1. School Security Personnel and Student Arrests
Tim Servoss
Canisius College
10/22/18

2. Research Questions
Is the presence of security personnel (SROs and/or guards) associated with an increase in overall student arrests?
Is the presence of security personnel (SROs and/or guards) associated with an increase in Black student arrests?
Not the usual language regarding disparities which I’ll discuss later

3. Data and Measures 2015-2016 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC)
Universe of schools (n = 96,360)
Arrests disaggregated by race and sex
Underreported
Cleaned at both the district and school level
School security personnel
FTE law enforcement officers and security guards
Due to processing error set to missing for 69k schools
School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS)
Nationally representative sample
Middle and high schools (n = 1500)
Security: personnel and non-personnel
School characteristics: urbanicity, region, SES, neighborhood crime, academics, misbehavior and crime in the school
Most of the analyses are based on a merged datasets

4. Measures Security Arrests
Personnel: Each school categorized as having None (23%), Guard Only (7%), Police Only (46%), Both Guards and Police (24%)
Non-personnel security scaled using dichotomous Rasch model
Arrests
Low frequency outcome
89% of schools in sample have none
Size Cat
Arrest Group
Zero
Low
High
Small (1-474)
1-2
>2
Medium ( )
1-4
>4
Large (>870)
1-7
>7 N
1063 85 43
Avg. Arrests
2.38
20.64
Arrests are tricky because not a lot of them overall arrest rate well below 1%

5. Arrest Group (COLUMN %)
Personnel and Arrests
Personnel
Arrest Group (ROW %)
Category
ZERO
LOW
HIGH
NONE
90.9%
8.2%
0.9%
GUARD ONLY
80.2%
16.3%
3.5%
POLICE ONLY
79.1%
14.5%
6.4%
BOTH
67.6%
19.6%
12.8%
Personnel
Arrest Group (COLUMN %)
Category
ZERO
LOW
HIGH
NONE
27.5%
13.8%
3.5%
GUARD ONLY
6.6%
7.4%
POLICE ONLY
45.8%
46.6%
45.9%
BOTH
20.1%
32.3%
47.1%
79% of schools with police only have no arrests
67.6% of schools with both police and guards have no arrests
80% OF LOW ARREST SCHOOL HAVE POLICE OR BOTH
93% OF HIGH ARREST SCHOOLS HAVE POLICE OR BOTH

6. Multiple Regression (multinomial)
Low vs Zero Arrests
High vs Zero Arrests
Urbanicity (town < rural)
Urbanicity (No)
Region (South 2.7x > Midwest)
Region (No)
Neighborhood crime (No)
%Free lunch (No)
% students <15th percentile (No)
School misbehavior (No)
School misbehavior (Yes; 1.26)
School crime (Moderate 3.0x > Low; High 4.3x > Low)
School crime (Moderate 4.1x > Low; High 7.7x > Low)
Security measures (No)
Security personnel (No)
Security personnel (Yes)
--No effect of Guards only
--Police only 3.8x > No personnel
--Both 4.6x > No personnel
Talk about DV contrasts Low vs Zero

7. Hi Arrest vs. Zero Both vs. Police Only
Roles that SROs play and their relationship to student arrests
Hi Arrest vs. Zero
Both vs. Police Only
Motor vehicle traffic control
Security enforcement and patrol
Maintaining school discipline
Coordinating with local police and emergency teams
Identifying problems in the school and proactively seeking solutions
Training teachers/staff in school safety or crime prevention
Mentoring students
Teaching a law-related education course or training students
Recording/reporting discipline problems to school authorities
Providing information to school authorities about the legal definitions of behavior for recording/reporting purposes NO NO NO NO
YES! (3.62)
YES! (1.47) NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO
Recall that 79% of police only schools and 67.6% of both school have no arrests, so something is different/working
Let’s look at the 70% of schools that have police (46% police only; 24% both)
Hi arrest vs 0 (maintain discipline = 85%; record/report discipline = 92%; define student behavior as crime 95%)
Police vs Both NO NO
YES! (3.42)
YES! (1.44)
YES! (5.40)
YES! (1.83)

8. Racial/ethnic disproportionality
From CRDC
Group
% Arrested
OR vs White
% of arrests
% of pop
Black
0.26
3.59
36.1
15.3
Hispanic
0.11
1.46
24.0
25.0
White
0.07 --
33.1
50.1
Imbalance within schools
92.3% of schools arrest the same proportion of Black and White students
3.2% (n = 2462) of schools arrest a greater proportion of White than Black student
4.5% (n = 3526) of schools arrest a greater proportion of Black than White students
114 of these schools have no White students
39% of these are 1-0 schools
About 25% of these schools arrest the same or more White students but proportionally more Black students.
So ideally we would have a measure of disproportion that we could calculate for each student but particularly once we merge the CRDC with the 1500 schools with SSOCS there’s not much variability

9. Predictors of Black student arrests
Low vs Zero Arrests
High vs Zero Arrests
Urbanicity (City 2.4x > rural)
Urbanicity (No)
Region (South 2.5x > Midwest)
Region (No)
Neighborhood crime (High 3.0X > Low)
Neighborhood crime (No)
%Free lunch (No)
% students <15th percentile (No)
School misbehavior (No)
School crime (High 7.7x > Low)
School crime (High 4.5x > Low)
Security measures (No)
Security personnel (No)
Security personnel (Yes)
--No effect of Guards only
--Police only 4.8x > No personnel
--No effect of Police only
--Both 4.6x > No personnel
--Both 5.0x > No personnel
Questions: What’s

10. Unanswered questions/issues
What is the dynamic in schools with both police and guards that appears to be particularly related to arresting students?
Is the absence of arresting students sufficient rationale for having police in schools?
Data issues
Underreporting of arrests
School-level measure of disproportionality for arrests