The Surprising Cost of School Security

The safety of its students and staff should be of top priority to a school. But when a school is implementing new security measures when do the precautions — security cameras, closed campuses, restricted movement for the students — become too much?

“There is a point of diminishing returns for fortifying schools," says University of California, Berkeley's Calvin Morrill, professor of law and sociology and co-author with Michael Musheno of the new book, Navigating Conflict: How Youth Handle Trouble in a High-Poverty School. "It may be that some security measures can reduce, for example, the bringing of weapons, or can reduce some of the violence that one sees on a school campus, but the trade-off is that you may erode the very dynamics or mechanisms that make that school a thriving school.”

Morrill and his fellow researchers observed such a shift when conducting their research at a "safe, high-poverty school" for Navigating Conflict. As part of the safe schools movement of the 1990s, this school, which up until theis point had never had a major incident, implemented a variety of new security measures. The more precautions were put in place, the more the atmosphere of the school deteriorated.

“What began to pervade the campus was a sense of anxiety about what was going on on the campus,” says Morrill, noting that students' trust in teachers and administrators diminished, causing decreased participation in extracurriculars and even a violent incident that led to a lockdown. “The whole civic culture of the school began to erode and unravel.”

In this edition of the Harvard EdCast, Morrill discusses how one school's increased security policies altered its culture and how the current debate about school security can be informed by this experience.

About the Harvard EdCast

The Harvard EdCast is a weekly series of podcasts, available on the Harvard University iTunes U page, that features a 15-20 minute conversation with thought leaders in the field of education from across the country and around the world. Hosted by Matt Weber and co-produced by Jill Anderson, the Harvard EdCast is a space for educational discourse and openness, focusing on the myriad issues and current events related to the field.