Ruthlyn James | Policing symptoms of developmental failure

There is a discomfort many Jamaicans feel but struggle to articulate when they see police officers stationed inside schools. It is not hostility towards the police, but a deeper societal question: what does it mean when law enforcement becomes part of a child’s ordinary school experience?

Not all schools are psychologically experienced the same way by children. Some environments are built around enrichment, identity formation, leadership, confidence and expansion. Others are increasingly shaped by containment, surveillance, behavioural control and institutional anxiety.

The School Resource Officer programme operates under the JCF Safe Schools Programme. The role of SROs is to support school safety, maintain discipline, identify at-risk behaviour and respond to unlawful activity on school compounds. On paper, this sounds reasonable. Schools should be safe. The concern emerging, however, is whether policing has gradually entered spaces better addressed through counselling, psychosocial intervention, emotional regulation support, restorative practices and education itself.

A school is a psychological environment that shapes human development. Children learn quickly from repeated experiences. When aggressive engagement, intimidation or fear-based interactions become normalised within educational spaces, many children internalise those experiences deeply. For some, authority begins to feel less like guidance and more like threat.

Research globally has shown that highly securitised school environments can alter how children emotionally experience school. Increased police visibility without strong psychosocial frameworks may heighten anxiety, reduce trust in authority, discourage communication and contribute to the criminalisation of behaviours once treated as behavioural or emotional concerns.

NEUROLOGICALLY VULNERABLE

This is especially important during adolescence, which is a neurologically vulnerable stage. The teenage brain is still developing, particularly in areas linked to judgement, regulation and impulse control. Educational systems must therefore distinguish between genuine criminal threat and emotionally dysregulated behaviour requiring intervention, guidance and psychological support.

Not every escalated child is criminally minded. Some are neurologically dysregulated, traumatised, anxious, overstimulated or functioning with unmet emotional needs. Modern adolescent behavioural science increasingly recognises that impulsivity, oppositional reactions and emotional escalation are often stress responses requiring intervention rather than simple behavioural suppression.

This becomes even more concerning when viewed through the realities of class, community and social inequality. Children notice patterns long before adults admit them publicly. They notice which schools are associated with strong alumni networks, leadership opportunities, counselling support, sporting traditions and broad extracurricular exposure. They also notice which schools are increasingly associated with searches, enforcement and visible institutional tension.

In Jamaica, some schools become pipelines for influence and upward mobility, while others increasingly risk becoming linked to behavioural containment and institutional survival. Children absorb these distinctions long before society openly discusses them. In a society already struggling with violence, trauma exposure and widening social inequality, schools increasingly carry emotional burdens far beyond academics.

Where guidance counsellors are insufficient, where psychosocial support is overwhelmed, where classrooms are overcrowded, where behavioural intervention systems are weak, and where trauma remains untreated, policing can quietly become a substitute for investment. Underinvestment in children rarely disappears. It usually reappears later as social crisis.

TRUST

Trust in institutions begins forming in childhood. If schools become environments where children feel over-policed rather than supported, society should not be surprised when alienation, distrust, resentment and oppositional attitudes later emerge.

Equally troubling are concerns emerging from students themselves. Increasingly, children instinctively attempt to record altercations involving authority figures because they fear their version of events may not matter without evidence. When children begin feeling that accountability itself is unsafe, something deeper has shifted within the school environment.

This is precisely why conversations surrounding body cameras can no longer be avoided or dismissed. In environments involving minors, authority and potential physical intervention, oversight protects everyone involved. Properly regulated body camera systems could provide transparency for students, protection for officers, reassurance for parents and accountability for institutions.

Within child-rights and safety frameworks, documentation matters. It reduces ambiguity, discourages excessive responses and creates opportunities for procedural review grounded in evidence rather than fear or hierarchy. Importantly, it also protects officers from false accusations while protecting children from potential misuse of authority.

Jamaica’s child protection framework recognises that children are entitled not only to physical safety, but also dignity, emotional wellbeing and psychological protection within institutional environments. International child-rights principles similarly emphasise that school discipline should preserve the dignity, voice and psychological safety of the child.

Many modern school systems now incorporate restorative approaches that prioritise de-escalation, accountability, emotional regulation and conflict repair before punitive escalation becomes necessary. These approaches do not remove discipline. They strengthen it by reducing humiliation, fear and adversarial engagement.

Recent increases in violence among students have understandably intensified public fear and strengthened calls for stronger security presence within schools. Many Jamaicans now see police involvement as necessary protection. Those concerns are not imaginary and should not be dismissed. However, the existence of violence does not remove the need for child-centred safeguards. In fact, it makes them even more urgent. A society facing escalating youth violence must ask not only how to control behaviour after crisis emerges, but what investments, protections and underlying social failures existed long before the escalation reached the high schools’ gates.

The police officers carry difficult responsibilities within a violent society, and many officers genuinely care for children while working under immense pressure. The concern is whether sufficient child-centred safeguards exist within schools to ensure that fear-based enforcement does not quietly become normalised under the language of discipline and safety.

Where are the publicly accessible protocols governing verbal engagement, restraint, searches, confiscation of devices, documentation of incidents and complaint pathways for children and parents? Where are the protections for neurodivergent, traumatised and emotionally dysregulated students?

There is a profound difference between a school that develops emotional regulation and a school that merely enforces compliance. One builds citizens. The other manages risk.

Ruthlyn James is the founding director of Adonijah Group of Schools Therapy and Assessment Centre. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com

Caption: Ruthlyn James