C
HAPTER I- INTRODUCTION
7
The findings of the Safe School Initiative’s extensive search for recorded incidents of
targeted school-based attacks underscore the rarity of lethal attacks in school
settings. The Department of Education reports that nearly 60 million children
attend the nation’s 119,000+ schools.
10
The combined efforts of the Secret Service
and the Department of Education identified 37 incidents of targeted school-based
attacks, committed by 41 individuals over a 25-year period.
11
Nevertheless, the impact of targeted school-based attacks cannot be measured in
statistics alone. While it is clear that other kinds of problems in American schools are
far more common than the targeted violence that has taken place in them, the high-
profile shootings that have occurred in schools over the past decade have resulted in
increased fear among students, parents, and educators. School shootings are a rare,
but significant, component of the problem of school violence. Each school-based
attack has had a tremendous and lasting effect on the school in which it occurred,
the surrounding community, and the nation as a whole. In the wake of these attacks,
fear of future targeted school violence has become a driving force behind the efforts
of school officials, law enforcement professionals, and parents to identify steps that
can be taken to prevent incidents of violence in their schools.
Methodology
The Secret Service and the Department of Education began work on the Safe School
Initiative study in June 1999. Research protocols employed in carrying out and
analyzing the findings of this work reflect an adaptation of the ECSP operational
approach to examining targeted attacks against public officials and prominent
individuals. Researchers used a similar operational focus for the
Safe School
Initiative to develop information that could be useful to schools in better
understanding and preventing targeted violence in school settings. The emphasis of
the study was on examining the attackers’ pre-incident thinking and behavior, to
explore information that could aid in preventing future attacks.
For the purposes of this study, an incident of targeted school violence was defined as
any incident where (i) a current student or recent former student attacked someone
at his or her school with lethal means (e.g., a gun or knife); and, (ii) where the
student attacker purposefully chose his or her school as the location of the attack.
Consistent with this definition, incidents where the school was chosen simply as a
site of opportunity, such as incidents that were solely related to gang or drug trade
activity or to a violent interaction between individuals that just happened to occur at
the school, were not included.
S
AFE SCHOOL INITIATIVE
F
INAL REPORT
enforcement officials, mental health professionals and others across the United
States. Several questions and discussion points raised by seminar attendees have
been addressed in this final report.
Finally, the Department of Education and the Secret Service currently are completing
work on a guide to investigating and responding to threats in schools. The guide is
scheduled for publication in 2002. The guide will include recommendations for
investigating and evaluating threats and other behaviors of concern in school;
address considerations for developing policies and capacity to support threat
assessment efforts in schools; and provide suggestions for approaches schools can
adopt to foster school environments that reduce threats of targeted violence.
The Prevalence of Violence in American Schools
Public policy-makers, school administrators, police officials, and parents continue to
search for explanations for the targeted violence that occurred at Columbine High
School and other schools across the country, and seek assurance that similar
incidents will not be repeated at educational institutions in their communities. While
the quest for solutions to the problem of targeted school violence is of critical
importance, reports from the Department of Education, the Justice Department, and
other sources indicate that few children are likely to fall prey to life-threatening
violence in school settings.
6
To put the problem of targeted school-based attacks in context, from 1993 to 1997,
the odds that a child in grades 9-12 would be threatened or injured with a weapon in
school were 7 to 8 percent, or 1 in 13 or 14; the odds of getting into a physical fight
at school were 15 percent, or 1 in 7.
7
In contrast, the odds that a child would die in
school–by homicide or suicide–are, fortunately, no greater than 1 in 1 million.
8
In
1998, students in grades 9-12 were the victims of 1.6 million thefts and 1.2 million
nonfatal violent crimes, while in this same period 60 school-associated violent deaths
were reported for this student population.
9
6
10
U.S. Department of Education. National Center for Education Statistics (2002).
Digest of Education
Statistics 2000
; Washington D.C.: Authors
11
Supra
note 2.
6
See, for example, Kaufman, P., et. al. (2000).
Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 2000
. U. S.
Department of Education (NCES 2001-017) and U. S. Department of Justice (NCJ-184176): Washington,
D. C. Online Vers.: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubinfo.asp?pubid=2001017; Anderson, M., et. al.
(2001). School-associated Violent Deaths in the United States, 1994-1999.
Journal of the American
Medical Association, 286
, 2695-2702; and, National Resear
ch Council and Institute of Medicine, Committee
on Law and Justice and Board on Children, Youth, and Families. (2001).
Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice
.
Panel on Juvenile Crime: Prevention, Treatment, and Control. McCord, J., et. al. (Eds.). National Academy
Press: Washington, D.C.
7
Snyder, H.N., & Sickmund, M. (1999).
Juvenile offenders and victims: 1999 National Report.
Washington, D.C.: Office of Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention, U.S. Department of Justice.
A
vailable online at http://www.ncjrs.org/html/ojjdp/nationalreport99/index.html.
8
U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of Justice (1999).
1999 Annual Report on School
Safety.
Washington, D.C.: Authors.
9
Ibid.