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

Abstract

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.