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The Thin Blue Line in Schools: New Evidence on School-Based Policing Across the U.S.

Lucy C. Sorensen,
Montserrat Avila Acosta,
John Engberg,
Shawn D. Bushway

U.S. public school students increasingly attend schools with sworn law enforcement officers present. Yet, little is known about how these school resource officers (SROs) affect school environments or student outcomes. Our study uses a fuzzy regression discontinuity (RD) design with national school-level data from 2014 to 2018 to estimate the impacts of SRO placement. We construct this discontinuity based on the application scores for federal school based policing grants of linked police agencies. We find that SROs effectively reduce some forms of violence in schools, but do not prevent gun-related incidents. We also find that SROs intensify the use of suspension, expulsion, police referral, and arrest of students. These increases in disciplinary and police actions are consistently largest for Black students, male students, and students with disabilities.

Keywords
School resource officer, SRO, policing, school discipline, school safety
Education level
K-12 Education
Topics
Student Well-Being and Mental Health
Tags
Student discipline,
Learning environments,
Equity
Download 04/2023
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/heqx-rc69
EdWorkingPaper suggested citation:
Sorensen, Lucy C., Montserrat Avila Acosta, John Engberg, and Shawn D. Bushway. (). The Thin Blue Line in Schools: New Evidence on School-Based Policing Across the U.S.. (EdWorkingPaper: -476). Retrieved from Annenberg Institute at Brown University: https://doi.org/10.26300/heqx-rc69

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