Smos In Schools

Due to an escalation of school shootings and violence, the government made provisions for the placement of police officers in schools across the country. The intention for these school police officers called resource officers (SROs) is to promote a better learning environment (Schlosser, 2014), and provide safety for students and staff. Safe schools are a priority for the students, parents, teachers, policy makers and the community (Schlosser, 2014). SROs have many duties in the schools; they act as role models, mediators, educators, among other resources (Raymond, 2010). The placing of officers in schools have a correlation with the increase of teenagers in contact with the juvenile justice system. The placement of these officers develops one of the key components of the “school to prison pipeline” (Price, 2009). School-yard behavior committed by these youths under other circumstances would usually result in suspension or expulsion, but not police arrest and detention. Furthermore, student academics are not encouraging because of contact with the criminal justice system (Price, 2009). Police officers in schools are the fastest growing unit in police departments Theriot (2009) (as cited in, Swartz, Osborne, Edwards, and Higgins, 2015). According to Chrusciel, Wolfe, and Kaminski (2015), there are approximately 20,000 police officers in schools …show more content…
Furthermore, zero tolerance policies place minorities at a bigger disadvantage and have redefined them as criminals with unfortunate consequences (Schlosser, 2014). Notwithstanding, these consequences include students missing out on academic lectures needed to graduate and proceed to become productive members of society. According to Schlosser (2014), students affected by these policies are already are “at-risk” children in their communities and are struggling