The Campbell Collaboration is a nonprofit organization that promotes evidence-based policymaking through the production of systematic reviews, summaries and syntheses of policy-relevant evidence. This post includes excerpts from a Campbell systematic review of surveys and studies on the impact of school-based law-enforcement strategies, followed by a few observations of my own.

Systematic Review Title: School-based law enforcement strategies to reduce crime, increase perceptions of safety, and improve learning outcomes in primary and secondary schools: A systematic review

Excerpts (from the plain language summary and full report):

School-based law enforcement (SBLE) includes a variety of forms of sworn law enforcement officers stationed in schools on at least a part-time basis.  

To be eligible for inclusion [in this review], the document must have reported on a policing strategy focused on crime prevention or school safety goals that does not involve officers teaching a curriculum. The program had to focus on a goal such as reduced crime or increased school safety… We did not include evaluations of programs in which police were among many other components (e.g., police collaborations with health and other social service agencies). In such studies, one cannot isolate the effects of the police action.  

Contrary to what is intended, schools with SBLE had higher rates of crime and behavior problems than schools without SBLE. This was primarily driven by higher rates of exclusionary discipline, with no detectable improvements to school crime or violence. We also found that students in schools with SBLE tended to feel safer at school, although this finding is less trustworthy because it is based on very little data. None of our other analyses showed that SBLE had beneficial effects.

The findings are based on studies that vary in the extent to which we can infer causal relationships between SBLE and the outcomes of interest, so we urge caution in interpreting this as a cause-and-effect relationship. Still, the study’s findings are consistent across studies with different methodological characteristics. 

…consistent with a more critical literature that focuses on the harms of SBLE, this study found that SBLE presence was associated with increases in school discipline. This is particularly noteworthy given the robust literature that has linked school discipline to a variety of adverse consequences, including increased delinquency and contact with the criminal justice system.

A Few Observations of My Own

Talk about throwing out the baby with the bath water! The authors of this review chose to exclude any studies that evaluate SBLE programs in which police collaborate with other personnel, such as social workers or school counselors. They did this to isolate the effect of police action. But that means the authors can’t evaluate the impact of police action in collaborative SBLE programs. And it’s quite possible that collaborative SBLE programs are more effective at reducing crime in schools than when the police are acting alone. That’s because collaborative programs are less likely to rely on school discipline to address misbehavior, especially if the collaborators are counselors or social workers. Such programs would likely include therapeutic and family interventions to help problem students better manage their emotions and behaviors. And that could make a huge difference in program effectiveness.

The inspiration for these observation was a recent study (McCart, Chapman et al, 2022), which found lower recidivism rates among probation violators when probation officers and social workers worked together to address violations. This hybrid approach entailed greater use of therapeutic interventions, focusing less on punishment than on helping the probation violator get back on track.

Returning to the Campbell review, the authors had no basis for suggesting that SBLE doesn’t work when they only considered a subset of SBLE programs. Causality is often conditional – that is, one thing leads to another only under certain conditions. That X doesn’t cause Y when considered in isolation doesn’t mean X has no impact on Y. In other words, school-based law enforcement may not be sufficient by itself to reduce criminal behavior, but in some situations, police presence and actions may be necessary as part of a broader, collaborative approach to the problem. Only more research will tell.

A final point about this Campbell review and the impact of police in K-12 schools: police are responsible for law enforcement, not what follows enforcement, such as school discipline or incarceration. As the authors of the review point out, the poor outcomes related to SBLE are thought to be driven by the effects of “exclusionary discipline”. In other words, the poor outcomes had little to do with police actions per se and much to do with policies determined by others, such as school administration and the juvenile justice system.

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References:

Fisher, B. W., Petrosino, A., Sutherland, H., Guckenburg, S., Fronius, T., Benitez, I., & Earl, K. (2023). School-based law enforcement strategies to reduce crime, increase perceptions of safety, and improve learning outcomes in primary and secondary schools: A systematic review. Campbell Systematic Reviews, 19, e1360. https://doi.org/10.1002/cl2.1360 

McCart, M. R., J. E. Chapman, et al. (2022). "Randomized trial of a diversion program for property offenders with drug use." Journal of Criminal Justice 79: 101900. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2022.101900