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Long thread on School Resource Officers (SROs) in light of recent events involving the Edmonton Public School Board ( @EPSBNews). For a quick recap, see here: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/school-board-to-reconsider-school-resource-officer-motion-following-trustee-resignation-1.5630153
SROs are deeply controversial. But a lot of the questions we ask about policing on the street are the same questions we should be asking other law enforcement officers: who are they interacting with? Why? What are the outcomes? https://ablawg.ca/2020/06/18/examining-the-future-of-policing-in-edmonton-reflections-on-reform-accountability-part-i/
All of these questions are equally important to ask of SROs, in part due to the school-to-prison pipeline & the concern about racialized students (who are disciplined more frequently in school, more likely to drop out, & end up incarcerated).
Research in the US shows that the presence of SROs significantly and directly increases incarceration rates for students: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10780-018-9326-5
Research in Toronto has shown that students, particularly those from marginalized communities, feel continually surveilled when SROs are in their schools.
These students are overpoliced at home and in their communities, while driving or at the mall, and now are under constant police observation. It is constant: all day, every day.
One justification for SROs is that they ‘build bridges’ to kids in overpoliced communities, showing them the positive side of police officers. That is a questionable justification for three reasons.
First, the direct way to respond to the problems created by overpolicing is to change policing of those communities.
Second, whatever individualized benefits might be offered have to be weighed against the negatives of having police in schools, such as those outlined above.
Third, it is questionable because SROs – by their own admission – have no specialized training to work in schools: https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/study-details-alberta-sros-attitudes-toward-violence-in-schools
This last point is almost unbelievable. Not only are schools footing half the bill for SROs, spending money they could spend on educational professionals, they are paying for untrained workers.
Thrusting untrained officers into the delicate and formative school environment is an indictment both of police services and school boards. For that reason alone, the SRO program should be suspended, @EPSBNews.
Putting that concern aside, let’s return to the question of SROs and the school-to-prison pipeline. EPS claims that only 2% of cases its SROs are involved in lead to charges of any kind (including bylaw offences), and so the school-to-prison pipeline is a fallacy.
But that is a misunderstanding of the school-to-prison pipeline which is a descriptor for the overall system of school discipline that pushes young people into the criminal justice system.
In other words, SROs can worsen the pipeline’s effects but are not necessary for it to exist. How school teachers, administrators & boards handle discipline, and how politicians legislate, are key factors in developing the pipeline.
Zero-tolerance policies, safe schools acts, unattainable conditions placed on suspended students, dress codes, streaming of students into alternative schools and other ‘diversionary’ mechanisms – all of these are access points to the pipeline.
Students are rarely sent directly from school to prison. Rather, they are disciplined out of schools, which impacts their ability to complete their education, get jobs, go on to post-secondary schools, or – where needed - develop the skills they need to manage conflict better.
All of this is compounded by the racialized disparities inherent to school discipline: https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/cswr/1900-v1-n1-cswr03948/1051108ar/
http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/ontario-safe-schools-act-school-discipline-and-discrimination/vii-disproportionate-impact-ontario
http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/ontario-safe-schools-act-school-discipline-and-discrimination/vii-disproportionate-impact-ontario
Research suggests that racial bias presents itself in school discipline at about the same level it presents in the community generally: https://www.pnas.org/content/116/17/8255
Think about the pathologies present in school administrators when they decide that an 11 year-old boy is a gang member because of his do-rag, whose objections to being disciplined require calling the police and putting the school into lockdown.
Eventually the school board apologized and admitted they were effectively racist, but only after 8 months. This is how the school-to-prison pipeline can work – in insidious ways that don’t require SROs at all. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/do-rag-edmonton-catholic-1.5579385
That is why the @EPSBoard should think of the investigation into SROs as part of a much more holistic examination of school discipline practices in general. Dealing with SROs is only the first step. /end
