Study Finds Metal Detectors More Common in High-Minority Schools

Minority students in a high-poverty neighborhood are more likely to pass through a metal detector on the way to class than their better-off and white peers are, even if the schools are equally safe, according to new research.

Researchers at the University of Delaware and the University of California, Irvine, based their findings on a study of nationally representative school data. {snip}

{snip} Yet, even after accounting for the levels of crime on schools’ campuses and in the surrounding neighborhoods, the researchers found that high-poverty schools were disproportionately likely to use such security mechanisms, and that the racial makeup of the student enrollment was a powerful predictor of whether the school would use metal detectors.

“It’s not that the more violent schools get metal detectors, or even the urban schools get metal detectors–though that’s true,” said co-author Aaron Kupchik, an associate professor in sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware. “It’s that schools with more students of color are more likely to get metal detectors, at every level, even elementary levels.”

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Even after controlling for student behavior, neighborhood crime, and other safety indicators, researchers found that schools with higher concentrations of poor students were more likely than their better-off counterparts to have a full-time security or policy officer, drug-sniffing dogs, locked gates in elementary schools, and metal detectors in middle school.

The percentage of minority students in a school strongly predicted whether it would use metal detectors at all grade levels.

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Daniel A. Domenech, the executive director of the Arlington, Va.-based American Association of School Administrators, said that administrators don’t take student demographics into account when designing their security plans; they usually respond to specific violent incidents and national trends.

“Nobody is going to say we have a school and they’re all minorities and they’re poor, so we need to put more security on that building,” Mr. Domenech said.

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