All SROs are not created equal: Heterogeneity in school policing

• In Event: School Resource Allocation

Abstract

The expansion of police presence in U.S. schools over the past two decades raises questions about the trade-off between student safety and exposure to the criminal justice system. In this paper, we study how school context moderates the effect that School Resource Officers (SROs) have on in-school offenses and school discipline. Using a difference-in-differences design that leverages a federal SRO hiring grant, we estimate bounds on the variance of the treatment effect distribution to detect treatment effect heterogeneity in SRO hiring and discover meaningful differences in how hiring SROs impacts the number of students suspended or referred to law enforcement. To explain the detected treatment effect heterogeneity, we consider observable school characteristics such as student demographics and school staff and unobservable differences in how schools implement their SRO program, measured by training text models to extract themes from grant narratives that describe the problems facing the school. We find that schools whose SRO programs focus on building community have decreased suspensions and referrals or arrests than schools that focus on the SRO’s fulfillment of traditional law enforcement duties. Our results highlight how a school’s context shapes the impact that SROs have in schools.

Author

• Hanna Han, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Presenting Author