Deadly Lessons Understanding Lethal School Violence (2003) / Chapter Skim
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9. Lethal School Violence in Statistical Context
9. Lethal School Violence in Statistical Context
Pages 287-301
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From page 287... ...
As described in Chapter 1, the operational definition we embraced was "lethal school violence," which includes the following elements: · Lethal violence · That took place in schools · Was committed by students of the school and · Resulted in multiple victimizations. The committee's application of this definition was fluid enough to include at least one case in which no one died.
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From page 288... ...
, we began referring to some of the school cases as "school rampage shootings." In one sense this is hardly controversial. The label "school rampages" seems a reasonable descriptor of events in which a student of a school shot at and killed members of his school community.
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From page 289... ...
Moreover, it turned out that suburban and rural schools were much more significantly represented in these cases than inner-city schools, where many of the incidents of school violence involved single victims. That was not because we thought these cases were unimportant; the committee held the opinion that the special attention given to the relatively few incidents involving multiple victimizations might distort society's picture of lethal school violence in general.
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From page 290... ...
290 DEADLY LESSONS: UNDERSTANDING LETHAL SCHOOL VIOLENCE | Violence in General r Youth Violence rid L~ Serious Youth Violence Youth Vim _ FIGURE 9-2 School rampages as a component of violence.
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From page 291... ...
TRENDS IN LETHAL SCHOOL VIOLENCE The principal dataset available in assessing the level and trends of lethal school violence (with or without multiple victims) was produced and maintained by the National School Safety Center (2001~.
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From page 292... ...
We also had access to the United States Secret Service study that looked at this form of violence over a longer period than 1992-2001. Consistent with our broader operational definition that includes incidents in which many were victimized but none killed, we included incidents that resulted in multiple serious injuries but no fatalities.
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From page 293... ...
The difference is highlighted in the figure by lines showing the mean number of such incidents per year in the 17-year period from 1974 to 1990 and the 11-year period from 1991 to 2001. The mean number of student-perpetrated ramTABLE 9-1 Multiple-Victimization, Student-Perpetrated School Violence in the United States Date of Name of Incident Location Offender Fatalities Injuries 12/30/1974 Olean, NY Anthony Barbaro 3 11 2/22/1978 Lansing, MI Roger Needham 1 1 3/19/1982 Las Vegas, NV Patrick Lizotte 2a 2 1/20/1983 Manchester, MO David F
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From page 294... ...
, and a separate media search using online national and local newspaper archives.
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From page 295... ...
While it seems likely that multiple victimizations in a school setting would be newsworthy throughout this period, we cannot be entirely sure that the media weren't particularly sensitized to the issue of school rampage shootings in the late 1990s, and therefore began covering these more assiduously (even when they did not involve fatalities) than had previously been true.
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From page 296... ...
. This suggests that school rampages are not unique to the United States and, since no international school rampages were evident until 1999, rampages in other countries may have been somehow influenced by the U.S.
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From page 297... ...
Figure 9-5 presents the yearly number of all homicide victims in the United States between 1976 and 1999 as measured by the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) (Fox, 2001~.2 There are two distinct peaks: homicides increased to a peak of 22,953 victims in 1980, decreased through the early to mid-1980s, increased to a second peak of 24,711 victims in 1991, and then decreased to 15,483 victims in 1999.
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From page 298... ...
At the peak in 1993, there were 2,634 homicide victims ages 12-18, which represents slightly less than 11 percent of the 24,571 total homicide victims that year. Figure 9-6 presents the yearly counts of homicide victims age 12-18 and homicide offenders age 12-18.3 The number of youth homicide victims increased dramatically between 1985 and 1993, then decreased significantly from 2,476 victims in 1995 to 1,495 victims in 1999.
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From page 299... ...
These patterns of intentional lethal violence in general and intentional lethal violence among youth stand in stark contrast to the epidemic of student-perpetrated school rampage shootings. The school rampages were increasing when broader forms of intentional lethal violence were decreasing.
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From page 300... ...
CONCLUSIONS The analyses reported here suggest a number of broad conclusions. First, school rampage shootings, while extremely serious, account for a very small component of all the lethal violence in the United States.
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From page 301... ...
As a descriptive matter, there is little doubt that the number of student school rampages increased over time. 2SHR victim data were weighted to match national FBI Uniform Crime Reports estimates of homicide victimization.
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