HomeMy WebLinkAboutStudents feel safer with police presence in certain Ontario high schools: Study - Metro Toronto - 01/10/2018 - Metro Toronto - 01/10/20181/11/2018 Students feel safer with police presence in certain Ontario high schools: Study
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By: Peter Goffin The Canadian Press, Published on Wed Jain 10 2018
A program that places police officers in some southern Ontario high schools made students feel
safer and helped them build positive relationships with law enforcement, a study released
Wednesday concluded.
But some anti -racism activists argued the study that examined the program in Peel Region, west
of Toronto, failed to properly take into account the effect police presence in schools has on
students from racialized backgrounds and other vulnerable minority groups.
After conducting nearly 1,300 surveys of students and interviewing school administrators and
police, researchers from Carleton University said high schools in Peel — a region made up
of Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon — should continue the School Resource Officer
program, which has been operating in the area for over 20 years.
"Every single one of these different groups (said) students feel safer at school," said Carleton
business professor Linda Duxbury, one of the study's lead researchers. "The goal of the Peel
program is to make people feel safer in schools so they can learn more ... every single source of
data said it (met that goal)."
The Toronto District School Board ended a similar program of its own in November after a report
by board staff found black students and other minority groups felt harassed, targeted and unsafe
when police were in their schools.
The Toronto report focused primarily on the concerns of those vulnerable students, something
the Peel study failed to do, said Andrea Vasquez Jimenez, co-chair of the Latinx, Afro -Latin -
America, Abya Yala Education Network.
"If we are looking at these detrimental issues within our schools and beyond, we really have to ...
look at who it negatively impacts and put more importance on that," she said.
Duxbury said that because the Peel student surveys were anonymous, researchers were not
able to track the race or culture of respondents.
Eight students who were interviewed in person for the report all came from racialized
backgrounds, she noted. Researchers surveyed students from three public high schools and two
Catholic high schools, which were selected specifically because their populations represented a
wide variety of racial, cultural and income -related backgrounds, she added.
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1/11/2018 Students feel safer with police presence in certain Ontario high schools: Study
"One dominant finding is that every single group of students benefited and felt safer over time,"
Duxbury said.
The Peel study was specifically designed to measure the financial value of the program that
placed police in schools, not the views of different racial groups, Duxbury said.
Unlike other such programs in Canada, Peel's assigns an officer to every high school in the
region. With an annual cost of $9 million to Peel police, the program is one of the most expensive
of its kind, Duxbury said.
"There's a lot of discussion on the cost of policing, the economics of policing," Duxbury said.
"People were very, very concerned, (saying), 'Look at how much police are costing, how can we
get value for money?"'
The study tried to calculate the program's "social return on investment" — a means of placing an
approximate dollar value on non-financial, even intangible results.
For example, having officers in schools decreases the number of calls Peel police have to
respond to, leading to a savings in the police budget, the study found.
Officers who build a relationship with a student may be more likely to divert that student towards
rehabilitation programs outside the justice system if the student gets in trouble, the study also
found. This keeps those kids in school and out of jail — outcomes researchers attached
approximate dollar values to.
Overall, the study found, Peel police got $11.13 of value for every $1 they spent on the program.
The Peel District School Board said there was "tremendous value" in the program.
"Through a partnership that is adaptive, responsive and focused on student success and well-
being, we look forward to working together with police to support all of our students so that every
child and teen feels safe, respected and included," the board's director of education, Peter
Joshua, said in a statement.
Black Lives Matter Toronto co-founder Sandy Hudson said the safety and well-being of racialized
students in particular should have been the focus of the report.
"This (program) is essentially police officers being able to extract information from minors without
their parents being present," Hudson said. "That, to me, should concern all parents and concern
all educators who are trying to keep their students safe."
Duxbury said the study found no evidence that random checks, or carding, was occurring in Peel
high schools. Most often, students approach school resource officers with a problem or a
question, as opposed to officers seeking out students, she said.
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