The Transition from DARE to the School Resource Officer Approach in Redlands, CA
Organization Name:
Community Name:
Organization or Community Type:
What was the criminal justice problem facing the community?
Description of Problem:
In the late 1990s, the City of Redlands, CA, had been implementing the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program for more than 15 years. Despite adhering to the program model and implementing DARE with fidelity, the Redlands Police Department (PD) could not demonstrate compelling causal evidence between the DARE program and positive outcomes in crime prevention, drugs and substance abuse, law enforcement or youth advocacy. The disconnect between investment and impact concerned criminal justice leaders and community stakeholders. When new research showed that the DARE program was only limitedly effective or ineffective at reaching key program goals, Redlands PD learned that its experience was not unique. As a result, Redlands decided to phase out the DARE program and replace it with an approach guided by a risk-based policing framework.
What factors were contributing to the criminal justice problem?:
- High and sustained incidence of youth violence
- Implementation of a program with limited evidence of effectiveness (DARE)
- Policy intervention framework disconnected from evidence and program evaluation data
Criminal Justice Topic area:
Crime Justice Sub-Topic area:
Which evidence-based solutions were recommended for this problem?
Name of evidence-based program or practice:
Description of Evidence-Based Program or Practice:
Redlands implemented a solution grounded in a firm understanding of youth risk and protection factors, which alternatively increase and decrease youth propensity for problem behaviors. Using data on five problem behaviors – violence, substance abuse, delinquency, school dropout and teen pregnancy – Redlands analyzed and weighed interventions that could reduce the risk factors for these behaviors and increase protective factors to the benefit of local children and youth. Ultimately, Redlands used this evidence-based framework to justify the elimination of the DARE program and the introduction of School Resource Officers (SROs). With one SRO assigned fulltime to each public school in Redlands’ jurisdiction, SROs functioned as liaisons between the domains of education and criminal justice. SROs applied their deep knowledge of school dynamics and understanding student relationships to mitigate risk, enhance protection and manage crises.
SROs operated with the understanding that each school has its own organizational culture and systems; generally, police officers and educators have different – and divergent – ideas of how best to interact with children. By assigning an SRO to each public school in Redlands, the police department was able to bridge prior gaps in understanding between police officers and educators; build strong, positive relationships between police officers and students; and adopt a holistic approach to mitigate potential problem behaviors and improve outcomes for local students and youth.
How was the evidence-based solution implemented?
Response Strategy:
Based on a risk-focused policing framework, the response strategy was sequenced to learn lessons from the outgoing DARE program, understand stakeholder support/opposition for the strategy, implement the new strategy to mitigate youth problem behaviors and sustain and build upon intervention success.
- Identifying Lessons Learned from DARE. Redlands PD leaders observed that, though evaluations of the DARE program showed limited effectiveness in meeting key program goals, the police officers who taught the program in classroom enjoyed strong, positive and long-lasting relationships with students. The leaders hypothesized that regular, sustained interaction with police officers encouraged students to shift prior negative perceptions of law enforcement officers and view them as helpful and concerned authority figures, rather than rule enforcers. Seeking to capitalize on the mutual respect and trust engendered by these relationships between police officers and students, Redlands PD sought to install a police officer as a long-term presence with a school-wide perspective in each public school.
- Build Support to Phase Out DARE. When Redlands PD leaders asked school administrators whether they would like to keep or replace the DARE program, administrators universally and resoundingly answered that they would prefer to have instruction time added back to the school day and adopt an alternative approach to preempt and mitigate youth problem behaviors. By approaching and engaging stakeholders within the school system, Redlands PD confirmed that there were no barriers to change and simultaneously established/reaffirmed the value of the perspective of educators and school administrators.
- Assign an SRO to Each School. By reassigning existing resources and selectively hiring new officers, Redlands PD staffed an SRO to each public school in the jurisdiction – four elementary schools, two middle schools and one high school. By bridging the education and criminal justice domains, SROs were able to bring comprehensive solutions to bear to benefit students and their families. For example, students exhibiting low attachment to school (extremely high tardy/delinquency rate) received special attention and short-term, intensive intervention: police officers identified these students using school data, went to their homes, interviewed parents or guardians to understand the home environment and family dynamic, drove the students to school and recommended long-term solutions to the students’ custodians. SROs’ responsibilities and purview far exceeded those of the former DARE officers, allowing them to become brokers between youth and a wide variety of community services and programs.
- Implement an Enduring Framework for Knowledge Management, Collaboration and Culture Change. With an SRO stationed at each public school in Redlands, the new framework allowed officers to alert each other as students or cohorts of concern graduated from elementary school to middle school, and from middle school to high school. This approach to knowledge management allowed officers and educators to maintain heightened situational awareness and sustain outcomes achieved by previous interventions. Further, to enhance collaboration between police officers and educators, Redlands PD allowed school district administrators access to communicate over police radio, reducing response time and confusion in the event of emergencies. Collectively, the carefully sequenced tactics of Redlands’ response strategy facilitated the building and deepening of relationships and encouraged a culture change within the police department and schools to the benefit of students and youth.
Stakeholder Groups Involved:
Before and throughout implementation, Redlands PD engaged school district leaders, principals and teachers, community organizations and non-profits and other local governmental providers of municipal services to understand potential barriers and to harness the enthusiasm of supportive stakeholders.
Estimated Cost to Implement:
The phase out of the DARE program and introduction of the SRO approach was a low-cost solution. To minimize cost, Redlands PD leaders reassigned officers and reallocated existing resources. To close the gap between the number of existing officers and the number of officers to implement a successful SRO approach, Redlands PD hired a few additional staff and funded this expansion through grant funding.
Estimated Time to Implement:
Impact and Outcomes
The Redlands PD conducted a year-long internal investigation to evaluate the impact of establishing a SRO within each school in the City of Redlands. The analysis revealed measurable increases in positive outcomes for students and youth through the reduction of risk factors and increase in protective factors. The analysis demonstrated that those schools that implemented the SRO approach exhibited a decrease in crime, compared to the crime rates before the introduction of SROs. In addition to the reduction in crime, the SRO approach was also successful in improving the perception of law enforcement officials among students, teachers and school administrators. The qualitative feedback from local school administrators, principals and parents was overwhelmingly, if not universally, positive.
Lessons Learned
Communities considering similar programmatic changes should incorporate the following best practices gleaned from the experience of the Redlands PD in transitioning from DARE to the SRO approach:
- Build relationships and collaborate with school administrators, educators and students
- Devise an approach to knowledge management that allows for maintenance and expansion of institutional memory
- Incorporate innovative, holistic approaches for replacing ineffective programs with new, data-driven programs
- Understand knowledge management before recommending or adopting new policing intervention or community engagement methods
- Identify and reduce risk factors, while simultaneously enhancing protective factors
- Hire a fulltime criminologist for your police department to analyze local crime and criminogenic data
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