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CENTER ON JUVENILE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE EXEC SUMMARY |
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| Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 54 Dore Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 | Tel: (415) 621-5661 | Fax: (415) 621-5466 |
School House Hype: Two Years Later
CONTACT: Daniel Macallair
E-mail: [dmacallair@cjcj.org]
Tel: (415) 621-5661 x310
Introduction
In July 1998, the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) published School House Hype: School Shootings and the Real Risks Kids Face in America, the first national report to note that school shootings were extremely rare and not on the increase. School House Hype: Two Years Later is an update of our 1998 report, adding the latest polling and crime data on school shootings, as well as a legislative, legal and policy analysis of the continuing debate over school safety.
Public Perception versus Crime
Public opinion polls conducted by a number of different media outlets and agencies have documented the fear Americans have that their schools are likely to experience lethal violence.
A phone poll of 1,004 adults for The Wall Street Journal and NBC News revealed that 71% of Americans thought it was likely that a school shooting could happen in their community. A Washington Post poll conducted seven months after the tragic shootings at Columbine High School revealed that 60% of respondents reported school violence as an issue that "worried them a great deal." According to two polls conducted by Gallup for the USA Today, respondents were 49% more likely to be fearful or schools in 1999 than in 1998. Polls showed that rural parents were the most fearful of school violence, even though the overwhelming majority of serious crime against or by youth occurs in cities.
Despite the public perception, several studies released since July 1998 have shown that the vast majority of America's schools are free from such serious crime, and that school crime appears to be on the decline along with other forms of youth violence.
- During the 1998-1999 school year, the year that included the Columbine shooting, the National School Safety Center reported that there were 26 school associated violent deaths-- a 40% decline from the previous year. Since there are 52 million students in America's schools, the odds of dying a violent death in a school in America last year was one in two million.
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that between 1993 and 1997, reports of physical fights by students declined 14%, reports of students being injured in fights declined 20%, the number of students who self-reported carrying a weapon in the previous 30 days declined 30%, and there was a 25% decline in students who had carried a gun to school in the previous 30 days.
- A joint study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and National Center for Education Statistics found that between 1993 and 1997, the number of school crimes declined 29%, the number of serious violent crimes declined 34%, the number of violent crimes (including fighting) declined 27%, and the number of thefts declined 29%.
- The FBI reported that since the historical peak for juvenile homicides in 1993, the number of juvenile arrests for homicide have dropped 56%, and the number of youth arrested for murder under age 13 is at its lowest point since the statistic was first kept (1964).
- A study by researchers from the Department of Special Education at the University of Maryland found that students at schools which employed "secure building" strategies to combat crime (including metal detectors and locker searches) were more likely to be afraid and be victimized than those attending schools which used less restrictive school safety measures.
- Surveys of students, teachers and law enforcement showed that they found the schools in their communities to be safe. A survey by Metropolitan Life in 1998 found that twice as many teachers, twice as many students, and three times as many law enforcement officials reported that the level of violence in their schools had declined from the previous year. Eighty-six percent of teachers, and 89% of students and law enforcement surveyed said that they thought their local schools were safe.
Legal Analysis of School Liability
Sensationalized lawsuits such as those filed in Littleton, Colorado and Paducah, Kentucky have added to the fear that school officials will be held liable if they do not take drastic actions to guard against potential school shootings. A legal analysis of recent case law does not support such fears:
- There is no discernible trend by either state or federal courts in holding school officials liable for injuries students suffered at the hands of other students or third parties in a school.
- State and local agencies have been held liable, and are at risk of future liability if they do not follow the due process rights of children in safety discipline cases, particularly in cases involving students with disabilities.
Policy and Legislative Changes: Focus on Suspension and Expulsions
In July 1998, we noted that public concern over school safety might be causing schools to expel and suspend students for trivial matters. An analysis of national and state data reveals that this is a growing concern.
Nationally, the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights notes that suspensions have increased steadily for all students, rising from 1.7 million (or 3.7% of students) to 3.1 million (6.84% of students) by 1997. In the State of Maryland, 64,103 students were suspended or expelled in school year 1998-99, representing 7.8% of the student body. Over 60% of Maryland student suspensions were for non-violent acts, matching what other studies show nationally.
Suspension and expulsion policies have a much greater impact on minority students and special education students. A JPI analysis of recent data publicized by the Applied Research Center shows that in a number of cities, African American youths are suspended and expelled at rates many times higher than the rates at which white students are suspended and expelled.
- In Phoenix, Arizona, African American students are suspended and expelled at 22 times the rate of whites. Austin, Texas, San Francisco, California and Denver, Colorado all expel and suspend African American youth at more than three times the rate of white students.
- The rates of suspension in states, cities and counties seem to bear no relationship to actual incidence of school crime. Despite the well documented fact that urban schools in the biggest cities are likely to experience the most school crime, the school districts in Columbia, South Carolina, and Salem, Oregon are suspending and expelling students at between 5 and 6 times the rate of Chicago and San Francisco.
- Studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have shown that students who do not regularly attend school face a variety of health and safety risks, and that suspension has been associated with higher rates of dropping out of school.
Other Legislative and Policy Responses to School Violence Issues
Though the process began before the highly publicized school shootings, a number of legislative and policy changes are being enacted in the name of school safety.
- Two thirds of state legislatures have enacted some form of legislation since 1996 to erode confidentiality provisions concerning children who commit offenses, a protection which is a major tenet of the juvenile justice system's focus on rehabilitation.
- Schools are bringing in crisis prevention plans and training teachers and students to respond to what turns out to be the exceedingly unlikely event of a school shooting. Training has included the use of S.W.A.T. teams on campus, evacuation readiness plans, and the use of helicopters to evacuate wounded students. More schools are hiring school police or security officers, mandating identification badges and installing metal detectors.
- New FBI "student profiling" software is being prepared to determine the characteristics of students prone to violence: the checklist of tell-tale signs of a school shooter includes the use of abusive language, cruelty to animals and writing reflecting an interest in "the dark side" of life.
Recommendations
1. Adding Context to Media Coverage of School and Youth Violence
The report urges the media to add statistical context to its coverage of school crime so as to avoid unnecessary panic and alert viewers to the fact that schools are not growing more dangerous. Recent advances in crime coverage protocol are cited as model ways to better contextualize coverage.
2. Creating Safe School Environments with Best Practices
The authors cite model programs that create a school-wide culture of nonviolence, such as Cleveland, Ohio's Peacemakers Program, as the most effective way to reduce school violence.
3. Gun Control/Regulations
Little can be done to prevent rare occurrences of school shootings as long as 7 to 8 children are killed each day by guns. The report recommends that legislation be enacted, to regulate firearms and to end the exemption guns now enjoy from consumer safety and protection laws that apply to a variety of other products.
School House Hype: Two Years Later was funded by a generous grant from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.