Unformatted text preview: VIOLENCE AND SECURITY
ON CAMPUS VIOLENCE AND
SECURITY ON CAMPUS FROM PRESCHOOL THROUGH
COLLEGE
James Alan Fox and Harvey Burstein In memory of the far too many innocent lives senselessly lost as the result of campus
violence. CONTENTS
List of Tables and Figures ix
Preface xiii
1. Violence in Primary and Secondary Schools 1
2. Onto College 29
3. Blaming and Scapegoating 45
4. Risk Factors, Warning Signs, and Prediction 65
5. A Major News Media Event 83
6. Hype, Fear, and Over-Response 97
7. Security in Elementary Schools 113
8. Security in Secondary Schools 133
9. Security in Colleges and Universities 159
10. The School Workforce 185
Afterword 199
Notes 201
Appendix A: Major Episodes of School/Campus Homicide 215
Appendix B: Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 and the Gun-Free Schools Act
of 1994 221
Appendix C: Bullying Prevention Programs 227
Appendix D: The Clery Act 233
Appendix E: School Security Design, Technology, and Operation 241 Appendix F: Student Privacy Rights 245
Appendix G: Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act 255
Appendix H: Higher Education Act of 2008 263
Index 267 LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
TABLES
Table 1.1: Five years of multiple-victim school shootings 2
Table 1.2: School-related homicide trends, 1992/93-2007/08 4
Table 1.3: Cause of death by age group, 1999-2005 6
Table 1.4: Historical counts of incidents of school violence in the U.S. and
abroad,1960-2007 8
Table 1.5: Percentage of teachers reporting having been threatened or physically
attacked 11
Table 1.6: Percentage of students who were threatened, felt unsafe, and brought a
weapon 15
Table 1.7: Prevalence of bullying victimization and offending by school level and sex
22
Table 1.8: Prevalence of cyberbullying victimization and offending 25
Table 2.1: Patterns of college campus homicide in the U.S., 2001-05 32
Table 2.2: Shootings involving multiple fatalities on college campuses in the U.S.,
1990-2008 34
Table 2.3: Violent crime rates at colleges and universities, 2006 and 2007 37
Table 2.4: Rape victimization of female college students 43
Table 4.1: Typology of risk and protective factors 67
Table 4.2: Effect of low base rate on false positives 68
Table 6.1: Percentage of schools with zero tolerance policies, 1996-97 108
Table 7.1: Violence, discipline problems, and security measures by school level, 2005- 06 115
Table 7.2: Modes of transportation to and from school 116
Table 7.3: Fatalities and injuries involving school bus accidents, 1991-99 118
Table 8.1: Percentage of students ages 12-18 reporting various school security measures
136
Table 8.2: Serious disciplinary actions by schools, 2005-06 153
Table 8.3: Tasks performed by School Resource Officers 156
Table 9.1: Use of mass notification systems at college campuses 182
FIGURES
Figure 1.1: Rates of serious violent offenses at school and away from school 9
Figure 1.2: Rates of violent offenses at school and away from school 10
Figure 1.3: Expulsions for firearm possession under GFSA 12
Figure 1.4: Percentage of high school students carrying a weapon at school 12
Figure 1.5: Students threatened or injured by a weapon in past 12 months 13
Figure 1.6: Students who were threatened, felt unsafe, and had a weapon in school 15
Figure 1.7: Path model of being threatened, feeling unsafe, and weapon possession 17
Figure 1.8: Prevalence of bullying victimization by school type 23
Figure 1.9: Prevalence of bullying victimization by gender 23
Figure 3.1: Perceived leading causes influencing school shooters 47
Figure 3.2: Public opinion of preferred level of restrictions on firearms sales 60
Figure 3.3: Cutting Edge Ministries' map of school shootings during the Clinton
administration 63 Figure 4.1: FBI Offender Profile 72
Figure 4.2: The Virginia Threat Assessment Model 77
Figure 5.1: Daily number of school violence threats in Pennsylvania after Columbine 89
Figure 6.1: Percentage of parents fearful for oldest child's safety while at school 98
Figure 6.2: Perceived likelihood of school shooting in own community 99
Figure 6.3: Perceived fairness of school discipline by race/ethnicity 111
Figure 8.1: Percentage of students ages 12-18 reporting gang presence at school 145
Figure 8.2: Contraband search procedures by school level 151
Figure 9.1: Percentage of students with various security measures in dorms 168
Figure 9.2: Average campus police staffing levels by school size and type 170
Figure 9.3: Trends in armed campus police officers in the United States 174
Figure 9.4: Campus-wide security responses of colleges and universities 180 PREFACE
For millions of Americans, the notion of terrorism invokes frightful images of hijacked
airliners crashing into the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center and suicide
bombers wreaking devastation on countless innocents for political leverage. However,
years before the identities of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda became widely
recognized, another form of terror-based not on religious fundamentalism but on
adolescent rage-had surfaced in onceobscure places like Moses Lake, Washington;
Pearl, Mississippi; and Jonesboro, Arkansas. And the word "Columbine," once
reflecting the colorful beauty of the Colorado state flower, became linked to the horror
of children being gunned down in the halls of their school. Adding to the irony, the diary
of one of the young shooters from Columbine High described a fantasy about following
up the massacre by flying an airplane into the skyline of New York; of course, the
journal entry was made years before the Twin Towers collapsed.
It may seem a stretch to characterize school shootings as a form of terrorism. Yet, the
issues of international terror and schoolyard terror are remarkably similar. Prompted by
a string of school massacres in the late 1990s, school administrators were eager to
profile dangerous students, just as airport security officials strived to identify violent
extremists among those who boarded commercial airplanes. While the U.S. Congress
voted to permit airline pilots to carry weapons in the cockpit to guard against a possible
in-air takeover, state legislators around the country debated the wisdom of arming
school teachers. Moreover, the fine balance between privacy and security that troubles
many Americans with regard to the ongoing "War on Terror" has been a thorny matter as
well at educational institutions of all levels, from elementary schools to colleges.
As widespread fear and apprehension over the safety of students pushed school
security onto the national agenda, the body of research and scholarship on the topic of
school violence and its prevention grew dramatically. Although at one time the theme
would have seemed far too narrow, in 2002 the journal of School Violence, an interdisciplinary quarterly on theory, research, and practice focused only on violence and
disorder in schools, released its inaugural issue. In addition, over 80 percent of the
peer-reviewed journal publications uncovered from searching for "school violence" in
the Social Science Abstracts dating back to the mid-1970s were published between
2000 and 2008. The growth in interest and concern has also been reflected outside of
the academic literature. A cottage industry has developed for school security hardware,
technology, guidebooks, and consulting. In collaborating on this book, we sought to blend our divergent yet complementary
perspectives. One of us has brought to the partnership an extensive background in social
science research, scholarship, and consulting related to youth and school violence,
including participation on several national advisory panels devoted to the issue. The
other of us has expertise honed from decades of executive employment in federal law
enforcement and corporate/ campus security, consulting with companies and
organizations worldwide, and teaching and writing in the area of security management
and law. Our objective was to approach the complex topic of school violence, safety,
and security by integrating criminological theory and research with security policy and
practice.
In the first part of the book, we attempt to distinguish hard facts from hyped fictions.
We detail the nature, patterns, and trends of school violence; assess some of the common
myths and misconceptions about violence, bullying, and other school safety perils;
discuss an array of factors associated-or at least believed to be associated-with violent
offending at school; and critically address the nexus between school crime and media
coverage.
In the next portion of the book, we review and discuss for each level of schooling
(preschool through college) the specific security concerns and best practices for
protecting students and staff, as well as buildings and other school property.
Importantly, the concern-sometimes bordering on obsession-over the problem of school
violence has, at times, caused school administrators and security officials to overlook
other issues that relate to protecting school assets. In addition, dealing effectively with
the wide range of school security risks includes many routine but no less significant
management issues. We emphasize, therefore, the importance of school personnel
mattersrecruitment, training, supervision, retention, and termination-all of which impact
on school security. Finally, several appendices provide background and reference
material, including a detailed list of major episodes of school violence, best-practice
approaches for bullying prevention and security technology, and key prescriptive
documents arising from legislative and judicial acts.
Finally, we are grateful to several individuals for their support, encouragement, and
assistance. Above all, Jenna Savage provided skillful suggestions in terms of both
substance and style. Several Northeastern University graduate students-Sarah Rustan,
David Hutchinson, Amanda Reich, and Aviva RichShea-helped us in assembling
sources of data and research. Also providing valuable direction and insight were: Beth
Cooney, Director of University Administration Human Resources at Harvard University;
Professor Dewey G. Cornell of the University of Virginia; Peter Langman, Clinical Director of KidsPeace; Dianne Layden, former professor at University of Redlands;
Professor Jack Levin of Northeastern University; Jon Oliver, President of the Lesson
One Company; Dan O'Neill of Applied Risk Management, Inc.; Katherine N.
Pendergast, Vice President of Human Resources Management at Northeastern
University; Professor Kenna Quinet of Indiana University-Purdue University,
Indianapolis; and Amanda Warman, Director of Public Safety at Keene State College.
Finally, we appreciate the confidence of the editorial staff at ABCCLIO Publishers for
the opportunity to contribute this text.
James Alan Fox
Harvey Burstein 1 VIOLENCE IN PRIMARY AND
SECONDARY SCHOOLS
Previous to the events of September 11, 2001, when two hijacked commercial jets were
deliberately crashed into the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center and
America was drawn into a "war on terror," the nation had already been engaged in a
very different kind of war against a very different form of terrorism. For the five years
leading up to that contemporary date of infamy, the country had been shocked by
murderous rampages perpetrated by mere youngsters. Schools everywhere, in big cities
and the rural hinterlands, were reacting-and sometimes overreacting-to the potential for
open warfare in the halls and classrooms of learning.
As listed in Table 1.1, between February 1996 and March 2001, eight multiple-victim
school shootings perpetrated by middle or high school students in America claimed
over three dozen lives, including a pair of gunmen who committed suicide as police
arrived (see also Appendix A). Although the table lists only those episodes that took
place in the United States, similar events occurred in distant lands-from Scotland to
Yemen, from Germany to Argentina. Within the United States, specifically, the fear
provoked by school shootings was so intense and the media coverage so widespread
that the word "epidemic" was often used to characterize the crisis of school violence, at
least until the events of September 11th drew our attention elsewhere.
SCHOOL-RELATED HOMICIDES
In March 2001, following yet another multiple-victim shooting-this time at Santana
High School, just outside of San Diego, California-the venerable Dan Rather, one of the
nation's best-known and well-respected TV journalists, had declared school shootings
to be an epidemic.' While calling the spate of school shootings an "epidemic" may have
been more hyperbole than reality, there is little question that the level of fear and anxiety
over school safety was spreading wide and fast. With impressions heavily impacted by
tragedies at Columbine High School and elsewhere, there was pervasive concern among
school officials and parents of school-age children that school violence was definitely
on the rise.
Table 1.1
Five years of multiple-victim school shootings Note: Columbine High School is actually situated in an unincorporated area of Jefferson
County, just outside of Littleton, CO, and has a Littleton postal address.
Notwithstanding the unmitigated horror and outrage associated with the succession of
high-profile schoolyard massacres over the five-year time span from Moses Lake to
Santee, schools were, in reality, not only safe relative to other settings in which children typically spend their time, but growing safer -and not necessarily because of steps that
were being taken to fortify them.
Unfortunately, no "official" (i.e., "known to the police") national data series for
school crime exists. However, there are available several sources of data pertaining to
school violence, based either on student/staff surveys or news media reports, all of
which vary with regard to their coverage, completeness, and accuracy. Arguably the
most accurate data available come from incident reports of school-associated violent
deaths maintained by the National School Safety Center (NSSC) in Westlake,
California-a private organization launched in 1984 initially through federal funding
directed by President Ronald Reagan. The data accuracy stems from the fact that school
homicides, given their severity, are presumably always reported in some media outlet
somewhere.
Table 1.2 displays annual counts for several measures of school-related homicides
(perpetrated by students or nonstudents), extracted from the NSSC documents. In
addition to these measures, the rate of homicide victimization per million students is
calculated based on annual public and private school enrollment figures.
Notwithstanding the news saturation during the five-year span in which several school
mass shootings occurred, the number of incidents and the number of victims-both
overall and students only-were appreciably larger in the early 1990s, when concerns
about school violence were not as center-stage in public discourse. As one measure of
attention, The New York Times, widely considered the newspaper of record, published
268 articles with the key phrase "school violence" between 1990 and 1994, compared
to as many as 684 in the years 1995 to 1999.
Part of the reason for the disconnect between incidence and awareness involves the
changing nature of the offenses. Many of the homicides near the beginning of the 1990s
reflected gang activity, interpersonal disputes, and arguments-violence unrelated to
school issues spilling onto school grounds. There was certainly no lack of awareness
regarding the youth crime problem in the early 1990s or alarm associated with the
notion of young "superpreda- tors" terrorizing the streets of urban America, but this
problem was not particularly related to schools. Although some of the urban violence
was occurring at school, the source of the conflict was located elsewhere.
The widely publicized episodes of school violence that marked the late 1990s
contrasted with the sharply declining homicide rate that America had been enjoying for
most of the decade. However, the more significant change in the pattern of schoolrelated lethal violence between the early and late 1990s was the emergence of mass shootings and multiple-victim homicides.
Statistical Trends
Among other things, the trend data contained in Table 1.2 highlight the distinction
between incidence and victim count. In the early 1990s, a point in time when the school
homicide count was at its peak, the victim and incident counts were nearly identical,
that is, one victim per incident. By contrast, from the 1995/1996 through 2000/2001
school years, the homicide victim tally outpaced the number of incidents. Thus, whereas
the homicide incidents in the early 1990s were almost exclusively single-victim
episodes, the late 1990s witnessed a significant number of multiple-victim shootings.
Table 1.2
School-related homicide trends, 1992/93-2007/08 Source: Adapted from National School Safety Center, "School Associated Violent
Deaths."
Single-victim episodes, which were more abundant in the early 1990s, tend only to be
noticed in the local area owing to the limited scope of news coverage and community
distress. These homicides receive little, if any, attention from the press. By contrast,
multiple-victim murders are reported nationally: the more victims, the more expansive
the coverage. Thus, it wasn't until school shootings became worthy of the news spotlight
coast to coast that the issue moved to the top of the national agenda. The last column of Table 1.2 provides the level of risk (i.e., the victimization rate per
million students) and shows how it has changed over the 15-year time span from 1993
to 2008. Notwithstanding the considerable fluctuation-which is to be expected of
calculations based on small numbers of cases-the rate of homicide victimization during
the school-violence panic of the late 1990s was half the comparable rate during the
early part of the decade. Overall, a rate of 0.31 per million (or about 1 homicide for
every 3 million students) is on par with or lower than that of a wide range of perils that
children face on a daily basis but that do not inspire nearly as much attention and
anxiety.
To place the risk of school homicide in some perspective, Table 1.3 compares the
number of school-related homicide victims for the years 1999 to 2005 with causespecific mortality figures drawn from coroner reports compiled by the National Center
for Health Statistics (NCHS).3 As the top portion of the table confirms, the number of
children slain at or near school (a total of 89 victims over the seven-year time frame) is
akin to that of other rare occurrences such as deaths from storm/lightning (105 cases) or
animal bites (79 cases). Moreover, the risk of school homicide is substantially lower
than that of accidental deaths due to careless handling of guns or of drowning in
swimming pools. At the extreme, children are killed while on a bicycle 12 times more
often than murdered while attending school. Yet, rather than ensuring that their children
wear a helmet when bicycling around the neighborhood, many parents worry more
deeply about the safety of their children when they are at school and demand tighter
security measures to protect them. Government seems to be complicit in the relative
neglect, as the major4 ity of states do not require the use of helmets for children or
adults.
Another useful contrast is between the incidence of school-related homicides versus
those that occur away from school-at home, at the mall, or in the neighborhood. As
shown in the bottom panel of Table 1.3, less than 1 percent of all youth homicides
during the years 1999 to 2005 occurred in the school setting. At the peak level by age
group-10- to 14-year-olds-only about 1.4 percent of homicides were school-related. In
addition, the number of children murdered by family members over the 1999 to 2005
time frame (1,285, based on FBI data) is 15 times larger than the number killed by
classmates or others at school.
Of c...
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