Policing and the Safety Logic in the School Context: Perceptions of Danger and Definitions of Law Enforcement

Abstract

How police construct definitions of law enforcement has been a longstanding inquiry in criminology. This research has demonstrated that police subculture values, such as how police are socialized to hyperfocus on danger and safety, can have a strong influence on officer decisions. These cultural logics can intersect with conditions of the environment to shape definitions of law enforcement. Particularly, school police offer an opportunity to elucidate how these cultural logics are used to construct definitions across contexts. We draw from 26 interviews with school police to investigate what cultural logic is used to construct law enforcement definitions. We illustrate how definitions were driven by a safety logic, which structured wide-ranging student behaviors as underspecified signals of danger mandating legal intervention.