Role of Law Enforcement in Public School Safety

Project summary for 2001-IJ-CX-0011 The proposed project will conduct a national survey of public schools to determine the level and extent of public law enforcement in school environments. The survey will identify what events lead to the involvement of law enforcement in different types of school safety strategies, the role of law enforcement in those strategies, and the degree to which law enforcement is integrated into overall approaches to school safety and the general school community. The applicant will also conduct in-depth case studies of selected school-law enforcement relationships. The project goal is to define an optimal role for law enforcement officers in schools, recognizing that this role may be school or jurisidiction specific. Data will be used from the U.S. Department of Education's Common Core of Data, which describes all public schools in the nation, to determine the number and size of school types with school-based efforts. The applicant will apply cluster analysis to characteristics (such as size, grade, urban-city, and funding) that have been linked to differences in crime and order problems, and anticipates identifying 10 to 15 distinct types (clusters) of schools.