Student Race, School Police, and the School-To-Prison Pipeline: Mixed Evidence of Indirect Pathways

Authors

Michael Heise, Cornell Law School
Jason P. Nance, Southern Methodist University, Dedman School of LawFollow

ORCID (Links to author’s additional scholarship at ORCID.org)

Jason P. Nance: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0048-8117

Abstract

While research consistently finds that increases in a school’s SRO/police presence correspond with increases in the rate of school referrals of student disciplinary incidents to law enforcement agencies, direct evidence of distributional concerns across various student subgroups is scant. Drawing on data from the 2017–2018 School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS), this study explores the possibility that student racial effects might indirectly inform school law enforcement reporting activity. While results from a generalized structural equation modeling strategy (SEM) do not preclude the possibility, direct evidence of indirect student race effects on school police reports is mixed, at best.

Publication Title

Journal of School Violence

Document Type

Article

Keywords

School crime, School safety, SRO/police, Race, Empirical legal studies

Recommended Citation

Michael Heise & Jason P. Nance, Student Race, School Police, and the School-To-Prison Pipeline: Mixed Evidence of Indirect Pathways, 23 J. Sch. Violence 387 (2024)