I've heard frequently about having police officers in schools after the most recent episode of a mascare in a school. One reason for the frequency of the current topic is the argument that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

This makes me think about “school resource officers.” Presumably, a police officer in a school would be a "good guy with a gun."

Here I offer an alternative proposal. First, though, I present a little background.

Context

This is not something new. Weiler and Cray (2011) cite papers on the topic going back to 1998. There are almost surely earlier ones. (An interesting question would be how the topics of those and more recent papers have changed over the years, in case anyone is looking for a master's thesis.)

Many US legislatures, state departments of education, and local education agencies have adopted policies about school resource officers (Counts et al., 2018). As long ago as 2007, almost 70% of US adolescents reported that there were police officers or security guards in their schools (Dinkes, 2009).

There is a National Association of School Resource Officers. It is a not-for-profit organization that bills itself as “the world's leader in school-based policing” and "dedicated to making schools and children safer by providing the highest quality training to school-based law enforcement officers.” I presume that it is dedicated to doing good, so I don’t mean this recognition to demean the organization.

Are members of the National Association of School Resource Officers, for example, the “good guys” in the good-guys-vs-bad-guys scenario? I hope so. What, however, is the evidence, not just about those members, but about school resource officers in genearl, and (especially) their effects on school environments?

The National Association of School Resource Officers provides some research. Yay! But, it's not causal-comparative research. It's survey (i.e., what-do-people-say) research. In some ways, this makes sense, because who would want to conduct a random assignment study of a group of schools that got some glitzy school resource officers compared with a group of schools that didn't get such resources?

Evidence?

There are different lines of evidence here. Some have to do with miratin' the topic (i.e., advocating for one or another alterntive school resource officer programs). Another has to do with whether school resource officers engage in discipline problems (i.e., get sucked into characterizing misbehavior as criminal) rather than protection from shooters. Yet another has to do with whether such programs work (i.e., does having school resource officers increase safety during serious incidents).

• Counts et al. (2018) compiled recommendations about appropriate use of school resource officers from the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Education, and National Association of School Resource Officers. The findings should be instructive to educators who are considering adopting policies and procedures.

• Na and Gottfredson (2011) reported that three of four school principals said that “as schools increase their use of police, they record more crimes involving weapon and drugs and report a higher percentage of their non-serious violent crimes to law enforcement.”

• In a case study of one city, Johnson (1999) reported “that the placement of police officers in city schools ha[d] a positive effect on school violence and disciplinary infraction.” {I was unable to access the methods of this study, so I must reserve judgement beyond what I can read in an abstract.]

• In a quasi-experimental study of schools that used more school resource officers versus matched control schools that did not use resource officers, Gottfredson et. al (2020) reported that they “found that increased SROs increased the number of drug- and weapon-related offenses and exclusionary disciplinary actions for treatment schools relative to comparison schools. These negative effects were more frequently found for students without special needs.” They concluded that their “findings suggest that increasing SROs does not improve school safety and that by increasing exclusionary responses to school discipline incidents it increases the criminalization of school discipline.”

• In a different analysis of the data set comparing schools that used more school resources officers versus than matched control schools, Crosse et al. (2021) found that “increases in offenses and exclusionary reactions due to increased SRO presence were most evident for Black and Hispanic as opposed to White students.”

Please don’t take this as a thorough literature review. One could accuse me of cherry-picking studies. I went in seach of thorough reviews…didn’t find them…will continue searching and update my notes if I do find such.

Observations

I certainly don’t want to paint all school resource officers with the same brush, but there is evidence that the consequences of having school resource officers in schools mayn’t be particularly good.

As readers may guess, I'm am not an advocate of discipline predicated on punishment and my-way-or-the-highway assertions. So, my alternative proposal will be different. As the foregoing notes indicate, though, I am not convinced that the current realization of school resource officers is beneficial. I recommend an alternative

John Oliver presented a passionate (duh!) take on school policing 6 June 2022. Although I don't agree with every point he makes in the ~27-minute presentation, I think he hit many important points. (Warning: Watching the video takes > 25 min; it includes f* and sh* bombs.)

That Modest Proposal

Here’s a different take on school resource officers. Instead of having one officer dedicated to each school, how about having many officers visiting schools frequently. Instead of having one officer monitoring for infractions (i.e., misbehavior), have multiple officers dedicating one hour of their weekly shifts going to schools to read to students, do math with kids, talk about history? And I’m thinking about not just little kids, but adolescents, too.

Consider a police cruiser pulling up to the front of a school (they can park anywere!) and two officers popping out to go to designated classrooms, one to Mr. Smith’s fourth-grade division session and the other to Ms. Fuertes’ first grade language arts session. For 30 min, Officer Black shows Mr. Smith’s students how he uses long division every day in his job. Officer Wall reads a story to a small group of Ms. Fuertes’ students. As appropriate, they answer questions not just about the arithmetic or the story, but also about their uniforms, radios, other equipment, and etc. Then they leave.

If they get a high-priority radio notice while they are computing or reading with the students, they can politely say, “Uh-oh! I’ve got to go help someone be safe; see you next week!” and hustle off to their conveniently parked car and to those policing duties.

Turn the officers' interactions into opportunities for cops and kids to interact on a positive basis. Reverse the dominance-submission situations; make them community-outreach activities.

Imagine an officer who, five years later, meets a kid with whom she or he read when the child was just six- or seven-years old. How would such experiences influence their—both the child's and the officer's—interaction?

Hey, publishers, you could create materials for supporting such activities! You could even give them to local education agencies at a nominal fee!

Sources

Counts, J., Randall, K. N., Ryan, J. B., & Katsiyannis, A. (2018). School resource officers in public schools: A national review. Education and Treatment of Children, 41(4), 405-430. https://doi.org/10.1353/etc.2018.0023

Crosse, S., Gottfredson, D. C., Bauer, E. L., Tang, Z., Harmon, M. A., Hagen, C. A., & Greene, A. D. (2021). Are effects of school resource officers moderated by student race and ethnicity? Crime & Delinquency, 68(3), 391-408. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0011128721999346

Gottfredson, D. C., Crosse, S., Tang, Z., Bauer, E. L., Harmon, M. A., Hagen, C. A., & Greene, A. D. (2020). Effects of school resource officers on school crime and responses to school crime. Criminology & Public Policy, 19(3), 905-940. https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12512

Johnson, I. M. (1999). School violence: The effectiveness of a school resource officer program in a southern city. Journal of Criminal Justice, 27(2), 173-192.

Mielke, F. J., Phillips, J., & Sanborn, B. (2021). Measuring the strategic fit of the school resource officer with law enforcement (leaders), the education system, the community and other interested parties: Section I – survey results. National Association of School Resource Officers. https://www.nasro.org/clientuploads/resources/Measuring_the_Strategic_Fit_of_the_School_Resource_Officer_section_1.pdf

Na, C., & Gottfredson, D. C. (2013) Police officers in schools: effects on school crime and the processing of offending behaviors. Justice Quarterly, 30(4), 619-650. https://doi.org/10.1080/07418825.2011.615754

Weiler, S. C., & Cray, M. (2011). Police at school: A brief history and current status of school resource officers. The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas, 84(4), 160-163. https://doi.org/10.1080/00098655.2011.564986