Reproducing Social Inequality Through School Security: Effects of Race and Class on School Security Measures

• In Event: New Developments in Conflict Resolution

Abstract

School security measures such as on-campus police and surveillance are commonplace in the U.S. We know little about how these practices are distributed across schools, and how this corresponds to status characteristics of schools’ student bodies. We use nationally representative school-level data to consider elementary, middle, and high school security practices. Results suggest that criminal-justice oriented security measures are ubiquitous in high schools, but that elementary and middle schools of concentrated poverty are more likely to use these measures than others. Furthermore, race of student body is a powerful predictor of some measures. These race and class effects exist after school and community crime are taken into consideration, suggesting that criminal justice-oriented security may reproduce and exacerbate existing social inequality.

Authors

• Geoff Ward, University of California - Irvine

• Aaron Kupchik, Dept of Sociology and Criminal Justice