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School police officers' roles: The influence of social, developmental and historical contexts

Amid national protests over police brutality, debates over law enforcement in schools have been reignited. Though research has focused on the consequences of police presence in schools, few studies have investigated the roles of school police officers (SPOs) and whether the larger contexts influence...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Ghavami, Negin, Thornton, Bryan E., Graham, Sandra
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier Ltd. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7495190/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32958967
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2020.101724
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author Ghavami, Negin
Thornton, Bryan E.
Graham, Sandra
author_facet Ghavami, Negin
Thornton, Bryan E.
Graham, Sandra
author_sort Ghavami, Negin
collection PubMed
description Amid national protests over police brutality, debates over law enforcement in schools have been reignited. Though research has focused on the consequences of police presence in schools, few studies have investigated the roles of school police officers (SPOs) and whether the larger contexts influence them. Using a bioecological framework (Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 2006), we examined how historical, social and developmental contexts shape SPOs' views of their roles and the challenges and opportunities they encounter. Nineteen 90-min focus groups with 45 SPOs from one large school police department were conducted. Analysis revealed that SPOs perceived their roles as multifaceted, encompassing both formal (e.g., law enforcer, educator) and informal (e.g., confidante, counselor) roles. These roles were enacted differently depending on the school level and neighborhood context. Furthermore, the challenges and opportunities SPOs reported were also contextualized emerging from changes in school policies, the rise in technology and social media and increased professionalization of their police department. Implications for theory and research as well as for training and policy are discussed.
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spelling pubmed-74951902020-09-17 School police officers' roles: The influence of social, developmental and historical contexts Ghavami, Negin Thornton, Bryan E. Graham, Sandra J Crim Justice Article Amid national protests over police brutality, debates over law enforcement in schools have been reignited. Though research has focused on the consequences of police presence in schools, few studies have investigated the roles of school police officers (SPOs) and whether the larger contexts influence them. Using a bioecological framework (Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 2006), we examined how historical, social and developmental contexts shape SPOs' views of their roles and the challenges and opportunities they encounter. Nineteen 90-min focus groups with 45 SPOs from one large school police department were conducted. Analysis revealed that SPOs perceived their roles as multifaceted, encompassing both formal (e.g., law enforcer, educator) and informal (e.g., confidante, counselor) roles. These roles were enacted differently depending on the school level and neighborhood context. Furthermore, the challenges and opportunities SPOs reported were also contextualized emerging from changes in school policies, the rise in technology and social media and increased professionalization of their police department. Implications for theory and research as well as for training and policy are discussed. Elsevier Ltd. 2021 2020-09-17 /pmc/articles/PMC7495190/ /pubmed/32958967 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2020.101724 Text en © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Ghavami, Negin
Thornton, Bryan E.
Graham, Sandra
School police officers' roles: The influence of social, developmental and historical contexts
title School police officers' roles: The influence of social, developmental and historical contexts
title_full School police officers' roles: The influence of social, developmental and historical contexts
title_fullStr School police officers' roles: The influence of social, developmental and historical contexts
title_full_unstemmed School police officers' roles: The influence of social, developmental and historical contexts
title_short School police officers' roles: The influence of social, developmental and historical contexts
title_sort school police officers' roles: the influence of social, developmental and historical contexts
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7495190/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32958967
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2020.101724
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