SCHOOL RESOURCE OFFICERS AND THE SCHOOL-TO-PRISON PIPELINE: A MIXED METHODS APPLICATION OF THE BEHAVIOR OF LAW IN SCHOOLS

Abstract

SCHOOL RESOURCE OFFICERS AND THE SCHOOL-TO-PRISON PIPELINE: A MIXED-METHODS APPLICATION OF THE BEHAVIOR OF LAW IN SCHOOLS Caitlin Grace Lynch Old Dominion University, 2017 Director: Dr. Allison T. Chappell The implementation of school resource officer programs has been a popular response to school-based violence in the United States. Parents, school officials, and policy makers believe that police presence makes students and staff feel safer on campus, deters school-based crime and violence, and creates positive relationships between youth and the police. However, there is a growing concern that school resource officers hypercriminalize trivial student misbehavior, contribute to a culture of youth punishment and control, and are instrumental in facilitating a link between schools and the juvenile justice system. Despite the rapid rate at which school resource officer programs have expanded over the last two decades and the significant amount of federal and state funds that have been allocated for their implementation, very little is known about how school resource officers operate in schools across the United States. The current work aims to gain a better understanding of how school resource officers spend their time, the extent to which school characteristics explain the variation in their behaviors, the factors influencing their involvement in school discipline, and how their behavior is shaped by the presence and availability of schools’ informal social control measures. Since school resource officers are likely to remain a permanent fixture in schools across the country, it is necessary to better understand their role within the school setting. Utilizing data from the Department of Education’s School Survey on Crime and Safety (2015), supplemented with qualitative interviews from a sample (n=20) of school resource officers, the current research aims to fill this