Op-ed published in the Press and Sun Bulletin, September 16, 2018, (they provided the new title) with additional references here (see end of text below).

Schools Don’t Need More Resource Officers

Recently, the Press & Sun-Bulletin reported District Attorney Steve Cornwell’s accelerating effort to place yet more police in our schools.

We’ve seen this before: in the 1980s and 1990s, the DARE drug prevention program put officers in the nation’s schools at a cost of over $1 billion. By 2000, it was clear the program was completely ineffective, and it collapsed. As one mayor put it, it was a fraud upon the public and public education.

As school budgets tighten, parents and teachers might wonder if shifting resources once again from educational programs to police supervision of students is wise. The DA, in announcing the expansion of the Student Resource Officers, surely thinks so: “… with their backgrounds, training and field experience, our School Resource Officers have dealt with issues related to children, domestic violence, drug abuse and violence — these experiences and lessons are invaluable to the schools and students.”

But is this the case? Does the experience of retired police officers with adult violence, SWAT teams and undercover drug operations help solve the real problems of youths and our schools?

Empirical studies show that there is little evidence that having armed police in school corridors prevents drug use, bullying, and disruptive or even violent behavior. Does it really make sense to turn a scuffle among students into an assault charge, or acting out in class into a suspension and a charge of disorderly conduct? Are these police matters, or problems to be resolved by parents, teachers and those trained in effective alternatives to detention and incarceration?

What we do know is that schools with SROs have fewer resources, especially counselors, to address students’ social, emotional and discipline needs. SRO schools also refer kids to the juvenile legal system at a rate five times greater than schools without SROs, with poor, black and Latino students far more likely to be suspended, expelled or drop out because of unevenly applied, punitive policies.

Do we really need another 10 years to find out what doesn’t work? Can we afford it? Can our youths?

William Martin is a founding member of Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier and teaches at Binghamton University.

Additional references (not in newspaper):

Multiple long-term studies chart the failure of DARE to change students’ use of drugs;  one study  suggested that DARE students were more likely than their peers to experiment with drugs and alcohol.  See among others:

  • Steven L. West and ,Keri K. O’NealPhD, “Project D.A.R.E. Outcome Effectiveness Revisited,” American Journal of Public Health, October 10, 2011. Conclusion: D.A.R.E. is ineffective.
  • S T Ennett, N S Tobler, C L Ringwalt, and R L Flewelling, How effective is drug abuse resistance education? A meta-analysis of Project DARE outcome evaluations.”, American Journal of Public Health 84, no. 9 (September 1, 1994): pp. 1394-1401,
  • And recent press report summaries: Christopher Ingraham, “A brief history of DARE, the anti-drug program Jeff Sessions wants to revive,” Washington Post, July 12, 2017,
  • Denis P. Rosenbaum, and Gordon Hanson, “Assessing the Effects of School-Based Drug Education: A Six-Year Multilevel Analysis of Project D.A.R.E.,” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 35, no. 4 (November 1, 1998): 381–412,
  • Deanna N.Devlin, Mateus Rennó Santos, Denise C. Gottfredson, “An evaluation of police officers in schools as a bullying intervention,”Evaluation and Program Planning, Volume 71, December 2018, Pages 12-21. Conclusion: “SROs do not have an effect on bullying in schools. Policy implications of these findings suggest that programs that focus on components such as teaching social and emotional competency skills, improving relationships between students and adults, and creating a positive school environment may be more effective in reducing bullying than a security procedure such as the use of SROs. Alternative programs should be explored to mitigate bullying and improve the well-being of students.”

And on where DARE is most deployed, and on the need for alternatives, see for example

Ebony Slaughter-Johnson, Karen Dolan, Myacah Sampson, Report: Students Under Siege, July 24, 2018, Institute of Policy Studies. Among their conclusions:

  • Schools with school resource officers (SROs) refer children to the juvenile legal system for “disorderly conduct” at a rate almost five times that of schools without SROs.
  • Recent research indicated that even one suspension can double the likelihood that a student drops out of school.
  • Black students, who during the 2013 to 2014 school year represented 15.5 percent of the public school student population, were 46 percent of those punished with multiple suspensions outside of school.
  • According to Kids Count, which uses data from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, for the 2013-2014 school year, nearly three million students in U.S. public schools experienced in-school suspension, and nearly three million students experienced out-of-school suspension. This trend continues for the 2015 to 2016 school year.