Addressing School Violence.

Prevention, Planning, and Practice

With these words, former FBI director Louis Freeh captured the essence of the challenge that communities face in addressing school violence. Recent high profile school shootings have led to an atmosphere of fear and apprehension among many communities about the safety of their schools. While statistics show that schools, in general, remain safer than their surrounding neighborhoods, every community must take steps to address school violence. In doing so, many questions may arise. Where does a community begin the process of addressing school violence? How can schools prevent or reduce school violence? How can communities plan for handling school violence when it does occur? Should law enforcement include exercises and training as a part of these preparations?

DEFINING SCHOOL VIOLENCE

To address school violence, communities first must understand what it is and who is involved. [2] The definition of school violence, an unacceptable social behavior ranging from aggression to violence that threatens or harms others, goes beyond highly publicized incidents of mass bloodshed to include acts, such as bullying, threats, and extortion. Therefore, school violence spans a broad range of antisocial behavior that law enforcement must address.

IDENTIFYING PERPETRATORS OF SCHOOL VIOLENCE

Historically, individuals who commit school violence fall into one of two groups. The first group, insiders" (e.g., students), usually can be divided into two broader categories--sociopaths (e.g., bullies who instigate fights and manipulate others) and psychopaths (e.g., socially inept loners who have the potential for great violence). [3] The second group involves visiting "outsiders," such as students from other schools or former students.

Communities must prepare for potential school violence from either of these groups. No standard profile of a school violent offender currently exists. At best, certain warning signs may indicate potential violence and specific factors may denote a greater likelihood of an individual carrying out violence.

ADDRESSING SCHOOL VIOLENCE

Primarily, communities can address school violence through three simple steps--prevention, planning, and practice. Prevention refers to taking actions to reduce or prevent school violence from occurring, planning determines what actions to take if school violence does occur, and practice entails rehearsing plans and modifying them when needed.

Prevention

Various publications provide a comprehensive overview of school violence prevention programs and offer various steps communities can take to help prevent violence in their schools. [4] First, communities should establish partnerships between schools and other public agencies. Because school violence remains a community problem, it requires collaboration from all residents, agencies, and businesses. Schools, police, business leaders, and elected officials all must cooperate to address school violence.

Next, communities should identify and measure the problem. School officials, working with law enforcement and other community agencies, should collect information that shows the size and scope of violence in their schools. This important step ensures that prevention efforts revolve around the community's specific problems.

Communities also should set goals and measurable objectives. School officials, collaborating with parents and students, should set goals (with broad results) and specific objectives (with measurable results) for their school violence prevention efforts.

Last, communities should identify appropriate research-based programs and strategies. The key to preventing and reducing school violence combines long-term strategies with short-term interventions. Community leaders and school administrators should research and examine various school violence prevention options and select techniques most appropriate for their schools. Such options fall into three broad categories. [5]

The first category involves environmental modifications and suggests that

police, trained in crime prevention through environmental design, or school security managers, who have attended specialized courses in physical security, audit or survey each school. These personnel should examine a school's physical environment and recommend modifications to prevent or reduce violence.

The second category includes options for preventing and controlling violence based on school management. For example, this may entail establishing behavior and discipline codes, the use of criminal penalties against selected students, or the placement of problem students into alternative educational institutions.

The final category, education and curriculum-based prevention techniques, could include teaching conflict resolution courses, establishing mentoring programs, developing self-esteem initiatives, or instituting community- oriented policing crime prevention efforts.

After reviewing the various options, administrators should work with the entire community to carefully implement the selected prevention measures. Some preventive techniques may require additional resources, outside approval, or long-term planning to prove successful.

Every community should include an early identification and intervention program in their school safety efforts. These programs help prevent school violence by educating parents, teachers, and students about the signs of potential violence and, ultimately, allow the troubled student to receive help before violence occurs. [6]

Another critical element of a school safety program involves a threat management plan. While not every school may have to deal with a violent shooter, nearly every school experiences violent threats. Communities and school administrations must prepare to assess threats they receive and how to respond appropriately to them. [7]

After implementation, administrators should, at regular intervals, evaluate the school violence prevention plan against the goals and objectives previously set. Administrators must prepare to revise the plan based on the results of the evaluation.

Planning

Even with the best prevention plan in place, communities still must prepare for school violence incidents. Planning how to respond in the event of school violence requires a communitywide effort and includes numerous tasks.

Law enforcement should conduct a tactical survey of schools.[8] While the security audit serves to reduce or prevent school violence, the tactical survey gathers information for use in planning a response. The survey forms the foundation for all other planning efforts and should be accomplished before planning begins. Law enforcement, working with school administrators, should prepare and distribute tactical surveys that include elements, such as local maps, aerial photographs, property diagrams and floor plans, and interior and exterior photographs of the school.

School administrators should develop emergency response plans. Because faculty are often the first to respond to calls of school violence, their initial actions can have tremendous impact on how safely and quickly a situation is resolved. Each school should have procedures in place to handle different emergencies, including various school violence incidents. An easily accessible checklist that includes how and when to notify emergency services can prove most beneficial. Law enforcement and school officials should work together to develop procedures that cover such emergencies as anthrax scares, bomb threats, fires, severe inclement weather, bus accidents, and shootings.

Developing first responder and immediate action drills also will prove beneficial. Past incidents have shown the need for rapid, coordinated response by the first officers arriving at a school violence incident. Patrol officers should establish a perimeter, gather information, resolve disputes, and, depending on the situation, locate and neutralize shooters. Local police agencies should establish and rehearse a mutual aid plan to ensure the use of the same response procedures.

Many school violence incidents do not require a tactical presence or may end before police tactical teams can deploy. However, tactical teams still should develop procedures for operating in a school environment. The plans should include how to integrate tactical teams with police already on the scene and how to deploy multiple teams in the event of a long-term or large-scale situation.

A large-scale school violence incident often requires more resources than one agency can provide and requires a joint response of many different organizations. Police administrators should develop an emergency management plan that outlines command, control, and communication procedures for a multiagency response, as well as general areas of responsibility for each agency.

Because school violence incidents generate media interest, agencies must develop a plan for handling the media prior to an incident. Police and schools should prepare to assist the media by providing timely briefings, designating a media representative for updates, and establishing areas safe for filming, interviews, and other media activities.

School officials should develop lock-down procedures to secure students and faculty in a school violence situation. They also should have procedures for evacuating students and faculty to safe areas, establishing accountability, conducting immediate counseling or debriefings (if required), and coordinating the pickup of students by parents. Schools should work with police in developing these plans because tactical and investigative considerations may impact the evacuation or release of students.

In a worst-case scenario, school violence can result in bloodshed--a reality that officials must prepare to handle. School, police, and emergency response personnel should work together to develop a plan to triage, treat, and evacuate those injured in a school violence situation.

Even after the successful resolution of a school violence incident, much work remains. Communities should develop a plan to provide counseling and assistance to students, faculty, and emergency personnel. Police need to develop an investigative plan, establish evidence recovery methods, and determine when they will return control of the building to school officials. School administrators should prepare to find an alternate location to hold classes while police conduct their investigation.

Due to the size and complexity of a school violence response, the various agencies involved should develop and sign mutual aid and notification agreements. These agreements should specify roles and responsibilities for each agency.

School violence planning requires a large investment of time, personnel, and resources. However, the possible benefits more than justify the cost. Communities that make planning a priority will become prepared not only for school violence but also for lesser situations that may require a coordinated response.

Practice

The best-developed plans become useless if they are never rehearsed or if no one knows they exist. Practice validates plans and identifies needed changes. It familiarizes personnel with plans and partners, increases the confidence of personnel involved, and gives the community a sense of security. Additionally, conducting drills can help identify areas for future training. Practice remains a critical step in preparing for school violence and should include rehearsing school emergency response plans, first-responder action drills, tactical team actions, post-incident command exercises, media plans, mass casualty plans, multiagency exercises, and field exercises. Because no substitute for practice exists, this step remains critical in addressing school violence and requires a strong commitment by communities.

FACING CHALLENGES

In addressing school violence, communities face several key challenges. They must learn how to balance the need for a secure environment with that of a learning environment. While many parents and schools welcome the increased emphasis on security, others worry that schools have become fortresses that hamper learning. Communities must examine their approach carefully and strike the right balance for their students.

Communities must decide how to balance student and parental rights with a community's compelling interest in safety. Many of the techniques proposed to prevent school violence may infringe upon student or parental rights. At the same time, administrators have a responsibility to maintain safe schools and must balance these competing interests when developing a school safety plan.

Additionally, communities must consider how to weigh the needs of many students against the needs of a few students. Many teachers and parents applaud recent efforts at getting help for at-risk youth before violence erupts, yet some individuals criticize these efforts as putting the needs of a few students ahead of the needs of the majority of the students. Communities must decide how far they should go to address some students' special needs and consider the impact on other students.

CONCLUSION

Because every community is unique, individual approaches to addressing school violence should be slightly different. Communities should seek the advice and help of other communities that have addressed similar problems, adapt these solutions, and tailor their approach to their specific situations.

Communities must take a team approach to addressing school violence. Addressing specific issues requires cooperation among schools, families, police, and other community members. If school violence should occur, a community will rely on many agencies to respond. No one agency holds the key; rather, teamwork stands as the definitive method of acheiving success.

Remaining well informed represents the best approach when addressing school violence. Community officials should refer to the plethora of resources available to help them make informed decisions about school violence.

Finally, and perhaps most important, communities must take a proactive approach when addressing school violence. As previous tragic events have shown, no amount of preparation can ever eliminate school violence, but proper preparation can help reduce its impact on American communities.

Endnotes

(1.) U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, "The School Shooter: A Threat Assessment Perspective, 2000," (Washington, DC, 2000); http://www.fbi.gov; accessed March 14, 2001.

(2.) For additional information on school violence, see S. Band and J. Harpold, "School Violence: Lessons Leamed," FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, September 1999, 9-15.

(3.) Dale Yeager, quoted in R. Kanable, "Patrolling the Schools," Law Enforcement Technology, September 1999.

(4.) See, for example, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, "The Annual Report on School Safety," (Washington, DC); http://ojjdp.ncjrs.org/pubs/violvict.html; accessed February 23, 2001.

(5.) Alexander Volokh and Lisa Snell, "School Violence Prevention: Strategies to Keep Schools Safe," Reason Public Policy Institute, January 1998; http://www.rppi.org/education/ps234.html; accessed February 23, 2001.

(6.) The U.S. Department of Education has published "Early Warning, Timely Response: A Guide to Safe Schools," which describes how to develop and implement an early identification and intervention program; http://www.ed.gov/offices/OSERS/OSEP/earlywrn.html; accessed March 15, 2001.

(7.) For additional information, see, supra note 1.

(8.) For additional information, see F. Hoang, "Preplanning for School Violence," Law and Order, December 2000, 107-109.

School Violence Prevention Options

Possible Environmental Modifications

* Installing metal detectors and video cameras

* Hiring security guards

* Adopting dress codes

* Removing lockers

* Controlling access into buildings

* Identifying all campus visitors

* Placing adults in hallways

* Monitoring entrances

* Increasing lighting

Education- and Curriculum-Based Prevention Techniques

* Teaching individuals conflict resolution

* Establishing mentoring programs

* Creating self-esteem initiatives

* Developing community-oriented policing and crime prevention efforts

School Management-Based Strategies

* Establishing behavior and discipline codes

* Using criminal penalties against selected students

* Placing students into alternative educational institutions

* Conducting lawful and necessary searches

* Establishing community information-sharing protocols

Keys To Successful Exercises

* Identify clear training objectives

* Conduct coordination before the exercises

* Hold exercises after developing plans and completing training

* Start with simple tasks and work progressively toward more difficult ones

* Conduct after-action reviews

* Link future training to results from past exercises