School Shootings

Prevalence of School Violence

In American schools over the past few decades, the education of youth has in some sense become secondary. With the increasing frequency of violent behavior in school settings, a larger concern among administrators, parents, and students is the question of safety, even if time and resources given to violence prevention does divert focus from the educational process itself. A survey of more than 15,000 teenagers in 2000 concludes that 39% of middle schoolers and 36% of high schoolers, or more than 1 in 3 students, report not feeling safe at school (Josephson Institute on Ethics, 2001).

Victimization “at school” includes crimes occurring inside the school building, on school property, or on the way to or from school. Nonfatal crimes include theft and simple assault and serious violent crimes such as rape, sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault. Fatal crime refers to homicide.

In 1992, a total of 3,409,230 nonfatal crimes against students aged 12 to 18 occurred at school, or 144 per 1,000; but in 1998, that number dropped to a total of 2,715,600, or 101 per 1,000. Looking solely at the total number of crimes, it might appear that schools were actually becoming safer places. However, it is important to examine the various crime categories separately. Theft alone decreased from 2,260,500 in 1992 to 1,562,300 in 1998, but comparing the data for violent crimes across the same period, the reverse trend emerges: 1,148,600 and 1,153,000 incidents, respectively. Similarly, serious violent crime over the years continued to increase from 245,400 in 1992 to 252,700 in 1998 (Kaufman et al., 2000; Small & Tetrick, 2001).

School violence was once believed to be a problem plaguing the urban areas, but the reality is that these types of behavior have infiltrated schools located in many settings. For instance, in 1998, the rate of victimization for nonfatal crimes per 1,000 students aged 12 to 18 in urban schools was 117 per 1,000; for suburban schools, 97; and for rural schools, 93 (Kaufman et al., 2000).

All forms of school violence are serious, but shooting incidents have captured the attention of the media and society. Although the majority of school violence does not result in fatalities, the use of firearms increases the probability that an incident will result in lethality. Between the school years 1992 to 1993 and the first half of the 2001 to 2002 school year (August through December), there were 283 events resulting in 326 school-related violent deaths, which included homicides, suicides, or weapons-related deaths. These events occurred on the property of private, public, parochial, elementary, secondary, and alternative schools, on the way to or from school, while attending or on the way to or from school-sponsored events, or as direct results of school incidents, functions, or activities on or off school property. Offenders used varying methods in these lethal acts. Shootings accounted for 75% of all the deaths; stab/slashing, 14%; beating/kicking, 5%; and 2% each for hanging, strangling/asphyxiation, and unknown methods (National School Safety Center, 2002).

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