SROs in Public Schools, and the School to Prison Pipeline

Ximena Mandujano

Schools should be a safe, encouraging, and trusting environment for students to learn. Unfortunately, that isn’t the reality for many students attending California public schools. Many of our public schools now have “School Resource Officers” on campus who are deputized officers who have the ability to make arrests. While their stated mission is to make schools safer for students, they often to the opposite; schools with sworn in resource officers arrest students at significantly higher rates than those without. On top of that, there are stark disparities in these arrests by race and disability status. Black students, particularly those who are male and have a disability, are far more likely to be arrested than their peers. Schools should be a place to learn, not a place where the systemic racism in our society manifests in school resource officers who funnel students into the prison system.

Check out Ximena’s one-pager here, and her presentation here!