Why and When Do School Resource Officers Engage in School Discipline? The Role of Context in Shaping Disciplinary Involvement

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

“…And then like, he’ll like just like make you feel—he’ll make people that are sitting at the front feel like better” (SGI participant). Whereas we discuss nuance to SROs’ roles in discipline in work elsewhere (Curran et al, 2019), our finding that the frequency or even quality of interactions with SROs was not predictive of differential reports of disciplinary consequences is consistent with the participating students’ descriptions of formal discipline not being a salient part of SROs’ activities. It seems then, in this context, the SROs generally avoided adopting a criminalization approach, and, in some cases, acted in ways that were consistent with the support model—though not so much so as to be predictive of lower disciplinary consequences.…”

“…Prior qualitative work has found SROs commonly engage in rule enforcement and take on active roles in formal discipline (Curran et al, 2019; Kupchik, 2010; Mukherjee, 2007; Nolan, 2011). That our SGI participants reported observing little of these types of activities suggests that the types of interactions within our sample schools may differ meaningfully from those in other contexts.…”

“…As a part of their established relationship with the school systems, the SROs are prohibited by policy from engaging in school discipline. We describe elsewhere (Curran et al, 2019) that there is nuance in how this policy is interpreted and implemented, but this is a noteworthy factor given that nearly two thirds of schools with SROs nationwide lack written agreements with law enforcement agencies specifying the role of SROs in discipline (Correa & Diliberti, 2020). The setting of this study may thus provide a test of outcomes associated with SROs under a “best-case” scenario—one in which the stakeholders view SROs as a safety mechanism rather than disciplinarians, attempting to mitigate potential increases in student discipline through explicit policy.…”

Effects of school resource officers on school crime and responses to school crime

“…Fewer than half of these schools have a formal policy defining the role of officers in maintaining school discipline (NCES, 2020). Further, a recent study documented that although most SROs stated that disciplining students is not part of their job description, and although they were not formally involved in writing disciplinary referrals or in determining disciplinary outcomes, most were in fact involved in disciplining students in less formal ways (Curran, Fisher, Viano, & Kupchik, 2019). It is hard to imagine how the ubiquitous presence of police with unregulated involvement in maintaining student discipline would not result in increased criminalization of student behavior.…”

Kindergarten Cop: A Case Study of How a Coalition Between School Districts and Law Enforcement Led to School Resource Officers in Elementary Schools

“…These divisions reflected differences across schools, with disagreements among SROs and among school officials, as we also heard from principals who preferred the SRO was not involved in student discipline (see Curran et al, 2019, for more details).…”