abstract: The presence of police officers is not an assurance of safety for everyone. Yet,
modern concerns for school safety suggest there is a need for more police officers in
schools. Over the last 70 years of School Resource Officer (SRO) programs, the variations
of SRO program implementation and the expectation of roles and responsibilities has
produced conflicting research on benefits or harms of police in the school environment.
The purpose of police in schools has shuffled from relationship-building ambassadors for
the community, to educators on crime prevention and drug use, to law enforcement
officers for punitive juvenile sanctions, to counselors and role models for legal
socialization, and other roles for emergency management and crisis response. Plans to
place more officers in schools for purposes of “school safety” requires an examination of
the SROs’ roles within the school, their interactions with students, and how these roles
and interactions contribute to safety. This study explores the roles of SROs to
understand the variations of roles within a program and understand factors influencing
the roles of SROs (e.g., school climate, initiation by others). To evaluate these roles and
potential influences, cluster analysis and multinomial regression models were developed
from one year of SRO-student interaction data (n=12, 466) collected daily from the
Richland County (SC) Sheriff’s Department SRO Division located in South Carolina.
These interactions were defined by the framework of counseling, educating, and law
enforcing roles. Results indicate the variations of roles performed are largely influenced
by the school type (e.g., elementary), SRO perceptions (e.g., counselor), and the
engagement of SROs by school officials for specific roles. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Criminology and Criminal Justice 2019
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:asu.edu/item:54973 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Contributors | Herbert, Jessica L. (Author), Sweeten, Gary (Advisor), Decker, Scott (Committee member), Scott, Michael (Committee member), Arizona State University (Publisher) |
| Source Sets | Arizona State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Doctoral Dissertation |
| Format | 126 pages |
| Rights | http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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