Counselors and mental-health workers can make a bigger difference than SROs
Last week the Red Clay Consolidated School District Board began discussions of removing police officers, called school resource officers (SROs), from schools. Other districts across the U.S. have recently decided to end their partnerships with police departments. Hopefully, the Red Clay Board’s continuing discussion considers the evidence on this subject, based on a large number of rigorous research studies. The research shows that while there are benefits to having SROs, there are also potential harms that outweigh the benefits for students in most schools.
I’ve participated in this base of research for the past fifteen years, and am often asked to discuss it with audiences across the country. I am also a parent of students in the Red Clay District.
In the past week, The News Journal has published two op-eds on this topic, both of which argued the importance of keeping SROs in schools. I appreciate these views, particularly Detective Joseph Melvin’s first-hand account of his role in supporting students. Over the course of my research I have observed many excellent SROs, and understand how they can help students. But this perspective does not take into account the bigger picture of how SROs impact students overall. It is important that we consider more than anecdote and individuals’ experiences, and carefully examine the wealth of carefully collected, rigorously analyzed data.
This evidence shows that despite the types of benefits to students that Detective Melvin describes, the presence of officers tends to result in problems that can hurt students. Nationwide research shows that schools with police have more suspensions and more arrests, particularly for minor misbehaviors, than do schools without police that are similar on other measures, including their rates of student misbehavior and crime. These punishments are damaging for youth in ways that hurt their long-term prospects. Students of color, and particularly Black students, are at the greatest risk of school punishment and arrest, resulting in increasing racial inequality. This result is certainly not intentional, and not usually the result of bad policing, but an unfortunate consequence of introducing law enforcement into schools.
While SROs might be caring, professional, and eager to mentor students, they are still not a replacement for trained counselors or social workers. Police might (but don’t always) receive training on working with children, but a session or short training program cannot compare to the preparation of someone whose sole function is talking to children and addressing the problems they may face. A police office also cannot keep a student’s confidence if the student informs them about criminal behavior.
In my research I have found that the presence of SROs is helpful for school administrators, because they have a point person for handling trouble in all forms. But this means that student issues ranging from mental health, attendance, to substance abuse often are given to the officer to deal with. As a result the school climate shifts in subtle ways, becoming more a site of law enforcement and less a site of caring for children’s emotional, social and even academic needs.
When I raise these points, audiences often talk about safety, and the need for police to protect students from risks that range from bullying to school shootings. But the research doesn’t support the assumption that SROs prevent these risks. Regarding student misbehavior and crime, research is inconclusive, though most high-quality studies show that the SROs are not effective at preventing crime and misbehavior. Several even show that schools with police have higher rates of crime and misbehavior than similar schools without them. Of course, most of these studies account for the possibility that officers are intentionally placed in higher-crime schools, and still find this result.
There is also no evidence that the presence of SROs deters school shootings. Of the school shootings we have suffered, some have occurred in schools with officers and some in schools without them. There are cases of officers who heroically prevented or ended shootings, as well as cases where this didn’t happen. Research on averted school shootings – incidents planned by students and then prevented - shows that the key is to have trusted adults who other students can inform if they hear about such a plan. One study on this found that students tell a police officer only rarely in these cases, relative to how often they tell another school staff member.
Thankfully, schools are safe. Shootings are horrific events, but they are still rare. In the most recent year reported by the Federal Department of Education, eighteen students were murdered at school nationwide. This is eighteen too many, but still exceptionally rare. Minor crimes and misbehaviors among students are way down, too, compared to when the Department of Education started collecting data in the 1990s.
I appreciate and admire the police who work in schools. But the evidence shows that in most schools, students would be better off if we invest instead in trained counselors, mental health workers, and others who can care for their emotional, social, and academic needs.
Aaron Kupchik is a professor in the department of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware.