School-based police officers lack training and support that could reduce troubling disciplinary disparities facing girls of color, new research from Georgetown Law’s Center on Poverty and Inequality and the National Black Women’s Justice Institute finds.
The new report, “Be Her Resource: A Toolkit about School Resource Officers and Girls of Color,” is centered on first-of-their-kind focus groups and interviews with school resource officers (SROs) and girls to learn first-hand perspectives about their interactions. It offers strategies and guidance based on the findings to improve relations between SROs and girls of color at schools. The research was focused on the South, an area often overlooked in related research.