The School (Resource Officer)-to-Prison Pipeline? The Influence of Youth Race and Maturation Bias on School Resource Officer Decision Making

Building on recent findings (Koch et al., 2023), the proposed research will empirically test for the potentially interactive effects of youth race and physical maturity on decision making among a sample of trained SROs. Based on prior research, we hypothesize that, in the context of a juvenile accused of committing vandalism at school, a white, visibly immature female youth will be treated most leniently whereas a Black, visibly mature female youth will be treated most harshly.