EDUCATION UNDER ARREST: - Justice Policy Institute

EDUCATION UNDER ARREST 9PART IVSCHOOLS DON’T NEED SROSTO BE SAFEAll schools should be safe places for students and faculty, but schools do not needschool resource officers to be safe. The most recent survey of students indicatesthat student-reported incidents of violence and theft are at the lowest levels since1993.Of course, this is not to minimize the sense ofsafety that teachers and students may or maynot have at their individual schools. Yellingmatches, fights in the hall, and other incidentscan create a sense of disruption and lack ofsafety in some schools more than others.Recent efforts to scale back law enforcementinvolvement in schools have not causedincreases in school crime, and in the fewinstances where it has been tried, incidents ofstudent misbehavior have decreased. Other, morepositive, evidence-based responses to studentRate of self-reported offenses per 1,000 students180160140120100806040200The total rate of self-reported school-based offenses per 1,000 students,including violent and theft, fell 69 percent between 1993 and 2008.14495 96 944815515059 56135855012178102 1016343 40 439258 593372 7346 4526 2864402473452855 56 57433 32 312422 2426 241992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008Violent Crimes (Serious Violent Crimes and Simple Assault) Theft TOTALSource: National Center for Education Statistics, “Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 2010,” Table 2.1:Number of student-reported nonfatal crimes ages 12 – 18 and rate of crimes per 1,000 students, by location, typeof crime, and year: 1992-2008. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/iscs10.pdfNote: Data from 2006 are not included because the National Crime Victimization Survey changed the surveyquestions, making them incomparable to previous years.