Issues of school safety have dominated news headlines for decades now, and even our Bowling Green community has grappled with the issue of school safety for some time. The good news is that regardless of political orientation or background, we all want the same thing: safe schools. But the way we maintain school safety remains hotly debated among politicians, police departments, school officials, and the general public alike.
Many scientists study school crime and safety, and there is a well-developed body of evidence-based practices on school safety. As a criminologist in the Department of Sociology at Bowling Green State University, I’ve presented some of this research to a number of our community groups, including our local School Board. And while there is no “one size fits all” solution, there are hundreds of studies on the topic of school safety. Consequently, we know a great deal about what does, and what does not, make schools safe. In response to some recent articles, I felt compelled to write a little bit about what we know focusing on school safety, school shootings, school security, and police in schools.
Fact 1: Schools are safer now than they ever have been.
Over the past few years, a variety of media outlets, politicians, members of law enforcement, and school officials – even some in Bowling Green, Ohio – have been quick to highlight that schools are not as safe as they were when “we were kids.” But here’s the problem with that: it’s simply wrong. Schools are safer now than they ever have been and crime and victimization in the hallways of our K-12 schools has absolutely plummeted since the early 1990s. The National Center for Education Statistics tracks school-based crime, which you can see in the chart below. Decreasing crime rates hold for virtually all forms of crime and violence in schools like property offenses, violent crime, drug crime, gang-related crime, and even gun violence.
Fact 2: Schools are already very safe and school shootings are not increasing
Not only has school crime and victimization decreased precipitously over the past few decades, schools are among the safest places for children and young adults. When a school shooting occurs, it is a tragic and devastating event. Make no mistake: even one child or young adult killed at school is one too many and we need to have open conversations about decreasing gun violence in the U.S. But school shootings are extraordinarily rare events. At the most fundamental level, schools are the least likely place for school-aged youth to be killed. In fact, about 1% of all homicides of school-aged children and young adults occur at school. Less than one half of 1% of all suicides of school-aged children and young adults occur at school.
Another way to put this would be that more than 99.5% of all deaths of school-aged children occur anywhere but the school.
But it’s not just homicide and death. With some exceptions like bullying (which is more likely to occur in school than outside of school), schools are the safest place for children and young adults. In fact, family members and friends are more likely to victimize a child than someone in the school. In our conversations about putting more security and police in schools (see next two sections), why aren’t we talking about putting metal detectors at the front door of our houses? Based on the evidence, Mom should be carrying a see-through handbag and Dad should be patted down before coming home from work. Surveillance cameras might help us monitor Aunt Becky’s behavior a bit more closely, and drug testing cousin Mark seems like a prudent choice because he plays a sport. Of course, this sounds ridiculous. And it is. But when you look at the evidence, if we really want to have frank conversations about improving the safety of school-aged children in our community, we should look at the evidence.
Fact 3: Increased security does not make schools safer
Despite schools being a safe haven for children and young adults, another thought is to put more security in schools. And this is a common response. Schools across the United States have massively increased the use of devices like quick-locking classroom doors, security cameras, metal detectors, and drug-sniffing dogs to maintain school safety. While it might be tempting to suggest that increases in security have led to decreases in school crime, the reality is this simply is not true. The use of multivariate statistical analysis allows criminologists to account for the influence of security on changes in crime and victimization. And findings overwhelmingly show that security measures simply do not decrease offending or victimization.
Part of the reason for this finding is that schools are already safe havens for youth. Implementing more security is unlikely to make them safer considering how low victimization rates are in the hallways of our schools. However, that doesn’t mean that security measures don’t impact students. They absolutely do.
Numerous studies have shown that increased security is related to decreased extracurricular participation, lower academic performance, decreased test scores, increased odds of school dropout, diminished mental health of students, and lower quality relationships between students and teachers. Security measures can also serve as a barrier to parental involvement, and schools that heighten security levels report significantly lower levels of parental involvement than schools with fewer (or no) security measures. While explaining each of these is outside of the scope of this writing, an analogy might help illustrate the issue:
Remember the last time you flew out of the Detroit Airport? You probably had to empty your pockets, take off your shoes, walk through a metal detector, follow specific directions of TSA, show your identification, and if you got lucky, maybe you got taken aside and patted down. How did this make you feel? For many of us – even perfect law abiding citizens – this is an uncomfortable experience. It causes anxiety, fear, stress, and even hostility. Now imagine being a 12-year-old and having to do this on your own every single day. In criminology, we call this “labeling.” Even if you have not done anything wrong, being treated with suspicion can make you feel like a criminal. Children are at a particularly vulnerable developmental stage and this labeling effect can be strong among K-12 students. The bottom line is that one of the first steps to increasing antisocial behaviors in children and young adults is to treat them like a criminal: place them in an environment that uses metal detectors, cameras, punitive punishment, and drug tests on student athletes. That’s a fantastic way to decrease safety within the school.
The sad reality is that school security measures can fundamentally change the atmosphere of the school. They can make the school look and feel more like a prison. They can send the message to children that the school isn’t safe, and increase fear and anxiety among youth. In turn, this can decrease student bonds to the school. It can interrupt student-teacher relationships, and lower school performance and attendance. Using nationally-representative data from schools all across the United States, some of my research has found that greater levels of security actually relate to increased victimization among high school students. That’s even after taking into account levels of school violence, victimization, and offending. In other words, students are safer in schools with fewer security measures. And students in schools with more security measures report lower levels of participation in extracurricular activities than students in schools with fewer, or no, security measures.
Fact 4: Police officers do not make schools safer
A recent letter to the editor in the BG Independent News suggested placing armed supplementary off-duty police, retired police/military, or ex-military members in schools to protect against a school shooting. On the surface, this seems to make sense.
However, there’s a problem with this: there is no evidence that placing police or school resource officers (SROs) into schools prevents, or reduces, school shootings at all. A study led by my colleague Dr. John Boman (a criminologist also at BGSU Sociology) compared all schools that had experienced a school shooting between 1999 and 2018 to schools that did not experience a school shooting. We expected to find that schools with a SRO would be less likely to experience a shooting event than schools without a SRO. Surprisingly, we found the opposite: In the contemporary United States, schools with a SRO are more likely to experience a shooting event than schools without a SRO. While it might be tempting to attribute this to the idea that SROs are only placed in “bad” schools, there is no evidence that this is the case.
We then looked only at schools that had experienced a shooting event. We found that among all schools that experienced a school shooting over the past two decades, the number of injuries and deaths was actually higher – about 2.5 times higher – in schools that had a SRO. In other words, in the event of a school shooting, school aged-youth are much safer at a school that does not have an SRO.
So placing police in schools does not appear to prevent shootings, nor does this strategy appear to reduce the harm inflicted during a school shooting. But a rapidly growing body of research on placing police in schools shows that there are numerous unintended consequences of having police in schools. A recent study showed that schools with police report arrest rates for “disorderly conduct” that are five times higher than schools without police despite no difference in levels of disorder or offending at the school. Schools with more police tend to have much higher arrest rates of students than schools without police. And this certainly makes sense: more police = more arrests. The issue is that these arrests tend not to be for serious or violent crimes. Instead, students tend to become involved with the criminal justice system due to minor offenses like writing on a school desk, being late to class, or having a cell phone out. These types of misbehaviors are probably better dealt with by school officials, and not the criminal justice system. Decades of criminological research have shown that early contact with the criminal justice system increases offending among youth as they transition into adulthood.
As with many issues, though, there might be ways in which police can improve the school. Although most studies tend to find negative outcomes, a recent study in Kentucky found that principals believed that SROs made the school safer and appreciated working with law enforcement. And just to be clear: the goal isn’t to blame police. Police serve an important function in our society. The police have a difficult job to do, are often overburdened, and lack resources. And certainly our police want to help create safe schools, but we have to consider the scientific evidence on the topic, which raises some good news:
There is evidence that SROs can be effective in promoting positive outcomes in some schools. The research in this area finds that school resource officers who connect with and mentor students can help promote positive outcomes. But we already have people in our schools whose job is to “connect with and mentor students.” Those people are called teachers.
Other things we might want to consider
Despite the evidence presented above, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take steps to increase safety. Requiring visitors to check in to the school, evaluating current safety procedures, and working together as a community are evidence-based steps to take. But this body of research taken as a whole strongly suggests that the best ways to increase safety are to continue to empower and support teachers, provide access to counselors, involve parents and family members, and maintain an atmosphere that focuses on education and not punitive punishment and security. Increased security and police in schools, as it turns out, are often counterproductive in creating safe schools.
Thomas J. Mowen,
Department of Sociology
Bowling Green State University
