School resource officer (SRO) programs were expanded to improve school safety, but limited research has assessed factors impacting students' perspectives on and intended utilization of SROs. We analyzed the relationships of students' experiences with law enforcement and school discipline with views and intended use of SROs. We used multilevel…

Positive programming from Law Enforcement organizations with K-12 students should be a priority. It can be challenging, but it can help lead to future elements of success for the kids. This study investigated law enforcement leaders' opinions, goals, and objectives in their approaches to positive programming. The participants were 12 law…

The social movement for #PoliceFreeSchools (and the adjacent campaign on college and university campuses called #PoliceFreeCampuses) welcomes an opportunity to reimagine school discipline and safety in contradistinction to current carceral forms. Scholars have moved away from notions of "school to prison pipeline" by demonstrating the…

Background: College campus police departments are providing law enforcement officers the authority to administer naloxone, the antidote to opioid overdose. This study explored the competence, concerns, and readiness among college campus-based law enforcement officers in Northern California to administer naloxone in case of an opioid overdose on…

This qualitative study explored essential characteristics attributed to highly effective School Resource Officers (SROs) as perceived by experienced Indiana high school principals. Through semi-structured interviews with five high school principals from Indiana, the study sought to identify key responsibilities, outcomes, proactive activities, and…

Increased attention has been given the safety of students and school staff members following highly publicized acts of violence within schools, including the mass shootings at Robb Elementary School in 2022, Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, and Columbine High School in 1999. In response to these tragic events, schools have implemented various…

University campuses could become leaders in developing alternatives to policing for managing public health and safety, yet, nearly all campuses rely on campus or local police to respond to mental health emergencies. Herein, we present the available evidence for campus mobile crisis intervention teams (MCITs) as an alternative to policing, consider…

Investigating crimes on college campuses is a prevalent phenomenon that often requires student cooperation with campus police. Using the procedural justice theory's process-based approach, this applied research examined the likelihood of students reporting campus crime based on their perceived legitimacy of campus police and whether the student's…

While research consistently finds that increases in a school's SRO/police presence correspond with increases in the rate of school referrals of student disciplinary incidents to law enforcement agencies, direct evidence of distributional concerns across various student subgroups is scant. Drawing on data from the 2017-2018 School Survey on Crime…

Over the past several decades, the presence of school-based law enforcement (SBLE) has grown steadily in the United States. In recent years, along with the steady growth of SBLE, criticisms of SBLE have grown louder and more pointed. This brief reports on the results of a study that applied a rigorous literature synthesis method--a systematic…

This article describes how the use of sworn law enforcement in American schools is patterned by school racial composition. Three distinct measures are constructed using data from the Civil Rights Data Collection and the School Survey on Crime and Safety: police prevalence, the degree of exposure that students have to police officers within their…

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to examine practices for school resource officers (SROs) in elementary schools to gain a compilation of best practices for this position in schools. Through this study, three district leaders, three law enforcement leaders, and 12 law enforcement officers serving in elementary schools from three school…

School safety is an ever-present issue in the modern education system. Incidents like Sandy Hook, Parkland, and Columbine have forever changed the way school and police officials develop school safety programs. A primary component of many school safety programs is the utilization of school resource officers at various levels throughout the…

The earliest School Resource Officer Programs in Canada date back to the 1970s. This study examines how police officers, teachers, school administrators, students, and journalists use a discourse of relationship-building between police and youth to frame School Resource Officers (SROs): who they are, the work they do, their roles in students'…

Despite a lack of empirical support for its efficacy in reducing violence, there remains a strong tendency among schools to respond to the threat of school violence via increased security measures, such as school resource officers (SROs) (Jonson, 2017). Although the implementation of SROs continues to center on their law enforcement background and…