School Resources Officers (SROs) have become more consistently present in schools around the country. But how do students, teachers, principals, and parents perceive the role and effectiveness of SROs?
To help answer this question, researchers from Michigan State University conducted a systematic review of the literature on SRO perceptions. In this video, they discuss the systematic review results and how SRO perceptions may affect long-term student outcomes and policy decisions.
Citation
The content featured in this video is based on the following publication:
Almanza, M., Mason, M., & Melde, C. (2023). Perceptions of school resource officers: Protectors or prosecutors? Criminal Justice Review 48(3), 318-338. https://doi.org/10.1177/07340168221113352
Transcript
Dr. Chris Melde: I’m Dr. Chris Melde. I’m a professor and director of the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. I’m also a subject matter expert with the National Center for School Safety, where I focus on comprehensive school safety planning, as well as the role of law enforcement in schools.
Matthew Almanza: I’m Matthew Almanza. I’m a doctoral candidate at Michigan State University in the School of Criminal Justice. I’ve been working with Dr. Melde as a research assistant for the last six years, and then particularly for the last two years, I’ve been working with him as a researcher with the National Center for School Safety.
Makayla Mason: I’m Makayla Mason. I’m a third-year doctoral student in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University, and I’ve worked with Dr. Melde as a graduate research assistant. So there have been growing concerns regarding the effects of SROs on students’ long-term outcomes, if they’re an effective aspect of school safety and whether or not they contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline. This systematic review evaluates studies that have focused on the perceptions and attitudes toward SROs from key stakeholder groups such as students, teachers, principals, and other school administrators, and understanding how stakeholders view the role and effectiveness of SROs is particularly important as feelings of safety among students and staff are critical in creating a healthy and safe learning environment.
Chris: There’s many reasons to believe that you should include a school resource officer as a safety enhancement, but really, there’s been a more recent dialogue in the last decade about potentially negative and unintended consequences of having police officers on campus.
Matthew: There’s this perception that the increased criminalization of behaviors that previously hadn’t been considered criminal in school such as misbehavior or fights in school or things like this are getting increasingly penalized and people are using the criminal justice system and SROs to treat these students as criminals, and that’s leading to this, this school-to-prison pipeline where the behavior becomes criminalized, and along down the road, these opportunities for them to progress through school are lost and they end up going through the criminal justice system.
Makayla: Overall, the findings across the 31 publications suggested that key stakeholder groups largely report that SROs are a positive presence within schools and improve school safety.
Matthew: I think further research is needed, but I kind of suggest that there may be this insular protection that SROs have versus police who are outside of schools, that maybe as people in the schools, as stakeholders in the schools interact with this SRO, they’re able to build better rapport with the SRO, and that in turn actually increases the positive perceptions that they have of the school resource officer.
Makayla: Secondly, stakeholders mentioned various ways in which SROs might improve their role in promoting school safety. The most mentioned was the need for SROs to be visible and available to students and staff to help promote school safety and develop positive relationships. Many stakeholders including SROs themselves, felt as though they had a lot of potential in their role as an educator, but it was an under-utilized and a missed opportunity to inform students, promote school connectedness and positive attitudes toward police, as well as increase the general sense of safety. And finally, there is a lack of research on parents and the public’s perceptions of the role and effectiveness of SROs. This is an important area that needs further exploration, given the importance of public opinion in policy and practice.
Matthew: There’s a lot of native knowledge that these stakeholders have, and I think it’s really important to really take what we can from these stakeholders at each individual level, ’cause they each have a different perspective, whether it’s the student, the teacher, the administrator, or the SRO themselves. I think each can offer great wealth of knowledge that maybe we in academia might not necessarily be aware of.
Chris: Most of the work that we reviewed was cross-sectional in nature, meaning that it was just taken at point in time, and most typically, that was after people have already been exposed to an SRO. But school districts go through this decision, whether to include an SRO pretty regularly across the country, so there’s an opportunity to collect both pre and post test measures or longitudinal measures on these attitudes and perceptions to see whether people’s perceptions on the effectiveness of SROs change over time.
I think it’s critically important for schools to understand why they’re considering a school resource officer. Are there particular issues within the school that they feel the school resource officer could help with? Are they planning to incorporate a school resource officer simply because others are and it’s an available option within their local district? But really, understanding kind of the key elements of where they want help, how they want the school resource officer to impact their environment, can shape those, the agreements that they may make with local law enforcement about things like how often they’re gonna be on campus and in what capacity. Seeking out those resources about how to incorporate an SRO into the school, but also how to monitor whether there are any of these negative impacts on the school on an ongoing basis, it’s gonna be really important. So looking for evidence-based practices and following those guides is a critical step for schools to take if they’re considering a school resource officer.