Policing in Schools: The Impact of School Resource Officers On Student Disciplinary Outcomes

The number of School Resource Officers (SROs) in schools across the United States increased during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Primarily introduced to address rising crime rates, School Resource Officers have since evolved in their role, taking on various responsibilities beyond law enforcement. Recent research into SROs has brought attention to the continued discretion and ambiguity that their roles entail, revealing how their presence can contribute to the criminalization of student behavior in educational settings. With such findings, this thesis reveals what happens to student disciplinary outcomes when SROs are introduced into a school, contributing to the existing research by highlighting changes in outcomes associated with the introduction of an SRO into a school. Using a difference-in-differences (DiD) approach, I find that adding an SRO into a school is associated with an increase in expulsions, arrests, and both single and multiple out-of-school suspensions, alongside a decrease in school offenses at the school-level. At the high school level, results also indicate a marginal decrease in corporal punishment. These findings suggest that as reported school offenses decline, the presence of SROs is associated with harsher disciplinary responses to student misbehavior, increasing exclusionary and criminalized forms of punishment. Such research highlights important policy implications, particularly the need for clarity, training, and accountability among School Resource Officers and their roles in schools.