School Resource Officers Essay

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The Youth and School Resource Officers School Resource Officers (SROs) are sworn police officers trained to serve and protect the community. As such, they have a duty to serve and protect schools within their jurisdiction as part of a total community-policing strategy. Research has shown that the youth with healthy relationships and “protective factors” have a reduced chance of becoming involved in serious delinquency. These “protective factors” include adding school resource officers to school campuses with the growing number of at-risk students. It is important for schools to have SROs because the SRO’s role on school campus is keeping students safe and supporting the education mission not only as law enforcement officer but also as a teacher and a counselor. They aren’t at schools “just to bust people.” School Resource Officers are there to teach about the law and students rights and also to protect and help students succeed in a safe learning environment; this equals less crime and more success. Crime and Disciplinary Infractions on Campus and Beyond …show more content…

However, varied structures of SRO programs and inconsistency in local record-keeping practices prevent reviews of the impact of every SRO program nationwide. However, national juvenile-crime and school-based crime statistics, as well as state statistics and studies of county and local SRO programs, show how dramatically SROs can reduce crime not only on school campus, but also in the community. Since SRO programs came to prominence in the early 2000s, the juvenile arrests declined 17% across-the-board between 2000–2009. The violent-crime fell 13%, and the property-crime fell 19% during this period. Other assaults, vandalism, weapons, drug, DUI, curfew, and loitering offenses all fell as well (pg.24 national