NCJ Number
232025
Journal
Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice Volume: 26 Issue: 3 Dated: August 2010 Pages: 294-315
Date Published
August 2010
Length
22 pages
Annotation
This study explored how students' rights are negotiated in schools with regular police presence drawing on ethnographic data collected in two mid-Atlantic public high schools.
Abstract
Over the past several decades, public schools in the United States have been increasingly transformed into high security environments, complete with surveillance technologies, security forces, and harsh punishments. The school resource officer (SRO) program, which assigns uniformed police officers to work in public schools, is one significant component of this new brand of school security. Although the intentions of the SRO program are clearto help administrators maintain order in schools, deter students from committing criminal acts, and arrest students who do break the lawthe potential unintended consequences of this program are largely unknown. This study employs ethnographic methodology in two public high schools with SROs to examine how students' rights, including fourth amendment rights, fifth amendment rights, and privacy rights, are negotiated in public schools with full-time police presence. The results of this study suggest that schools administrators and SROs partner in ways that compromise and reduce the legal rights of students. Notes and references (Published Abstract)