Stationing police officers in schools ends up criminalizing students instead of keeping them safe, according to a new study.
Researchers found no evidence that the presence of police officers in schools reduced crime or promoted safety.
But schools with police officers attached did see higher levels of suspensions and expulsions, with students more likely to become criminalized as a result.
Basing police officers in schools – or school-based law enforcement (SBLE) – has become a widely-used approach to try to counter crime and disorder, either committed by students or directed against them.
Although accurate figures are hard to come by, around two in five public schools in the U.S. had at least one police officer on campus for at least one day a week.
But the policy has been controversial, with numerous reports of officers using a heavy-handed approach and arresting students for minor incidents.
Concerns over the negligible impact on crime rates and the disproportionally negative effect on marginalized groups such as Black, disabled and LGBTQ students, a number of cities have started removing SBLEs, including Minneapolis, Denver and Seattle, a movement that gained momentum following the death of George Floyd in 2020.
Now new research has found that not only do police officers in schools not make schools safer, but they have detrimental consequences for students, who are more likely to end up in the criminal justice system as a result.
There was “no evidence that our collective investment in putting police in schools has led to safer schools, but instead is associated with harmful practices of excluding students from school,” according to Benjamin Fisher, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and lead author of the report.
After analyzing 32 studies from around the world, researchers found that schools with police on campus had higher rates of crime and behavior problems than those without, according to the study published in the journal Campbell Systematic Reviews.
Rather than this being due to police being more likely to be stationed in schools with high crime levels, researchers found this was primarily the result of higher levels of suspension and expulsion.
Schools with police on campus also had a higher rate of discipline – and inflicted more punishment on students – than schools without a police presence, the study found.
The use of exclusionary discipline puts students on a pathway towards future punishment and behavior problems, including contact with the criminal justice system, researchers noted.
Researchers were unable to detect any noticeable improvements to crime or violence as a result of police being stationed on campus.
Among the possible explanations for the link between police on campus and higher rates of discipline put forward by researchers are that school-based officers increase detection rates of relatively minor misbehaviors or are involved in administering sanctions.
School-based police may also contribute to making the school’s approach to discipline more punitive, resulting in more formal sanctions, or may actually encourage students to engage in more problem behaviors, if they are seen as normal.
Researchers also looked at studies which examined possible links between police stationed on campus and other factors, such as learning outcomes, and found no evidence of any impact.
They did detect one positive effect of campus police, however: students were more likely to feel safer at school if there were officers stationed on site, although this had no connection to crime rates.
“If the intent of SBLE is to prevent crime and delinquency in schools, this study found no evidence that this intent is being accomplished,” researchers said.
The result is that schools interested in promoting safety are likely to benefit from withdrawing from campus-based police programs and instead invest in evidence-based strategies, they added.
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