs (Davis, 2003) and/or explicitly called for total removal of programs.…”

School Policing, Climate, and Safety: The Challenges for Local Policy Makers in Urban Districts

“…At the same time, institutes of higher education should play a more active role in making their school safety data and research-based programs and interventions accessible and relevant to local school districts and schools. School districts need local data as educational decisions become more complex (Layton & Addo, 2021; Strategies for Youth, 2019). School safety researchers create evidence-based programing that has a significant impact on safety, but they often find it difficult to implement these programs widely in schools.…”

“…(Cowen et al, 2021, para 3) In the wake of the killing of George Floyd in 2020, many urban school boards across the country, such as Oakland, Seattle, Portland, and Minneapolis, voted to cut their ties with local police departments. The death of George Floyd and widespread cries for racial justice were a catalyst for significant changes in school policing in cities and towns across the United States, with funding redirected to various efforts (Cowen et al, 2021;Layton & Addo, 2021). School-based policing has been a violence prevention strategy in many districts since desegregation and civil rights efforts in the 1950s and 1960s and has grown significantly with the establishment of the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program in 1994, which provided millions of dollars to fund school resource officers (SROs; U.S. Department of Justice, 2022).…”

“…Some urban district decision-makers appear to understand the strong negative impact that law enforcement can have on certain groups of students and the overall climate of the school, as evidenced by attempts to disentangle school districts from police forces (Layton & Addo, 2021;Lee, 2020). In communities across the United States, suspension and expulsion rates, referrals to law enforcement, and punitive discipline rates in schools are disproportionately and consistently higher for students of color and students with disabilities (Astor et al, 2021;King & Schindler, 2021; U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, 2014Rights, , 2018Rights, , 2021Zimmerman & Astor, 2021).…”