Corridor Warriors or Trusted Adults in Uniforms? – School guards in Hungary

• In Event: POLWG Panel 26. Beyond Police Enforcement: Diversion, Harm Reduction, Offender Management and Early Intervention

Abstract

In 2020, the Hungarian government introduced ‘school guards’ into schools, official personnel who are closely supervised by, but not members of, the police. Since then, close to eight hundred school guards have been posted with the primary goal of preventing crime among children and young people and with some limited powers to intervene should the need arise.
In this piece of research, we used various qualitative research techniques to get a better understanding of this new system. First, we carried out focus groups with school guards in six counties and the capital city to get an insight into how school guards perceived their roles and responsibilities. Then, we chose three counties and visited seven schools in each and undertook qualitative interviews with the heads of schools to discuss their experiences and expectations of this new system and to talk with school guards themselves about their day-to-day activities and how they interact with the police, school staff, parents, and children. Finally, we used focus groups to speak with the police coordinators of school guards to examine how they perceived this new initiative and its place in the wider policing landscape.
We found that the perception of the system was mixed with some heads strongly in favour of having school guards and others opposed or indifferent. While in specific schools, there were some signs that the system worked as intended, fully preventing or reducing the number of high-harm incidents, in most schools the impact was limited to low-level transgression with a manifest increase in the subjective safety of the school staff. School guards varied in their perceptions of their role, identity, and whether they deployed deterrence-based or procedural justice-focussed approaches to resolving issues in schools. Important caveats regarding the generalisability of the findings and evidence gaps will also be discussed.

Authors

• Krisztián Pósch, University College London

• Katalin Molnár, National University of Public Service

• Orsolya Szabó, TÁRKI Social Research Institute