https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1608-1477
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ABSTRACT
In the context of a racialized moral panic around serious youth violence, we have seen a resurgence of calls to increase the presence of police in English schools in recent years. As well as a lack of popular and political opposition, there is a dearth of critical academic consideration of the placement of police in schools, and even less from a Critical Race Theory perspective. Given that teachers’ perspectives are relatively absent from academic and popular debates, this paper draws upon data from semi-structured interviews with 24 secondary school teachers. In doing so, the paper argues that an increased police presence in school will impact negatively upon learning environments, create a culture of low expectations, criminalize young people, and feed a school-to-prison pipeline. Noting that racially minoritized students will be affected most harshly, the article provides empirical evidence to warn against the presence of police in schools.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Laura Connelly, Jas Nijjar and Bridget Byrne for comments on versions of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Despite a lack of parliamentary opposition, there is considerable community resistance. See www.nopoliceinschools.co.uk
2. Whilst police forces use a range of different terms for roles that see officers working in/with schools, I use ‘school-based police officer’ here to refer to the range of arrangements that see police officers spending significant amounts of their work time in a school, or across several schools.
3. I use this term in the broadest sense in order to include research that might not specifically invoke CRT, but does otherwise share and uphold key features of the framework.
4. Under this deficit thinking, Black families are imagined as dysfunctional (often with ‘absent Black fathers’), chaotic, and disinterested in education. Asian families are seen to be stifling, over-bearing, reserved, and isolated. Obscuring the realities of racism, these ‘cultural deficit’ stereotypes are taken to be explanations for the educational challenges facing Black and Asian students.
5. For instance, the Safer Neighbourhood Team programme (ACPO Citation2013).
6. This guidance was first issued in 2009, and revised in 2013 (see: ACPO Citation2013).
7. This figure excludes British Transport Police and the Ministry of Defence Police (Henshall Citation2018).
8. See Connelly, Legane, and Joseph-Salisbury (Citation2020) for insights from young people.
9. This is consistent with data from two surveys that have been conducted since the interviews were carried out (see Connelly, Legane, and Joseph-Salisbury Citation2020), and NEU North West Black Members Organising Forum cited therein.
10. There is considerable evidence to show that racially minoritized officers are not exempt from perpetuating the institutional racism of the police force (Joseph-Salisbury and Connelly Citation2019)
11. This includes forms of information gathering that can be used to criminalize communities.
12. It is this divergence that Hayley perhaps nods to when she suggests that ‘this is not the Police’s job’.
13. I would add here that, if, following CRT, we understand racism to be institutional rather than only individual, we can see that schools, as institutions, can and do transmit racist messages regardless of the perspectives of individual teachers.
14. Several teachers recalled sessions with external speakers focusing on criminal justice. When classes were asked if they had been subject to ‘stop and search’ recently, all the Black students had raised their hands.
15. One might think, here, of Peggy McIntosh’s (Citation1989) seminal list of white privileges and add, ‘I can be in the presence of police and know that my race does not make me less safe’.
16. ‘We try not to have them here often I think there are very fractured relationships with the Police it’s not just among the BAME community I think here in general I think they have a shocking reputation. Personally, I don’t think they do themselves any favours’ (Becky).
17. In England, school-based police officers are more likely to be in schools with high levels of free school meals (a crude indicator of class) (Henshall Citation2018).