Deadly Lessons Understanding Lethal School Violence (2003) / Chapter Skim
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11. Response Strategies: Observations on Causes, Interventions, and Research
11. Response Strategies: Observations on Causes, Interventions, and Research
Pages 330-342
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From page 330... ...
Not only does the public health community make analytic distinction among these different forms of prevention, but they also are strong advocates for particular kinds of prevention. Generally speaking, they would prefer primary prevention over any of the others particularly if the primary prevention instruments are both inexpensive to use and entirely effective.
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From page 331... ...
This report suggests that many different factors can potentially lead to lethal violence or school rampages, including structural community variables, the ordinary processes of child development, the risks created when children become alienated from adults, cultural influences, the stable characteristics and motivations of the individuals who become offenders, and microsocial situational processes that, although surely influenced by individual characteristics and larger community forces, take on a life of their own in the give and take of interpersonal and group interaction. Since each of these factors is a potential cause, each is a potential target of preventive efforts.
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From page 332... ...
POTENTIAL TARGETS OF PREVENTIVE EFFORTS Creating a Profile of Likely Shooters One widely discussed preventive idea is to develop methods to identify likely offenders in instances of lethal school violence or school rampages. If they could be identified, then a secondary preventive instrument could be developed to focus on those who are at high risk of committing such offenses.
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From page 333... ...
While the shooters in our cases demonstrated less variability on some of these risk factors, they were, for the most part, not distinguishable from many of their peers on those factors. Trying to make these kinds of distinctions would result in many errors, of two types: mistakenly classifying many schools, individuals, or situations as high risk and wasting resources on circumstances that were not going to produce instances of lethal school violence, and mistakenly classifying many communities, schools, individuals, and situations as safe when in fact they were risky and might well produce instances of violence.
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From page 334... ...
Case authors John Hagan, Paul Hirschfield, and Carla Shedd note that after the city-wide installation of metal detectors in Chicago, no further shootings occurred in Chicago schools. We would need evidence from experimental studies to conclude that metal detectors in schools could end either lethal shootings or school rampages, and one would want to look closely at other effects of the metal detectors on school culture and performance.
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From page 335... ...
All instances of lethal violence documented in the cases were committed by youth armed with rifles and handguns who were breaking current gun laws in addition to substantive criminal laws. Both state and federal laws prohibit children of this age from possessing or carrying guns without adult supervision, and many federal and state statutes are designed to prevent children from being able to acquire weapons.
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From page 336... ...
To become and remain a nation that creates equal opportunity for all, that creates the conditions under which individuals can make the most of their talents in whatever pursuit interests them, communities must help young people get to the starting line of adult life with health, vitality, and confidence. Communities that cannot keep their children safe from lethal violence, that endure conditions in which those reaching for adult status and competence in schools cannot be safe, are failing to protect the American dream.
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From page 337... ...
Finally, while some research has followed children who have been victims of school rampage shootings in the past, further longitudinal research is needed to understand the impact of school shootings on both perpetrators and victims, including secondary victims. Two Types of Violence As the committee worked with both the cases and the data, it seemed that there might be two quite different strands of lethal violence.
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From page 338... ...
Gun Carrying Virtually every case of lethal school violence that has occurred since 1992 has involved the use of a firearm. In our review of these cases and other research on lethal youth violence, the committee found that illegal gun carrying by youth crosses racial and class boundaries, and that a substantial number of boys particularly those becoming involved with gangs illegally carry firearms, at least sometimes, at young ages.
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From page 339... ...
This research should examine the circumstances and motivations related to illegal gun carrying, the sources of and ease of access to guns, socialization to illegal gun use, and the relationship, if any between legal and illegal gun use by adolescents. Individual Risk Factors for Violent Behavior in School The extensive and sound knowledge base on risk factors for delinquency and violent behavior, which can be used to design prevention programs, would not have helped identify the young people in most of these cases as high risk.
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From page 340... ...
The urban neighborhoods were characterized by social and physical conditions that created a milieu for the development of youth delinquency and violence. These include a high degree of social and economic disinvestment in the neighborhoods of the shooters, especially the withdrawal of community services; population change resulting in neighborhood hypersegregation; poor housing stock; social disorganization, characterized by the presence of criminal juvenile gangs; and high levels of violent crime.
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From page 341... ...
It is important to the development of prevention efforts to have a better understanding of social and structural features of communities where shooting rampages have taken place, and of parental supervision of children's activities in all communities where school shootings occur. The committee recommends that research be conducted on the effects of rapid change in increasingly affluent rural and suburban communities on youth development, socialization, and violence.
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From page 342... ...
Others make distinctions among the different kinds of prevention on the basis of the probability that the condition or event that is the focus of preventive effort will lead to the injury. Still others associate the types of prevention with their ultimate effectiveness: primary prevention essentially eliminates the risk of injury across the general population; secondary prevention reduces but does not eliminate the risk among a subsection of the population; and tertiary prevention consists of efforts to mitigate the damage once primary and secondary prevention have failed to prevent the injury.
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