Nationwide calls to “Defund the Police,” largely attributable to the resurgent Black Lives Matter demonstrations, have motivated derivative calls for public school districts to consider “defunding” (or modifying) school resource officer (“SRO/police”) programs. To be sure, a school’s SRO/police presence—and the size of that presence—may influence the school’s student discipline reporting policies and practices. How schools report student discipline and whether that reporting involves referrals to law enforcement agencies matters, particularly as reports may fuel a growing “school-to-prison pipeline.” The school-to-prison pipeline research literature features two general claims that frame debates about changes in how public schools approach student discipline and the growing number of calls for schools to defund SRO/police programs. One claim is that public schools’ increasingly “legalized” approach toward student discipline increases the likelihood that students will be thrust into the criminal justice system. A second distributional claim is that these adverse consequences disproportionately involve students of color, boys, students from low-income households, and other vulnerable student sub-groups. Both claims implicate important legal and policy dimensions, as students’ adverse interactions with law enforcement agencies typically impose negative consequences on students and their futures. We study both claims using the nation’s leading data set on public school crime and safety, supplemented by data on state-level mandatory reporting requirements and district-level per pupil spending, and explore three distinct analytic approaches in an effort to assess the independent influence of a school’s SRO/police presence on that school’s student discipline reporting behavior. Results from our analyses provide mixed support for the two claims. We find that a school’s SRO/police presence corresponds with an increased likelihood that the school will report student incidents to law enforcement agencies. However, we do not find support in the school-level data for the distributional claim.

全国范围内呼吁“取消对警察的资助”，主要归因于重新兴起的“黑人的命也是命”示威活动，这促使衍生呼吁公立学区考虑“取消资助”（或修改）学校资源官（“SRO/警察”）计划。可以肯定的是，学校的 SRO/警察存在——以及存在的规模——可能会影响学校的学生纪律报告政策和做法。学校如何报告学生纪律以及该报告是否涉及转介给执法机构很重要，特别是因为报告可能会推动“从学校到监狱的管道”不断增长。从学校到监狱的管道研究文献有两个一般性主张，它们围绕公立学校如何处理学生纪律的变化以及越来越多的要求学校取消 SRO/警察计划的呼吁展开辩论。一种说法是，公立学校对学生纪律日益“合法化”的做法增加了学生被推入刑事司法系统的可能性。第二个分配主张是，这些不利后果不成比例地涉及有色人种学生、男孩、低收入家庭学生和其他弱势学生群体。这两种说法都涉及重要的法律和政策层面，因为学生与执法机构的不利互动通常会对学生及其未来产生负面影响。我们使用全国领先的公立学校犯罪和安全数据集研究这两项声明，并辅以州级强制性报告要求和地区级每名学生支出数据，并探索三种不同的分析方法，以评估学校的 SRO/警察存在对该学校学生纪律报告行为的独立影响。我们的分析结果为这两种说法提供了混合支持。我们发现，学校的 SRO/警察存在与学校向执法机构报告学生事件的可能性增加相对应。然而，我们没有在学校层面的数据中找到支持分布声明的证据。