Abstract
The actions and behaviour among students in Swedish schools previously described as teasing, fighting and ‘school trouble’ have gradually come to be positioned and understood within a legal discourse. Self-assessment surveys conducted with students in grade nine, from 1995 onwards, do not, however, reveal any marked increase in violence among young people over time. Consequently, it is possible to identify signification spirals, where certain issues of concern are identified, certain groups of people are targeted, and the issues are gradually multiplied and linked together, leading to an escalation of the threat and a call for firm steps of action. The purpose of the present study was to investigate how different professional groups – school health teams and police officers – related to and understood various measures taken to handle school violence. The authors focused in particular on the increasing tendency to report crimes in schools and the consequences of this trend. The results indicated, on the one hand, an ambivalent attitude towards filing police reports on the part of school health teams. On the other hand, the police officers were highly critical of the reluctance among school health teams to report ‘crimes’ to the police.
Introduction
In comparison with the rest of Europe and the USA, Sweden has long been viewed as an exception in terms of its progressive jurisdiction for young offenders and its focus on care and social pedagogical measures instead of punishment (Estrada et al., 2012; Lappi-Seppälä, 2008). However, during the last decade, behaviour among students that was previously described as teasing, fighting and ‘school trouble’ has gradually come to be positioned and understood within a legal discourse, making these events into a legal matter rather than a pedagogical challenge (Skolverket 2010:800; Utbildnings- och kulturdepartementet, 2005). It is unclear what significance these changes in policy documents have on how school personnel deal with disturbances and conflicts between students on a daily basis, although statistics show that the number of police notifications has increased (Hammarén et al., 2015). However, statistics from the Swedish National Council for Crime show that few students are exposed to serious or extreme violence (Frenzel, 2016). In addition, the self-assessment surveys that have been conducted since 1995 among students in Grade 9 do not reveal any marked increase of violence (Ring, 2013). The focus on social order in terms of legal issues is thereby probably more related to school policies than to young people’s actual behaviour and the prevalence of violence.
Therefore, the policy changes in Swedish schools may be seen as part of a broader policy change that relates to the debate on the school crisis and involves a strong call for order and discipline. Similar developments can be seen in the United Kingdom, for example, where pedagogical challenges have been viewed as being caused by a lack of discipline in schools (Ball et al., 2012). In Sweden, these changes in policy have led to both greater opportunities and greater requirements for schools to take action when students are subjected to violence (Hammarén et al., 2015). These policy changes have been described as a process of juridification. In general terms, this means that decisions previously considered as pedagogical concerns have been replaced by a juridical process, along with juridical concepts and interpretations. This shift affects the relations between school professionals and students, and raises questions regarding where the educator’s responsibility to handle student conflicts and fighting ends, and at what point such events become a matter for the police.
The above-described policy changes establish a connection between the Swedish situation and the famous British study
The purpose of the present study is to investigate how professional groups relate to and understand the various measures taken to handle school violence. We will focus in particular on the increasing tendency towards reporting crimes in schools and the consequences of this trend. The research questions are as follows:
What are the views of school professionals and police officers regarding reporting crimes in schools? How do school professionals and the police officers respectively situate the perpetrator and the victim? In what ways do socio-economic factors influence the strategies of school professionals and police officers?
The empirical material consists of two case studies focusing on different professional groups involved in these matters. The article is structured as follow. First, we present and discuss research in this area, and thereafter we lay out the methodological and theoretical perspectives. The results section is structured in accordance with the three research questions, and thereafter the results are discussed and conclusions are drawn.
School violence and the police
In the vast majority of research in Sweden and the Nordic countries, as well as in much of the research from other post-industrial countries, violence and conflicts among students at school are conceptualised as bullying. In this literature, bullying is defined as a subtype of aggressive behaviour, in which groups or individuals humiliate, attack and/or exclude a relatively powerless individual (Hymel and Swearer, 2015; Thornberg, 2015). The majority of these studies are concerned with investigating bullying typologies and finding psychological personalities among the students involved. Less attention is given to the sociocultural, economic and political discourses which underpin the practices of individuals and groups, as well as institutions (Lunneblad et al., 2017; Robinson et al., 2012). Furthermore, few studies explore the perspectives of different professional groups on school violence (Yoon and Bauman, 2014).
Most of the research that investigates the involvement between schools and the police has been carried out in the USA. These studies show that school professionals and the police often have different perspectives on how to handle student misconduct. This has been described in terms of the existence of a number of obstacles to cooperation, including distrust between the police and school personnel. Whereas the police act based on a ‘fear of crime’, school personnel act based on a ‘fear of labelling’ students as criminals (Coon and Travis, 2012). Research has also shown a lack of agreement between the police and educators regarding the role and function of the police in schools. There are both educators who want to receive assistance from the police with disciplinary issues and educators who believe that policing schools will ‘criminalise’ students and their behaviour (Theriot, 2009). However, research has also shown that police officers refuse to report and file students for minor misbehaviour in the classroom (Coon and Travis, 2012). Studies have indicated that police involvement in schools may be counterproductive. Police involvement may give the impression that educators have lost the initiative to promote a positive school culture (Tillyer et al., 2011). There is also a concern expressed by police officers that their involvement in enforcing school rules concerning minor infractions may provoke students and cause them to become aggressive (Coon and Travis, 2012; Morris, 2005). The presence of police in schools also contributes to a heightened awareness of potential threats, which may have a negative effect on students’ feelings of safety in school (Tillyer et al., 2011).
Studies have shown that schools in which the police are more present also have higher recorded rates of crime than schools without a police presence. The pattern seems to be that when the police are involved in schools, acts of simple violence and disturbing behaviour are reported more frequently. One interpretation of this is that the presence of the police serves to redefine behaviour problems as criminal justice problems, rather than as educational, psychological or social issues. Their presence also tends to undermine educators’ competence in handling behavioural problems, and brings confusion to schools’ disciplinary procedures (Na and Gottfredson, 2013). Educators are sometimes unwilling to use law enforcement in schools because they do not want to feel they are relinquishing their own control (Coon and Travis, 2012). A police presence in a school may also be taken as evidence that the school is unsafe. Previous research has revealed that there are fears that police involvement will lead to both the school and the neighbourhood getting a bad reputation (Theriot, 2009). Other scholars have argued that views on police officers’ presence in schools need to be nuanced. The presence of the police has in fact led to higher rates of detection of weapons and serious violence. The involvement of police officers is, however, more common in schools situated in disadvantaged urban areas where crime is more likely to occur. It is also not clear whether a police presence prevents crime or is mainly reactive (Swartz et al., 2016).
Research from schools in the USA has shown that black, minority and poor students are more likely to be subjected to punishment than white middle-class students (Gregory et al., 2010; Kupchik and Ward, 2014; Skiba et al., 2011). However, different opinions have been expressed as to how this should be interpreted. One explanation is that because police involvement and security measures are common in a large number of schools, this has contributed to a general criminalisation of disciplinary problems in schools. Thus, youth growing up in socially disadvantaged and violent neighbourhoods are over-represented in the statistics on arrested and suspended students (Kupchik et al., 2015). The presence of armed police in cafeterias and hallways leads to a climate of violence and fear, which in turn can lead to less academic motivation and increased misbehaviour (Morris, 2005; Watts and Erevelles, 2004). The perspective that the best way to handle behaviour problems is legal action has been labelled a ‘school-to-prison pipeline’. The over-representation of black, minority and poor students in prison stands as proof of the ongoing reproduction of inequality (Casella, 2001; Irwin et al., 2013; Wacquant, 2008). In Sweden, residential segregation has contributed to increasing differences between schools (Lunneblad and Johansson, 2012). This has led to a situation in which disadvantaged and immigrant groups are concentrated in the same schools, which are often seen as ‘immigrant schools’. According to Milani and Jonsson (2012), the immigrant student has become, in the media and the public mind, synonymous with a violent and rowdy young man. Research shows that there is an over-representation of both student victims and student offenders in socio-economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods. This has led to debate on the impact that such a trend has on how educators and other professionals exercise their authority (Estrada et al., 2012).
To sum up, research has shown that there is a complex relationship between police interventions, schools’ preventive work and the construction of safe school environments. Some studies point towards the negative effects of police interventions in terms of a criminalisation and stigmatisation of pupils and schools. Studies have also revealed that there is sometimes a strained and complex relationship between the police, on the one hand, and teachers and school health teams, on the other, not least as regards methods of handling school violence. Most of the research about school violence in Sweden and many other western countries has conceptualised violence as bullying; thus, the approach used in the current study can contribute with a complementary perspective. Furthermore, this study contributes to the discussion on the relationship between neo-liberal policy and juridification as part of more general changes in Sweden and other post-industrial societies. This study is thereby a kind of excursion into unknown terrain, exploring violence in Swedish schools as part of the process of juridification. It is our hope that this study will generate knowledge about how such changes may influence professionals’ understandings of school violence.
The present study
The study is designed as two interlinked case studies. The purpose of this design is to allow us to discuss and analyse how different professional views and attitudes regarding school violence are expressed and manifested in the narratives (Becker, 1970). The cases in this respect consist of, on the one hand, principals and school health teams working closely with young students in the school. On the other hand, we have the local police, working in different neighbourhoods with violence both within and outside schools. There is no ambition to match schools and the representatives of the local police force, but instead we have primarily focused on the professional attitudes and views. When possible, however, we will also try to bring the local urban contexts into our analysis of the material.
The first case study is based on data from six Swedish urban secondary schools located in different demographic areas. The present study focuses on students in 7th, 8th and 9th grades. When using quotations from the study, we will label the schools with different pseudonyms. Different types of empirical material have been gathered: (1) official documents; (2) interviews with the principals; and (3) interviews with school nurses, counsellors and other school officials. The data is drawn from semi-structured interviews with the school officials. Overall, 28 interviews with school professionals were conducted at the schools in our study. Contact with the schools was first established through the principals, who gave the researchers contact information for the professionals participating in the school health teams. The interviews were carried out at the workplaces. All of the interviews were audio-recorded and lasted approximately 45 to 70 minutes, and were held at the officials’ respective workplaces, often in one of the rooms used for meetings at the schools.
The second case study is based on interviews with seven police officers working in urban areas closely connected to the secondary schools. These police officers were selected for their experience of working in urban schools and areas, as well as for their involvement in and experience of several cases of school crime reports. Contact was established by calling local police stations in the neighbourhoods where we carried out our research in the schools. Also in this case, the interviews were carried out at the workplaces and were audio-recorded. The interviews lasted approximately one hour and were held at the officials’ respective workplaces. In both cases, with regard to ethical considerations and ensuring confidentiality, all the names of the informants, as well as the schools, are pseudonyms (Vetenskapsrådet, 2011).
Analytical reflections
The focus of the present study is on what role professional cultures and expert systems play in the strong current tendency towards the
The professional culture can also be referred to as an
The student welfare team can be described as an expert system, in that it contains competences relevant to assisting children and young people in need of support. This expert system is also tied into other expert and knowledge systems, such as child psychiatry, social work and the police. The knowledge and expert systems permeating schools today lead to categorisation processes. For example, when approaching unruly behaviour and violence in schools, it is common to see this as a police matter. Incidents and situations are thus framed and categorised through juridical and social discourses. These processes can be framed in terms of discipline and control systems (Foucault, 1979). On the one hand, categorisations can be helpful when deciding what measures should be taken in schools. On the other, the focus thus moves from the social context to the categorised and stigmatised individual. Central to the analysis is also trying to understand how different forms of power are connected to the processes of categorisation of conduct. In his work, Foucault (1990) has shown how repressive power works through the law by defining what is forbidden and what is not. Schools, on the other hand, have been used as an example of productive power for the way in which they teach students self-discipline by teaching them to want to follow norms (Foucault, 1979). Focusing on key statements and the attitudes of the professionals, where talk about police reports is present, our ambition is to get closer to the different ways in which schools approach violence and what forms of power are used. We will focus in particular on how different professional groups categorise and talk about school violence.
Constructing the ‘offender’ and the ‘victim’
In this part of the article, we will look in detail at two extensive case studies. We will start with a case study of the professionals at schools working more closely with questions of school violence, and then move onto the local police forces and their way of approaching the same questions. This section will be concluded by a comparative analysis of the two cases.
Case study 1: the school health team
The results show that there are different perspectives among the school officials on reporting to the police. In an interview with the principal at Water Lily school, the routines that have been established through collaboration between the municipality and the police are described: In my view, this is a difficult balancing act. We are trying to communicate to the students that the same law operates on the sidewalk as at the school. We have no specific criminal law for the school. If you hit someone, we are subjected to the same law, whether at school or outside school – it’s as bad as it is. Then there are a number of decrees that the municipality has developed together with the local police, to be used when reporting a crime in school. We should use these forms when we are reporting violence in the school. However, we still have to make certain distinctions. The students are not just in school to learn, but also to be good people. We have a dual assignment. This is always an issue; you have to find somewhere to draw the line. We cannot report everything that happens to the police. We don’t want the police to do our work. But it’s really hard to know where to draw the line.
The educators also emphasised that protecting and fostering students was a responsibility of the school and not of the police. The professionals emphasised the importance of telling students that the professionals were there for them and that they could be trusted. In the following interview, a school counsellor from Cow Parsnip school elaborates on this: It may be an important way to show respect for those who have been subjected to a crime. You are a victim, just as if it was an adult who had been in the same situation. However, I can also feel that it is a weak society that leaves everything to the police. It’s a signal to the children saying that we adults cannot solve this – that we were forced to leave it to the police. A police report usually makes the work more difficult. This is because we lose the students’ and parents’ trust in the school. This occurs regardless of whether you are the victim or the perpetrator … The victims can feel very vulnerable, because we have made a report. They feel like everybody knows they have been victimised, which make them feel more vulnerable. The student you label as perpetrator often feels betrayed by us, and that we are letting them down. School counsellor: There are some students who define themselves as victims, and of course this makes it easier. When the students are telling us that ‘I am a victim of this’ … then we can act in line with our policies. This is, however, not always the case … There are students – we know that they are exposed. … But they don’t view themselves as victims. They don’t want that; it would be admitting defeat. School officials: There is also a gender difference. School counsellor: Yes. What I was talking about is this group of boys, who don’t want to see themselves as victims. With girls it’s often different …
Reporting to the police is framed in different ways, depending on where the schools are situated. The school professionals in the schools located in middle-class areas described the importance of being vigorous and re-establishing parents’ trust in the school. At Daisy school, most of the parents were well educated and had both high expectations and demands on the school. For example, parents used their social network and knowledge to get their way. One such example appeared when a family was not satisfied with the work of the school psychologist and came into school with two independent assessments from two other psychologists. Findings from conversations with school officials at Daisy school, or observations of dialogues among them, reveal the importance of documentation that allows schools to show how they have handled various issues: Principal: It is important that we document the measures we take, so we can account for this later, if the parents go further to other agencies. School counsellor: It is very important to arrange a meeting immediately with the parents! They’re of course worried about their children – the parents are also aware of their rights and are quick to make complaints to other authorities.
Case study 2: the local police
In this part of the results section, we will take our point of departure from the interviews with the police officers. This part will be structured in accordance with our three research questions, starting with the question of how the police frame and talk about police reports in schools.
The police officers are quite aware that they frame and define violence and different problems in schools in a somewhat different way than the principals and school health teams. In their view, teachers and other professionals in schools tend to focus on and protect the long-term relationship with a pupil, whereas the police tend to focus on questions of violence, guilt, crime and responsibility. These differences are also reflected in the following quotation from a male police officer who has worked in different urban areas: They sometimes have problems seeing a police report as a way of helping the individual to accept that they did something bad. I get the feeling that they just don’t trust our methods. No one younger than 18 is put in jail, of course. Instead, they get care. They are afraid of letting them face the consequences. They also feel that there is a risk that they will lose the young people’s trust if they talk with us. That could be true in the short run, but in the long run they will know what we stand for. There are many ways of showing that you care. But it is also important to draw a clear line: I will not accept this! It is crucial that you learn to face this, but some of the teachers are not prepared to do this. Sometimes schools want to file reports on everything – for example, trivial brawls between youngsters. However, sometimes we also have to push them to report things. We have to tell them that reporting a 13-year-old kid for a crime is not such a big deal. The principals often have a watchful eye on these things, but sometimes we have to tell them that this Interviewer: For the young person, a police report can serve as a reminder that their behaviour is not acceptable. Do you ever discuss these things? Police officer: Yes. Filing a police report is definitively a signal from society. However, we often tend to end up focusing mostly on the offenders, and not that much on the victims. But the offenders often turn into victims later on. In my view, the schools should file more police reports. I often meet kids who are being harassed and exposed to violence, and when the schools refrain from reacting, they have hell to deal with. I’ve met so many youngsters who feel the adult world is looking away. I find this deeply disturbing. Who can you trust, then? There is no one, and you just have to stay in school. At some schools – for example, in segregated areas – it is, of course, impossible to report all incidents. There are a lot of incidents at such schools. The teachers somehow learn where to draw the line and when the school has to report or not. They also learn when pupils have crossed the boundaries and when it is important to show the offenders, the parents and the victims that ‘crimes’ are taken seriously. Certain actions have consequences. However, we also have principals in other segregated urban areas who refuse to report crimes, even though some of the pupils tend to rule the school. This has been a huge problem for us. We have tried to talk with the schools. Through other pupils we became aware that pupils had been grossly abused, and the school had not reported this. This would never happen in the more affluent areas of the city. In these areas, news about incidents at school is immediately spread among the parents. They form Facebook groups. But these kinds of actions are non-existent in the segregated areas. They do not have that kind of social cohesion. Young people in this area have to face regular contact with the police. This situation stands out and differs a lot compared to other more affluent urban areas. If young people gather here, well, then we automatically suspect that they are up to something. We often have to perform a visitation – a protective visitation. This occurs more frequently in this area, compared to other areas that is, and sometimes we pick the wrong people. They are not always up to something, but if you hang out here during certain late hours, and in a gang constellation, then … Sometimes we are right on the spot, but sometimes we fail. I understand how innocent youth can see this as harassment, and they also often confirm this.
Conclusions
School professionals have a dual assignment: not only to teach, but also to contribute to value and identity formation. Comparing the two professional cultures – the police and the professional school staff – there are both differences and similarities in how school violence is approached and handled. Whereas the school professionals show a more ambivalent and complex way of approaching these issues, the police officers are clearer about their role and action plans. There is a high degree of
Previous research has shown that school officials are afraid that police involvement will give the impression that the school is unsafe. Reporting to the police may also make school professionals feel that they are relinquishing control over the situation (Coon and Travis, 2012; Tillyer et al., 2011). School professionals care about protecting their relationship with pupils and their parents. According to school personnel, police involvement may undermine students’ and parents’ trust in the educators’ ability to handle violence and behavioural problems (Na and Gottfredson, 2013). The social pedagogical perspective on young people’s conflicts and how to deal with violence in schools contrasts considerably with how police officers view the ‘problem’. Police officers regard a police report as something positive and constructive, in that it mobilises resources to help the young person assume responsibility for his or her actions. The police perspective does not include reflections or thoughts on how being defined as a criminal may affect a young person’s self-image and identity.
This study shows that the professional cultures of both groups have problems in clearly defining the offender and the victim. Often the categories are overlapping: the victim may sometimes turn into an offender, and vice versa. However, we can still identify a difference in how school professionals and police officers approach this diffuseness. Whereas school professionals tend to work relationally and try to solve conflicts and violence through dialogue and interaction, police officers primarily see their role as identifying offenders and crimes. Although police officers show a certain degree of institutional reflexivity, reflecting on the changing relation between offender and victim, they ultimately tend to freeze the situation and focus on the offender and the crime.
Looking more closely at how these professional cultures approach questions of segregation, school violence and professionalism, we can identify reflexive ways of talking about the relation between crimes, social unrest, segregation and working with young people. Both professional groups seem to provide a similar analysis of the ‘problem’, and they also suggest similar strategies for handling violence and urban segregation. Both professional groups also put more focus on policing segregated areas. The police put segregated areas under surveillance, targeting young people who gather in public spaces and defining them as potential suspects. The teachers in segregated areas also tend to use a more juridical approach to school violence, especially compared with teachers in more affluent middle-class areas. The literature suggests that this strict measurement against crime in socially disadvantaged areas carries the risk that the young people living there are reported to the police more often than the young people living in other areas (Estrada et al., 2012).
The contrast between the two different professional cultures is not merely to be understood as a consequence of different institutionalised ways of defining and solving social ‘problems’. Rather, it is a consequence of more general changes in society and culture. The tendency of schools to treat unruly behaviour, bullying and violence as crimes can be viewed as part of a general political change in the welfare state in post-industrial societies, with greater emphasis on legal measures. Such measures can essentially be understood as part of a repressive exercise of power. The criminalisation of certain forms of behaviour is contributing to an increased focus on aspects of schools’ legal responsibility. However, more resources for surveillance and discipline do not necessarily facilitate mutual respect, dialogue and an inclusive school. The danger of a heightened level of control and of a moral panic regarding school violence is that it leads to further polarisation and segregation in society.
To conclude, the present study contributes to new knowledge on how different professional groups relate to and understand the various measures taken to deal with school violence. In particular, the focus has been on the increasing tendency to report crimes in schools, and the consequences of this trend. The results provide knowledge about the juridification of Swedish schools, especially in relation to policy changes and socio-economic conditions. However, the study also has its limitations, especially in relation to the relatively small amount of data. This makes it difficult to draw general conclusions and make policy recommendations. However, we believe that this study can contribute to an emerging field of research exploring violence and different forms of harassment in Swedish schools. In addition, we strive to complement and add new insights and analysis to the research on bullying. Clearly, in Sweden as well as internationally, more research is needed on violence in schools, as well as the preventive measures implemented to create better psychosocial school environments.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/ or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by the Swedish Research Council (grant number 2015-01859).