School pupils' perceptions of the police that visit schools: Not all police are ‘pigs’

Abstract

This paper presents data concerning young people's perceptions of the police taking part in a police-schools liaison programme. Eighty-one 14-year-old school pupils took part in 28 semi-structured group discussions concerning their perceptions of the 'typicality' of police officers working in their schools. Pupils clearly differentiated between these and those 'on the street'. Central to this differentiation was the issue of police power; the perceived atypicality of the police in schools was intimately bound up with pupils' perceptions of the qualitatively different social relations that obtain between young people and the police 'in the school' and 'on the street'. The implications of these data for the literatures concerning the 'contact hypothesis' and police-schools liaison are discussed.

Cognitive models of stereotype change: (1). Generalization and subtyping in young people's views of the police

“…However the explanations provided by pupils of their sorting strategies seem to indicate that a more complex interpretation is required. The detailed interviews that accompanied our research (Hopkins, 1991) also tend to reject the familiarity-liking effect; adolescents do have considerable contacts with these other authority figures (especially police officers) in their normal, out-of-school lives.…”

Understanding and assessing school police officers: A conceptual and methodological comment

“…As to studies conducted outside of the United States, researchers in the United Kingdom studied the effects of a police-schools liaison program and found that the students perceptually differentiated between the SLOs and the police in general and that the SLOs were viewed more favorably than the police in general (Hopkins, Hewstone, and Hantzi, 1992, p. 212). Their data, however, also indicated that students attending schools in which SLOs had been assigned developed more negative views toward the police than did students attending schools in which SLOs were not present (Hopkins et al, 1992; also see Hopkins, 1994).…”

School resource officers and the criminalization of student behavior

“…There also was literature discussing the development of collaborative partnerships between school and law enforcement personnel (e.g., May, Fessel, & Means, 2004;Patterson, 2007) as well as students' attitudes about school police officers (Hopkins, 1994;Hopkins, Hewstone, & Hantzi, 1992;Jackson, 2002). Though such research, commentaries, and process evaluations are essential for understanding school resource officers, they rarely discussed the notion of criminalization or provided data about arrests made at school.…”