Making Schools Safer and/or Escalating Disciplinary Response: A Study of Police Officers in North Carolina Schools

Linked disciplinary, academic, juvenile-justice and adult-conviction records for North Carolina middle schools

North Carolina middle schools, US.

Uses the timing of federal grant-funded school resource officer placements across North Carolina middle schools, with outcomes drawn from four linked administrative systems including adult criminal convictions. Administrative outcomes throughout — no survey measures of perceived safety standing in for behaviour.

School resource officers decrease the incidence of serious violence AND increase the use of out-of-school suspensions, transfers, expulsions, and police referrals. Both effects are real and they point in opposite directions for student welfare, which is the honest shape of the school-safety trade-off.

Low. Variation comes from grant-funded staffing decisions rather than family choices.

The most credible single study of police in schools; no direct replication. Its two-sided result is the reason this archive does not treat "reduce exclusion" and "keep the school safe" as the same objective.