NCJ Number
186489
Journal
Police Chief Volume: 67 Issue: 11 Dated: November 2000 Pages: 74-77
Date Published
November 2000
Length
3 pages
Annotation
This article describes the State-level infrastructure created by Virginia during the past few years to guide the development of its local school resource officer (SRO) programs and presents findings from the first analysis of evaluation data.
Abstract
The infrastructure includes new resource manuals for SROs and educators, new curricula for basic and specialized SRO training classes, an expanded training schedule, grant conditions that promote the Virginia model of SRO programming, and a data collection system that supports local program development and supplies data for program evaluation. The first analysis of evaluation data focused on activity between January and July 1999, a period in which 57 State grants supported 63 SROs in 44 localities. Evaluation data came from 3,244 school incident reports, 2,067 school staff surveys, 11,684 student surveys, and a content analysis of the written responses from 104 SRO quarterly activity reports. Results revealed that 48 percent of the reported incidents were crimes against persons and that tobacco possession, disorderly conduct, profanity, verbal threatening, and truancy accounted for 53 percent of the offenses. The survey data revealed that both students and school staff feel safe at school, that SROs are a welcome presence in schools, and the SROs are actively performing their designated roles and are affecting the school in many ways. Findings suggested that the new infrastructure and program are having a positive impact.