In Loco Parentis: The Boundary Work of Campus Police

• In Event: 4155 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 3. Criminal Justice (Identity) Work

Abstract

The United States has reached a critical moment in both higher education and policing, with universities welcoming increasingly diverse student bodies and thus the potential for socioeconomic stratification (Mehta and Davies 2018) and public outrage growing towards police who behave as “warriors” rather than “guardians” (Presidential Task Force 2015). Situated at the intersection of these two domains are campus police, the approximately 16,000 sworn officers who patrol colleges and universities nationwide (Reaves 2015) and who have been virtually untouched by sociological analysis. These officers act 'in loco parentis' (“in the place of parents”); they are among the first responsible for determining the sort of discipline that their student-charges deserve, with broad consequences for students’ lives and thus for within- and between-campus inequality. Using semi-structured interviews with 60 police officers on four college campuses and informed by quantitative analysis of data from the national Survey of Campus Law Enforcement Agencies, I interrogate the symbolic boundary work of campus police – that is, the distinctions that officers draw between students who deserve protection from students who deserve disciplinary and/or legal sanctions (Lamont and Molnár 2002). Pilot research anticipates (1) cross-campus differences in officers’ readiness to sanction students, linked with the perceived merit of admitted students and (2) within-campus moral boundary work that traces gender, race, and class lines. The contributions of this study are twofold. First, it engages with theories of boundary work to advance our sociological understanding of an impactful but understudied cultural process of inequality in both university life and policing. Second, it points to policy reforms for universities and for municipal police departments, who might benefit from emulating on-campus approaches.

Author

• Hanna Katz, Harvard University