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Nature of Crime by School Resource Officers: Implications for SRO Programs

NCJ Number
248721
Date Published
February 2014
Length
10 pages
Annotation
School resource officers (SROs) have become a permanent presence in many K-12 schools throughout the country. As a result, an emerging body of research has focused on SROs, particularly on how SROs are viewed by students, teachers, and the general public. This exploratory and descriptive research uses a different focus by examining the nature of crimes for which SROs were arrested in recent years with information gathered from online news sources.
Abstract
The current findings are encouraging insofar as they reveal that SROs are rarely arrested for criminal misconduct. When SROs were arrested, however, they are most often arrested for a sex-related offense involving a female adolescent. These sex-related incidents generally occurred away from school property or during nonschool hours and rarely involved the use of physical force. The implications of these findings for SRO programs are discussed. (Publisher abstract)

Date Published: February 1, 2014