When the Gun Free Schools Act of 1994 entered into force, zero tolerance policies brought with it strict punishments for youth that exhibited anti-social behaviour. In particular, the act required any region that received funding through the Elementary and Secondary School Education Act to adopt a policy to suspend a student for one year for bringing a firearm on school grounds. In turn, this manufactured a need to have police readily available to enforce zero tolerance.

These police officers came in the form of school resource officers (SROs) — law enforcement officials stationed in schools to uphold safety and security. In theory, SROs were meant to be community-building agents that worked to normalize community relations while functioning as the bridge between schools and precincts. In many schools, SROs in plain clothing also educated, coached, and mentored youth. The key separation between them and teachers was their legal authority to arrest and carry a weapon in schools.

Because gun violence and youth violent crime was on the rise leading up to 1994, the idea of SROs was generally accepted. As a result, the consistent presence of SROs in schools increased 27 per cent between 1999 and 2007. The SRO program’s growth was enabled by the allocation of $68 million through the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) in Schools Program. Research shows that this program led to 599 SROs being hired in 289 communities in 2000. Overall, from 1997 to 2003, the number of SROs in schools grew from over 9,000 to over 14,000.

As SRO programs expanded, so did the need to thoroughly understand its impact. Despite public affinity towards SRO programs, the research suggests that SROs are a microcosm of zero tolerance policies. Stated more plainly, SROs are ineffective in ensuring safety and security and have introduced a host of consequences.

The Impact of SROs on School

SROs have been found to have little effect on school safety. This was noted in a 2008 study of North Carolina’s SRO programs that surveyed SROs and principals indicated that the program did not create a safer environment. When crime on the schoolyard was analyzed, researchers found that schools did not experience significantly different mean crime rates after the program’s implementation. Given the cost, SRO programs were shown to deliver poor return on investment while also taking away from psychological safety.

Part of the reason that researchers found that the North Carolina school did not experience a significant change in crime rates is because violent incidents in schools, such as shootings or stabbings, are rare events. This is not to say that SROs are not useful in the scenario of a school mass shooting. In fact, in 2024, two SROs at Apalachee High School played important roles in stopping a 14-year-old student that killed four fellow students. Nonetheless, general findings suggest that there is no association between SROs and the deterrence of violence in the case of mass shootings.

Because SROs are neither actively nor consistently dealing with gun violence on school grounds, they are often left to address anti-social behaviour. On school grounds this translates to schoolyard fights or bullying. The problem is that, though unfortunate, these are normal school occurrences that are typically addressed by school administration. But over time, there is a transfer of power as school administration tends to overly on SROs to address anti-social behaviour. This results in a trend of referrals to law enforcement for offenses committed on school grounds.

Researchers have found that this increases the probability of students being arrested or eventually becoming incarcerated as opposed to correcting their path. They have also found that the reasons for arrest are more likely to be for minor offenses. Consider how during the 2004-05 school year in Florda, there were over 26,000 school related referrals to the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice. 72 per cent of those referrals were for misdemeanors such as disorderly conduct, trespassing, or assault, which were often byproducts of schoolyard fights. Further consider how, in a comparative study of schools with and without SROs, a University of Tennessee professor found that schools with SROs had approximately five times the number of arrests for disorderly conduct as schools without an SRO. This remained the case even after controlling for the level of economic disadvantage of the school.

When arrests occur, this typically implies the student has been suspended or expelled from the school. Expulsions eliminate positive interactions in school environments and force students to enroll in schools in other regions where a seamless integration might be challenging. At times, this can contribute to the hardship youth face in finding a meaningful path. In most cases, this has disproportionate effects on Black and racialized students, and more generally, students with low socio-economic status.

Key Takeaway

The story of SROs underscores a larger truth about zero tolerance: policies designed in the name of safety often expand the reach of punishment without producing the promised security. The presence of SROs has not consistently prevented violence but has reliably increased referrals, suspensions, and arrests for behaviours that schools once managed internally. In doing so, they have widened the pathways from school to prison, especially for Black, racialized, and low-income students. As with zero tolerance more broadly, SROs force us to ask whether we are equipping youth to thrive — or managing them through fear of discipline. To move forward, we must decide whether schools should mirror the logic of the justice system, or instead cultivate the conditions for safety rooted in care, support, and opportunity.