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The purpose of this article is to examine the expectations, challenges and tensions officers describe while engaged with public schools to demonstrate that officers engage with students in public schools in a conscious, goal-oriented process to establish and maintain useful relationships.

Data collection involved 104 semi-structured interviews (including follow up interviews) and 31 focus groups, conducted between 2014 and 2018 with police officers working in rural areas of a province in Atlantic Canada.

Utilizing the concept of social capital, we analyze practices of investments alongside the understanding of rurality as socially interconnected and the rural school as a particular site of interconnectedness for police officers. We demonstrate how, while accumulating social capital, officers face role tension and fundamental barriers when trying to integrate into rural school communities.

By demonstrating the specificities of building social capital in schools and community environments in a rural setting, we contribute to understandings regarding the unique opportunities and challenges faced by police in rural schools in integrating effectively into schools and responding to youth-specific problems.

Given the historical legacy of policing Black bodies, this research focuses on the structures of anti-Blackness within school policing and the strategies students of Color activists use as they work to defund or abolish police departments in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).

Specifically, this article looks to Twitter as a counter-storytelling space for students of Color activists to organize and build movements to end anti-Black school policing. Through the frameworks of critical race theory (CRT) and Black critical theory (BlackCrit), this research applies inductive coding to analyze 42 Twitter posts from three students of Color-led organizations based in Los Angeles.

This document analysis presents four themes, which describe four dominant strategies students of Color activists use in their campaigns to defund or abolish school police in the LAUSD: (1) centering Blackness and Black student experiences, (2) making demands for the elimination of funding and support for school police, (3) calling for a shift in funding to support Black students and (4) employing multiple tactics concurrently.

These findings demonstrate the importance of developing and centering a critical understanding of anti-Blackness to achieve racial and educational justice within social movements.

Moreover, the demands of students of Color activists reflect visions of public schools free from anti-Black school policing.

We present the results of one of the only in-depth studies of a police agency’s internal and external response to the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 (COVID-19). This study emphasizes the importance of law enforcement agencies conducting comprehensive case studies and after-action assessments to prepare, prevent and respond to prolonged public health crises and showcases the profound (and lingering) effects of COVID-19 on police organizations.

This multi-method case study combines document analysis, a workforce survey, a community survey, interviews and analysis of administrative data to detail and assess the agency’s internal and operational responses to the pandemic and the reactions of employees and community members to those responses.

Despite agency strategies to mitigate the pandemic’s effects, employees cited very high stress levels one year after the pandemic and a third of sworn officers considered leaving the policing profession altogether during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Several policies intended by the agency to protect employee health and maintain staffing needs kept workforce levels steady but may have increased feelings of organizational injustice in both sworn and non-sworn individuals, with variation across racial and gender groups. A jurisdiction-wide community survey indicated general support for the police department’s responses but a preference for in-person rather than telephone-based responses to service calls. Officers, however, preferred continuing remote responses even after the pandemic subsided.

To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the only in-depth case studies that examine a police agency’s internal and external responses to COVID-19 and the sworn, non-sworn and community reactions to those responses.

Active shooter incidents have risen considerably in recent years, elevating public and law enforcement focus on improving response to these incidents. The contemporary policy for reacting to an active shooter event is for the officers who first arrive on the scene to move quickly to engage and neutralize a shooter, prioritizing victim safety and minimizing loss of life. This study provides a preliminary understanding of the police view regarding their role in active shooter events and their experiences with active shooter training.

We conducted a survey of 413 sworn personnel across three US cities. Analyses examine differences in officers’ training experiences across the agencies and predictors of a sense of duty to prioritize victims’ lives over that of officers.

Officers’ training experiences differed by agency, yet most officers supported a duty to sacrifice their lives to prioritize victims’ safety during active shooter incidents. Officers with more years of experience have lower odds of supporting a duty to sacrifice their lives to save victims during an active shooter situation relative to less experienced officers. Respondents who recall officer safety among the top three most memorable topics from their recent active shooter training also have lower odds of supporting a duty to sacrifice.

The authors add knowledge about police officers’ experiences with active shooter training and officers’ opinions about their role in responding to active shooter incidents. We discuss implications of the findings relative to police culture and training and suggest directions for future research.

This paper aims to center the experiences of three cohorts (n = 40) of Black high school students who participated in a critical race technology course that exposed anti-blackness as the organizing logic and default setting of digital and artificially intelligent technology. This paper centers the voices, experiences and technological innovations of the students, and in doing so, introduces a new type of digital literacy: critical race algorithmic literacy.

Data for this study include student interviews (called “talk backs”), journal reflections and final technology presentations.

Broadly, the data suggests that critical race algorithmic literacies prepare Black students to critically read the algorithmic word (e.g. data, code, machine learning models, etc.) so that they can not only resist and survive, but also rebuild and reimagine the algorithmic world.

While critical race media literacy draws upon critical race theory in education – a theorization of race, and a critique of white supremacy and multiculturalism in schools – critical race algorithmic literacy is rooted in critical race technology theory, which is a theorization of blackness as a technology and a critique of algorithmic anti-blackness as the organizing logic of schools and AI systems.

This study aims to present radical abolition studies, which encourages us to (re)member that the abolition of institutions and systems is incomplete without the abolition of their attendant epistemes of domination. The authors draw on the etymology of the word radical to encourage abolitionist praxis to grab systemic harm at its epistemological roots. Within radical abolition studies, this study presents Black abolition theory, which aims to make explicit a theorization of Blackness and works to abolish the episteme of anti-Blackness.

This paper offers Black abolition theory within radical abolition studies to reground abolition in its Black theoretical roots and to interrogate the concept of anti-Blackness and other epistemes of domination in abolitionist study and practice. Using a close reading of W.E.B. Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction, and subsequent books and articles in abolition studies and educational studies that reference it, the authors highlight Du Bois’ original conceptualization of abolitionism as an ultimate refutation of a racial-social order and anti-Blackness. The authors then put Michael Dumas and kihana ross’ theory of BlackCrit into conversation with abolitionist and educational theory to push forward Black abolition theory.

Radical abolition studies and its attendant strand of Black abolition theory presented in this paper encourages scholars and practitioners to go beyond the dismantling of current instantiations of systemic harm for Black and other minoritized people – such as the school as it currently operates – and encourages the questioning and dismantling of the epistemes of domination sitting at the foundation of these systems of harm.

Black abolition theory contextualizes abolition in education by rooting abolitionist educational praxis in Black lineages. More generally, radical abolition studies encourages further research, study and collaboration in partnership with others who have historically participated in the fight against being labeled as subhuman to upend all epistemes of domination.

To cope successfully with the pressures imposed by a devastating pandemic and other challenges, companies and policymakers need to look at how they conceptualize, define, measure and operationalize “value”. This paper aims to support this conversation.

This study presents a historical review of how the value construct has been conceptualized over time, demonstrating that its history is one of tension and debate with conceptualizations swinging between objective (i.e. the value of something exists independent of the observers) and subjective (i.e. the value of something depends on the personal response of the observer to what is being considered) views over time.

This paper outlines the implications to researchers of value’s low construct clarity, offering suggestions designed to exploit rather than ignore the duality of the value construct. Instead of thinking of the value construct as being subjective or objective, this study recommends that scholars consider value’s objectivity and subjectivity as being interrelated and complementary. The paper recommends that researchers use both quantitative and qualitative methodologies in studying this construct.

A major limitation of this paper is the word count limitation restricting the extent to which this paper could explore a more comprehensive list of the conceptualizations of value throughout history.

This paper presents practitioners with a nuanced understanding of value that should assist those interested in examining the worth of investments with observable expenses but less quantifiable outputs.

The authors have not found a similar analysis of the various conceptualizations of value.

This paper aims to communicate the relevant management model with optimal performance in the collection of construction resources (human, non-human), supervision of workers and activities in the development of adequate and quality school infrastructure facilities.

The study employed a mixed methods research approach in collecting and analysing research findings. Semi-structured face-to-face interviews and questionnaires which consisted of closed questions were the data collection tools. Numerical data collected were processed and analysed by using quantitative methods and techniques such as descriptive analysis, whereas text data were subjected to content analysis.

The findings revealed that the Post-New Public Management (PNPM) is relevant in the collection of construction resources and suitable for the supervision of workers and tasks towards the development of adequate and quality school infrastructure facilities. Based on the evidence generated, the PNPM model was recommended to be adapted to collection of construction resources and supervision of workers and activities.

This paper highlights the need for construction committees and other education policy implementers to adapt a relevant management model in realising optimal performance in the development of adequate and quality school infrastructure facilities.

The nature of policework is uniquely challenging to officers’ mental health, producing detrimental outcomes such as higher rates of suicide, substance abuse and divorce compared to other occupations. This is especially true in small and rural police departments, where officers often have broader responsibilities and cover a larger geographic area than their counterparts who work in large urban departments. Given the limited resources available to small and rural police, the purpose of this study is to explore the mental health services available to officers in small and rural police departments.

We used a mixed methods approach. First, we surveyed 349 small and rural Pennsylvania police chiefs about the mental health services in their department. Of these chiefs, 53 participated in subsequent in-depth qualitative interviews about officer awareness of the mental health services available to them, what resources they thought would be helpful to officers and what barriers exist to prevent officers from seeking help.

Quantitative results indicated that 22% of small and rural police departments had no mental health programs available to officers; Critical Incident Stress Management and Employee Assistance Programs were most commonly available. Budget size and the presence of a union influenced whether a department had mental health programs available to officers. Qualitative interviews found that although most departments provided some mental health services, officers were unlikely to use them. Chiefs expressed a need for improved services that officers might be more likely to use.

Given the lack of resources available in small and rural police departments and the lack of adoption of some resources, we recommend peer assistance, general wellness programs and telehealth as feasible options for officer mental health.

Small and rural police comprise the bulk of policing in the USA, yet remain understudied. This study focuses on small and rural police.

The correctional system continues to face challenges with responding to and managing methamphetamine use among incarcerated individuals. This study aims to uncover what resources and policies could better help correctional workers deal with these challenges. The authors also examined methamphetamine’s impact on correctional work and staff well-being.

An online survey was distributed to correctional workers (n = 269) in Manitoba, Canada, featuring questions about their experiences related to methamphetamine use in populations under their care, what supports are needed to adequately address the concern, and the potential effects on self and their occupational responsibilities. Using NVivo software, survey responses were analysed using an emergent theme approach.

Correctional workers believed policies and protocols for managing methamphetamine use and withdrawal are currently inadequate. Correctional workers reported having monthly contact with incarcerated individuals experiencing methamphetamine withdrawal, posing safety concerns to them and other incarcerated individuals. Respondents proposed more education and training on managing incarcerated people withdrawing from methamphetamines, related to the symptoms of use and withdrawal and how to support persons detoxing. Increased human and material resources were reported as being needed (e.g. more nurses onsite and better screening devices). Respondents also desired more medical intervention, safe living spaces for methamphetamine users and programming to support addiction.

The current study unpacks correctional workers’ perspectives, support desires and their experiences managing methamphetamine use amongst incarcerated people. The authors discuss the required knowledge to respond to gaps in prison living, re-entry and related policy needs.