Stationing police (school resource officers) in schools reliably incre

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For the Court

Researchers broadly agree that placing police in schools shifts student misconduct into formal disciplinary and justice channels: more suspensions, expulsions, referrals, and arrests, disproportionately for Black students and students with disabilities, with the best long-run evidence linking school-police funding to lower graduation and college enrollment. They also agree the safety picture is mixed — some serious violence declines, gun incidents do not — which is why the policy debate now centers on alternatives rather than on whether the discipline effect exists.

What This Claim Does NOT Say

That SROs provide no benefits — the strongest national design finds reductions in some forms of serious violence.

That SROs cause school shootings or that removing them would prevent gun violence — the evidence shows they do not prevent gun-related incidents, not that they cause them.

That individual officers are acting in bad faith — the pattern is structural: police presence converts discipline into enforcement.

That increases in recorded offenses always mean more misbehavior — part of the increase is detection and formal processing of conduct previously handled informally.

That these findings resolve any constitutional question — they inform policy and disparate-impact analysis, not doctrine by themselves.

Scope — Where It Holds

Applies to sworn law enforcement regularly stationed in U.S. K-12 schools (SRO programs), evaluated by quasi-experimental designs (national regression discontinuity, grant-based natural experiments, matched longitudinal comparisons). Effects on recorded offenses partly reflect increased detection/reporting; non-sworn security guards do not show the same arrest/discipline pattern in national data.

Sources & Verification

Seminal

Sorensen LC, Avila-Acosta M, Engberg JB, Bushway SD (2023). The thin blue line in schools: New evidence on school-based policing across the U.S. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.
Observational · K-12 public school students (national)
SRO placement reduced some forms of school violence but did NOT prevent gun-related incidents. Simultaneously, SROs intensified suspensions, expulsions, police referrals, and student arrests — with the increases consistently largest for Black students, male students, and students with disabilities. The strongest national causal design in this literature: safety benefits are partial; criminalization costs are concentrated on protected subgroups.
Bearing on this claim: National fuzzy RD: SROs intensify suspensions/expulsions/referrals/arrests (largest for Black students and students with disabilities); reduce some violence; no effect on gun incidents.
doi.org/10.1002/pam.22498

Supporting

Precedent Bridge

Held that a student's state-law entitlement to a public education is "a property interest ... protected by the Due Process Clause" that may not be taken for misconduct "absent fundamentally fair procedures." For a suspension of ten days or less, due process requires "oral or written notice of the charges ... and, if [the student] denies them, an explanation of the evidence the authorities have and an opportunity to present his side of the story." Notice and hearing should generally precede removal, except where the student's presence poses a continuing danger or ongoing threat of disruption.419 U.S. 565 (1975)

Limits & Counter-considerations

Outcomes come from administrative records, so part of the measured increase in offenses reflects detection and formal processing rather than changed behavior — the studies themselves flag this. Grant-based designs identify effects of marginal, federally funded SRO expansions, which may differ from long-standing programs; heterogeneity across programs (training, role definitions, MOUs limiting discipline involvement) is high; and long-run attainment effects rest chiefly on one (very large) study. Safety outcomes (especially rare gun events) are hard to power.