The Impact of Internal and External Factors on Student Perceptions of School Resource Officers

• In Event: A Multidisciplinary Examination of School Resources Officers: Discourse, Policy, and Stakeholders' Perceptions

Abstract

Objectives or purposes
School Resource Officers (SROs), armed employees of local police departments embedded in schools, have proliferated in recent decades in efforts to maintain student safety. However, their growing presence has outpaced research studying their impact. In particular, emerging research seeks to understand whether their presence does or does not make students feel safe. We sought to directly elicit student perspectives on the presence of School Resource Officers and to understand the impact of contextual factors, both internal and external to the school, that affect how these officers are perceived.

Theoretical Frameworks
More than 17,000 school resource officers (SROs) now work full time in schools across America (Na & Gottfredson, 2013). Efforts to understand their impact have focused largely on administrative level data (e.g. arrest rates, weapon confiscations). Proponents of SROs note fewer weapon assaults in schools with SROs (Theriot, 2009) and point to data suggesting that students are more likely to report a crime if there is a full time officer on campus (Na & Gottfredson, 2013). Opponents fear SROs criminalize behavior that would otherwise have warranted less harsh disciplinary intervention (Curtis, 2014), especially for students of color (Merkwae, 2015). Moreover, students residing in low-SES communities are more likely to attend schools with intense security measures such as metal detectors, x-ray machines, and SROs (Nance, 2013; Tocci, 2020).We add to recent work that seeks to understand SROs’ impact by directly soliciting the attitudes and opinions of students themselves.

Methods and Data Sources
We administered a 30-40 minute online survey to students from 3 mid-Western high schools (n = 442). Students completed basic demographic measures, indicated their sense of safety in student interactions with SROs on a 5-point scale (1=not at all, 5=completely), their perceptions of safety in their neighborhoods, their perceptions of resources within their schools and the frequency with which they witness violence in school (e.g. bullying, threats, gang activity, etc.).

Results
Bivariate correlations indicated that students’ sense of safety in SRO interactions was positively associated with how safe they felt in their own neighborhoods as well as with how well resourced they believed their schools to be; safety was negatively associated with the frequency with which they perceived violence to be occurring within their school. Modeled together in a linear regression, both neighborhood safety and level of resources at school (mental health and otherwise) uniquely and significantly predicted SRO safety. Such findings suggest that both internal and external forces are important in determining students’ sense of safety around SROs, perhaps by impacting the manner in which SROs approach their position.

Scholarly Significance
Conversations and decisions around the presence of police in schools often focus on school-specific contexts and outcomes. However, based on student perceptions, outside forces and the safety of one’s neighborhood may also meaningfully influence the way the SRO’s role and impact are considered, and how safe or unsafe their presence makes students feel. Neighborhoods that are less safe are often policed in harmful ways; this may translate into harmful policing in schools.

Authors

• Yael Granot, Smith College

• Ogechi Cynthia Onyeka, Loyola University Chicago

• Yelyzaveta DiStefano, Loyola University Chicago

• Akila Raoul, Loyola University Chicago