Students’ Rights and School Resource Officers: How School Teams Can Protect Students

Abstract

As more schools integrate heightened security measures and staff, including SRO’s, into secondary schools, issues arise relating to violations of students’ rights as well as criminalization of students. This paper provides a critical lens to infringement on student rights as well as suggestions for school-based teams (including administrators and SROs) designed to transition safety training away from punitive criminalization of students (perpetuating the school to prison pipeline) and instead focus on proactive relationship building and understanding of students’ rights and needs.