Protocol for a Systematic Review: Policing Schools Strategies to Reduce Crime, Increase Perceptions of Safety, and Improve Learning Outcomes in Primary and Secondary Schools

The presence of gangs, drugs, bullying, weapons, and other criminal activity is associated with negative effects on school culture and student learning (e.g., Henry, 2000). Schools and school districts have long turned to police interventions to address these and other challenges to improve school safety (Shaw, 2004). In turn, police departments have also recognized the importance of developing strategies in collaboration with schools, such as special truant units or police-school liaisons, to combat school-based crime and disorder or to develop more positive relationships with youth (Shaw, 2004). Although school-based police interventions are controversial (see below), American educators and the public are increasingly open to their implementation (Cook, Gottfredson, & Na, 2009). Police presence on school grounds has grown dramatically following several high-profile shootings (Brown, 2006). In particular, the recent massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in December, 2012, has renewed calls for deploying armed police in schools, a proposal offered by both President Obama and the National Rifle Association. Increased police presence and intervention at schools has also been reported in the United Kingdom and other European nations (Smith, 2003). Research suggests that juvenile violence has been on the decline in the United States since the mid-1990s (Gottesman & Schwarz, 2011), and schools remain safe places for students (relative to their time outside of the school setting). However, a considerable amount of crime and misbehavior has always occurred in educational settings—a result of placing large numbers of children together in one setting. For example, the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice report that during the 2009–2010 school year, 85% of public schools reported that at least one violent crime, theft, or other crime occurred at their school (Robers, Zhang, & Truman, 2012). Over half of administrators surveyed in the 2009–2010 School Survey on Crime and Safety reported at least one student threat to physically attack another person, with or without a weapon (Neiman, 2011). Moreover, in 2007, 8% of students in high school reported being threatened or injured with a weapon during the previous 12 months (Dinkes, Kemp, & Baum, 2009). The problem of school violence, crime, and disorder is not just an American issue. Estimates of school-related crime from other countries are more difficult to obtain, but the European Observatory on School Violence (EOSV) has been collating data from nations such as the U.K., Germany, France, and Spain (Debarbieux, 2003). For example, the EOSV has found that nearly 6% of U.K. teachers report being threatened or attacked at school, 20% of Spanish students report that they have committed some form of vandalism at school, between 15–46% of German students report carrying a weapon to school, and over 25% of French students report being involved in a physical assault on school property (Debarbieux, 2003). These international estimates dovetail with a recent World Health Organization (WHO) report that listed violence as the world's priority public health issue (Krug, Mercy, Dahlberg, & Ziwi, 2002). The WHO report has generated a renewed focus on youth violence and, more specifically, on school violence, in such organizations as the United Nations Economic, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, 2007). The European Observatory's offspring, the International Observatory on Violence in the School Environment, was inspired in part by growing interest in this issue by nations around the globe. Given the high levels of crime and disorder present at schools in the U.S. and in other nations, it is not a surprise that police and educators would collaborate in order to combat it. Shaw's (2004) international review of police-school practices categorized such strategies into three groups: (1) school-based police officer programs; (2) police as ‘teachers’ (i.e., curriculum approaches such as the police officer teaching the students about drug, gang, or sexual abuse prevention); and (3) comprehensive or broad-based liaison programs in which police and other social service agencies are involved with the schools. Shaw reported that non-curricular policing programs (e.g., police patrol strategies, problem-oriented or community policing tactics, assigning school resource officers or police-school liaison offices, or other measures) have been implemented in a wide range of countries, including the U.S., U.K., Canada, Germany, Denmark, Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Estonia, Poland, and South Africa, at least through 2003. Shaw's review was globally comprehensive but not systematic; she concluded her synthesis (2004, p. 26) with a future research agenda that includes “a more comprehensive, comparative review of police-school interventions” and “the systematic collection and documentation of good practice models and tools.” To our knowledge, there has not previously been a systematic review of evaluative evidence specific to the “policing schools” area, with the exception of police-led curriculum efforts such as Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E) (Ennett, Tobler, Ringwalt, & Flewelling, 1994; West & O'Neal, 2004). In other words, while police departments maintain a significant presence in many schools, there is not yet a research-based consensus on whether School Resource Officer or special police-school liaison programs, or other policing schools strategies make schools safer and reduce criminal or delinquent behavior and non-criminal student misbehavior (such as bullying and harassment). There is also no agreement on whether the presence of police enhances perceptions of safety by students or staff. Critics of school-based policing argue that police in schools represent an unnecessary expense and may have unintended negative consequences for students, teachers, and staff (e.g., Petteruti, 2011). For example, police presence in the schools could lead to behavior normally handled informally by schools to be criminalized by arrest and formal charges (e.g., Petteruti, 2011). The National Association of School Psychologists (2013) recently issued a brief that summarized a number of potential harms from increasing police and security at schools, including sending a signal to students that their campus is unsafe, increasing fear, and undermining school climate. In 2012, Petrosino, Guckenburg and Fronius reported on a scoping study using systematic review techniques to assess the state of the evaluation evidence in this area. They located 11 quasi-experiments available that had a comparison group. Only one would have met the minimum evidentiary standards of the What Works Clearinghouse in education, and most of the studies would have been scored a “3” by the Maryland Scale of Scientific Methods: a common approach to rating evaluations in justice. However, they did not attempt any meta-analysis, and their review covered the literature through 2009. This proposed systematic search is designed to build upon Shaw's (2004) work and recommendations, and the earlier Petrosino, Guckenburg and Fronius (2012) scoping study, to provide a systematic review of research on the effects of policing schools strategies. A general theory of change for policing schools strategies is provided in the Figure in Appendix A. As the Figure denotes, there are a number of anticipated interventions that we expect fall under the “policing schools” strategies, including various police patrol strategies, school resource officer allocation, police-school liaisons, safe routes/corridor programs, and community and problem-oriented policing strategies specifically targeting the schools. Programs that solely involve the police officer teaching a specific prevention curriculum such as D.A.R.E., G.R.E.A.T., or sexual abuse prevention are not eligible, though interventions that combine curricular and non-curricular strategies would be included. Policing programs that involve providing information on school crime or data to schools would be included, if the police are not teaching a curriculum or lesson plan. These programs and strategies are expected to increase police presence activities and interaction with students and staff at the schools. Police presence serves as a deterrent to crime and misbehavior, and police establish relationships that allow them to gather information to prevent or intervene with students who may be planning a crime. In turn, this should reduce criminal behavior and non-criminal student misconduct; increase perceptions of safety by students, staff, and parents; and lead to more positive relationships between police with young persons and with the schools. This should also result in increased attendance, test scores, and grades, and improved perceptions of school climate. However, there is the possibility of unintended negative consequences that police presence leads to heavy surveillance, resulting in police coming across more misbehavior by youth, leading to overuse of arrest for behavior normally handled informally by schools and to more push-outs of students (disproportionately affecting racial and ethnic minorities, and youth with disabilities). Police presence could also lead to increased fear of crime and misbehavior by sending a signal to the school community that the building is unsafe. The types of learning outcomes we anticipate are grades, attendance/absenteeism, dropout, test scores, and perceptions of school climate. The types of non-educational outcomes we anticipate are measures of safety such as police reports, calls for service, arrests, school disciplinary reports, self-reports of student behavior, self-reports by staff of safety and fear, self-reports by students of safety and fear, and measures of parent fear for their youth at school. The objectives are to systematically review the research to answer three research questions relevant to potential positive effects of police-school programs, and two questions relevant to a potential unintended negative consequence. For this project, we will only include those studies that have the following characteristics: A quasi-experimental evaluation that would meet the study inclusion criteria was reported in the United Kingdom (Bhabra, Hill, & Ghate, 2004). The study evaluated the location of one police officer in each of 11 schools located within ten designated “crime hot spots” in the United Kingdom. The results were compared to two schools that were also in high crime areas that did not have a police officer assigned. Esbensen, Osgood, Taylor, Peterson, & Freng (2001) reported on a quasi-experimental evaluation of a police-taught curriculum designed to prevent adolescent gang involvement, Gang Resistance Education Awareness Training (G.R.E.A.T.). Because this study involves police teaching a curriculum in the schools, it would not be included in this review. We will rely on five major strategies to identify eligible evaluations published through 2013. These are: The databases listed in Appendix B can be somewhat idiosyncratic. Our approach is to conduct pilot searches of terms, working iteratively until the yield of citations and abstracts is as relevant as possible. In other words, we want to maximize sensitivity (getting as many citations and abstracts as possible) and specificity (making sure that as many as possible are relevant to the project). Our planned search strategy combines three types of keywords. The first set of keywords (and their derivatives) targets outcome studies: e.g., “random,” “experiment,” “control,” “evaluate,” “trial,” “impact,” “effect,” and “outcome.” A second set of keywords focuses the search on schools and education institutions: e.g., “student,” “school,” “district,” “classroom,” “academy,” “,” “campus,” “teacher,” “principal,” “faculty,” “bully,” “truancy,” and “superintendent.” The third set of keywords focuses the search on policing, including keywords such as “police,” “patrol,” “sheriff,” “constable,” “enforcement,” “officer,” and “security.” When the database does not permit extensive lists of keywords to be combined, simpler searches involving words such as “police” and “schools” will be used. For example, a proposed search in Criminal Justice Abstracts would be: Query: AB=(Columbine or school* or student* or campus* or teacher* or truan* or vandal* or classroom*) and AB=(experiment* or evaluat* or assess* or impact* or outcome* or effect* or randomly or randomize* or “comparison group” or “control group” or controls or comparisons or “control condition” or “comparison condition” or “time series”) and AB=(police* or “law enforcement” or patrol* or policing or “security guard” or “security measure*” or “crime prevention” or sheriff* or “cop” or “cops” or constabl* or detective* or undercover or “school crime” or “school violence” or “school safety” or “school security” or “resource officer*) or ”problem-oriented”). Search methods will usually result in a large number of citations and abstracts. The review author conducting the search will save the results from the searches described earlier and mark those for which full-text should be retrieved. This will be examined by at least one other co-author to ensure that there is agreement on the selections. Since three are in conducting of this no is of these will be as not being relevant to the proposed review. In some they will identify eligible The of those eligible studies will be and by the the study can be included. 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We will information about the quasi-experimental and other of the The of and whether the study included at levels will also be is that information about three in the implementation be from each study These will of the intervention and including the of the being and the number of to each group. The types of interventions that we expect include School Resource Officer police-school liaison programs, problem-oriented policing strategies, and police at the school to crime within or around the school, or to ensure safe for children as they to school. We anticipate that the evaluations in this review will be of a intervention and a group. 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