Research as Copaganda? A Critical Review of the Empirical Literature About School-Based Police

• In Event: Abolitionist Praxis and Broadening Perspectives on Educational Carcerality

Abstract

Despite shifts in mainstream discourse troubling policing as benevolent and calls from scholars across disciplines to remove police from schools, a majority of research about SROs starts with a presumption of police neutrality, thereby reifying school-based policing as necessary and good. Here, we report our findings from a critical review of empirical literature, wherein we question the fundamental assumptions of much of the research exploring the presence of and outcomes associated with police in schools. Our critique focuses on three areas: a whitewashed and narrowed historical contextualization of SROs and school-based policing; an absence of theoretical framing about carcerality, abolition, and anti-Blackness; and an emphasis on reform over abolition. We conclude by amplifying several recommendations put forth by abolitionist scholars.

Authors

• Carey E. Andrzejewski, Auburn University
  Presenting Author

• Hannah Carson Baggett, Auburn University
  Non-Presenting Author

• LaKendrick Richardson, Auburn University
  Presenting Author

• Brucie Porter, Auburn University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Dwayne Clark, Air University
  Presenting Author