U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

National Institute of Justice

Research Forum

Preventing School

Violence
U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

810 Seventh Street N.W.

Washington, DC 20531

Janet Reno

Attorney General

Daniel Marcus

Acting Associate Attorney General

Mary Lou Leary

Acting Assistant Attorney General

Julie E. Samuels

Acting Director, National Institute of Justice

Office of Justice Programs National Institute of Justice

World Wide Web Site World Wide Web Site

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij
Preventing School Violence:

Plenary Papers of the 1999

Conference on Criminal Justice

Research and Evaluation—

Enhancing Policy and Practice

Through Research, Volume 2

Sponsored by

OFFICE OF JUSTICE PROGRAMS BUREAUS

National Institute of Justice

Bureau of Justice Assistance

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention

Office for Victims of Crime

OFFICE OF JUSTICE PROGRAMS OFFICES

Corrections Program Office

Drug Courts Program Office

Executive Office for Weed and Seed

Violence Against Women Office

May 2000

NCJ 180972

Sheppard G. Kellam

Ron Prinz

Joseph F. Sheley

National Institute of Justice
Opinions or points of view expressed in this document are those of the

authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of

the U.S. Department of Justice.

Julie E. Samuels

Acting Director

John Thomas

Program Monitor

The National Institute of Justice is a component of the Office of

Justice Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Assistance,

the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Office of Juvenile Justice and

Delinquency Prevention, and the Office for Victims of Crime.

The Professional Conference Series of the National Institute of Justice supports

a variety of live researcher-practitioner exchanges, such as conferences,

workshops, and planning and development meetings, and provides similar support to the criminal justice field. Foremost among these forums is the Annual

Conference on Criminal Justice Research and Evaluation. The Research Forum

publication series was designed to share information from this and other forums

with a larger audience.
iii

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Foreword

Recent, tragic instances of violence in our Nation’s schools have

brought the issue to the top of the agenda for public policymakers,

school administrators, and the public. No matter how reassuring are the

aggregate figures on school safety and the downward trend in juvenile

violence, they cannot diminish our concern. It prompted the National

Institute of Justice and other sponsoring Office of Justice Programs to

present a major plenary session on school violence prevention at the

1999 Conference on Criminal Justice Research and Evaluation.

The conference theme “Enhancing Policy and Practice Through Research” expresses NIJ’s core mission—studying criminal behavior and

the response of the justice system and its allied entities not as an end

in itself but as a means to crime reduction and prevention. School violence is among the issues for which effective prevention policy and

practice, informed by empirically based research, are most sorely

needed.

As the three speakers demonstrated, policy grounded in research promises to be most effective if it draws on expertise in a range of disciplines. Sociologist Joseph Sheley, who has written extensively on the

explosive nexus of youth, violence, and firearms, first puts school violence in perspective by demonstrating that it occurs much less often

than in communities where students live, but that, on the other hand,

weapons carrying by young people is not uncommon and guns are

easy to obtain. Perhaps one of the most important research findings he

notes is that the prime motive for carrying weapons is fear. To be sure,

schools are taking steps to lower the risk of weapon-related incidents,

but whether they choose techniques that have had a record of success

is unknown. Ron Prinz offers the insights of psychology, persuasively

arguing that because problem behavior stems from prior maladjustment, prevention has to be considered from a “developmental” perspective—by analyzing what gives rise to that behavior. Prevention

requires understanding and changing social environments more so

than targeting specific individuals. Finally, public health psychiatrist

Sheppard Kellam uses his decades-long work in Chicago and Baltimore

to illustrate the imperative of community involvement in designing

prevention programs.
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iv

The papers convincingly demonstrate that preventing school violence

is not the exclusive preserve of the criminal justice community. The resources of multiple research-based disciplines—whether their province

is human behavior or the workings of the mind or community health—

need to be tapped to find the path to an enduring solution.

Those who wish to read more about the 1999 conference can find

abstracts of conference sessions on the Web at http://www.ilj.org.

Julie E. Samuels

Acting Director

National Institute of Justice
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Contents

Foreword .................................................................................. iii

Community and Institutional Partnerships for

School Violence Prevention

Sheppard G. Kellam ................................................................ 1

Research-Based Prevention of School Violence and

Youth Antisocial Behavior: A Developmental and

Educational Perspective

Ron Prinz............................................................................... 23

Controlling Violence: What Schools Are Doing

Joseph F. Sheley.................................................................... 37

The Federal Government Responds to School Violence ..... 58
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Community and Institutional

Partnerships for School

Violence Prevention

Sheppard G. Kellam, M.D., Johns Hopkins University

It is a long-held belief among veteran public health workers that the

first rule is, “Don’t get thrown out of the community.” The field has

many examples of this rule being followed and many examples of

it being broken. One well-known example of achieving trust at the

community level—being allowed to add chlorine, a potent poison, to

drinking water—illustrates successful institutionalized prevention programming at the universal level (i.e., reaching all individuals in the

community).

Who gives permission in the community? What are the processes of

developing trust and maintaining acceptance, and even “owning” programs in the community? Our immediate concern, and the subject of

this paper, is how we approach the problem of introducing a new prevention program that offers proven efficacy in a way that promotes acceptance of the program, perception of the program as in keeping with

the community’s values, and willingness to take up the program as part

of the community’s own institutions.1

Why community partnerships?

The emergence of prevention science over the past three decades has

made possible a growing body of prevention programs that have been

rigorously tested for their impact in defined populations within specific

social contexts.2

 The nature of prevention often makes it necessary to

address how specific aspects of environments help or hinder the development of individuals, given the varied capacity of individuals to adapt.

For example, programs aimed at preventing mental and behavioral

disorders are often based in schools and involve students’ families and

peers in the community as well as in other settings such as the workplace or the context of intimate relationships.
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Community and Institutional Partnerships for School Violence Prevention

Evidence-based prevention programs are generally guided by one or

more specific prevention science strategies, each requiring community

partnerships for implementation.3

 Some prevention programs address

policy changes that may reduce risk or address community issues and

organizational structure related to risk. For example, interventions may

involve minimum age requirements for obtaining a driver’s license or

local practices regarding serving alcohol in bars.4

 Some programs involve the media in promoting less risky behavior. Prevention programs

may also address antecedents of problem behaviors that occur in early

childhood or later. These programs may, for example, involve changing

family practices, schools’ teaching practices and curricula, families’

relationships to teachers and schools, peer group values and processes,

and other highly intrusive activities that have been shown to influence

developmental trajectories toward healthier, more socially efficacious

outcomes. Prevention programs require great sensitivity to the power

structure, values, and symbols of the local community and the broader

society, and recognition that values vary dramatically from one community to the next and even within our society.5

How prevention program leaders relate to

community concerns will dictate the

fate of their efforts.

Some newly tested prevention programs include how to parent, how to

teach in the classroom, what children should know about sex and the

availability of condoms, minimum age requirements for driving cars

and purchasing cigarettes or alcohol, how to resist peer pressure about

drugs, and many other intimate and value-laden issues. All of these

programs, if imposed by outsiders, are very likely to bring about intense community response. How prevention program leaders relate to

community concerns will dictate the fate of their efforts.

In prevention research, the field trial is an important element in the

most rigorous designs.6

 Decisions about whether children or schools

are to be randomly assigned to trial groups or whether control conditions are to be permitted will evolve, in large part, from the quality and

structure of the relationship between the researchers and the community. After the research has been completed, questions about how to
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Sheppard G. Kellam, M.D., Johns Hopkins University

implement programs can also affect community interests, which in

turn, can aid or impede access to schools and classrooms for purposes

of implementation.

Even after a program has been adopted, the quality and level of community involvement can markedly influence the fidelity with which

the program is carried out. The subject of how community partnerships

affect prevention program research, implementation, and subsequent

administration is rarely examined thoroughly, if at all, in graduate study

of health and mental health disciplines, and should be the subject of

research. This paper describes how to establish partnerships with communities and their institutions—partnerships that are essential for both

research and implementation of prevention programs.

Risk factors as targets for prevention

Prevention research and programming, and indeed all public health

programs, are built within the cultural, social, and political structure of

a defined population. From a public health perspective, the goal of such

programming is to promote social adaptation and psychological and

physical well-being and to prevent disorders over the life course, not

only for those who are already ill but also for the total population of a

community or institution. Prevention is based on the development of

knowledge about risk factors, mediators of risk, and moderators of risk

along the life course. Interventions can then be directed at improving

specific risk factors to forestall specific mental and behavioral disorders. Such prevention interventions can also, in the same process,

promote good social adaptation and psychological well-being in the

population.

Risk factors may be in the environment, in the individual, or in the

demand/response aspects in the environment and the individual’s

ability to respond. For example, a teacher may be either consistent or

inconsistent in telling a child in the classroom to “sit still and pay attention,” the child’s response may be influenced by other classmates,

or the child may or may not be cognitively or developmentally ready to

respond adaptively. Such risk factors require providing teachers with

methods for improving classroom management and instruction, for

example.

Prevention programs directed at mental and behavioral disorders usually do not deal with individuals in isolation but rather in the context of

major social fields at each life stage, such as families, classrooms, peer
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Community and Institutional Partnerships for School Violence Prevention

groups, intimate relationships, and the workplace. Because individuals

must respond to social task demands within these environments, many

prevention programs must be integrated within the major social fields

and/or the relevant social institutions within which these fields are embedded. Therefore, partnerships involving prevention programs, institutions, and the community must support access to teachers, principals,

children, parents, workplace leaders, lawmakers, and community

leaders who may or may not allow such intrusive programs. Again,

the key is the adequacy of these partnerships.

The ecological context for prevention

Prevention programs can be developed within defined residential areas,

elementary school catchment areas, workplaces, or military battalions

or divisions. The size of the population is not the issue; the focus is the

totality of the population in its ecological environment, including its

power structure, values, and symbols. The perspective of public health

and, in recent years, of public education, is directed toward the whole

population rather than the undefined individuals who may happen to

come to a clinic or participate in a program. In effective public health

prevention, the delivery agents are most often not clinicians who care

for a few. Instead, they are the individuals who may, because of their

position in an institution, improve the effectiveness of the institution by

addressing risk or protective factors that may be part of the institution’s

structure.

Prevention programs may, for example, provide teachers with tools to

develop and maintain classroom learning environments, may improve

parents’ tools for teaching their children to regulate behavior, or may

promote law enforcement efforts to impede the sale of tobacco to

adolescents. Because such activities can alter classrooms and schools,

families, business practices, laws, and media positions, the whole community has an interest and should, therefore, accept and even become

the “owners” of these new ways of socializing and supporting individuals at all stages of life.

Building and maintaining such prevention and health promotion programs also involves the ethics and governance of human research and

public health and education. Intimately coupled with problems of access to institutions and individuals are issues of confidentiality and of

the representativeness and roles of participants in policymaking and the

administration of programs.
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Sheppard G. Kellam, M.D., Johns Hopkins University

Political and cultural analysis

In the 1960s, and particularly during the “War on Poverty,” several

models of gaining community support were used.7

 In one model, the

interagency council, social service agency leaders met periodically and

discussed priorities and coordination. These councils were based on

the premise that, working together, social agencies could provide legitimacy for new community programs. As interest in citizen participation

grew, the interagency council model came under attack by citizen

groups that did not accept agency leaders as representing local values,

priorities, or interests.

A second model, dubbed the storefront, literally implemented programs

in vacant stores, posting invitations in the windows for citizen participation. Storefront programs also aroused protest, particularly from

community organizations that claimed they failed to recognize, and

even deliberately excluded, local leadership and organizations. A third

model involved hiring local citizens as paraprofessionals, on the assumption they would be accepted by the community for participation

in decisionmaking. All these models lacked structures for deliberately

including the existing community organizations and their constituents

in the planning, acceptance, and ownership of new programs.8

 Their

participation from the beginning is the key to solid partnerships between programs and communities.

In developing solid partnerships, the first important step is the analysis of different groups (and their institutions and power structure)

within the population, taking into account the diversity of the population and its links to the broader society. To reach all people in a

potential prevention program population, leaders of constituencies

that need to lend support must be identified. This analysis and identification of decisionmakers and their constituencies within and across

subgroups of the total population may include clergymen, newspaper

owners, leaders of political organizations, block club presidents,

youth organization leaders, and neighborhood and business association leaders.9

In conducting this “power analysis,” it is extremely important to understand the difference between locally based leaders of community organizations with local constituencies, and heads of public and private

social service agencies. Agency heads (paid staff) have less authority

to approve or not approve programs for children than do parents and
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Community and Institutional Partnerships for School Violence Prevention

leaders of their local social, religious, and political organizations.

Agencies may be colleagues of prevention program staff in offering

services to children and families, but they do not represent the population. Therefore, although a program may have won the support of the

local family service agency, there may not be sufficient local support

for a school or family prevention program. Parents, speaking through

leaders of their own local organizations, may be far more effective in

interpreting community concerns to program leaders and bringing

reports from the program back to the community.

The second step in developing partnerships is learning about the values,

priorities, and acceptable language within the population. Such knowledge makes it possible to explain the proposed research and/or prevention activities in a way that is understandable to community members

and reflects their values and priorities.10

Implementing population-based programs

involves negotiating with leaders of community

organizations whose constituencies lie within

the population itself rather than within

agency departments “downtown.”

Implementing population-based programs (step 3) also involves

negotiating with specific leaders of community organizations whose

constituencies lie within the population itself rather than within agency

departments “downtown.” These negotiations must begin with the process of engagement, working through trust issues and looking for mutual priorities and mutually acceptable research and service solutions.

This does not imply that the community dictates the research question

or the program to be adopted. The key is negotiating so that all parties’

interests are served, including the values and aspirations of the community and the scientific or program missions of the professional staff.

Accomplishing the above three steps requires a thorough interviewing

process in which many potential leaders answer detailed questions

about the community, including how decisions are made and who

makes them. Program advocates should also establish a consistent

presence in the community through frequent visits to local churches,
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Sheppard G. Kellam, M.D., Johns Hopkins University

organization meetings, offices, and other places where personal

engagement can begin and information about specific community

subgroups and their organizations can be learned. Such visits help

researchers and/or program staff in getting to know the community,

establishing credibility, and establishing and building on mutual investments in collaboration.11 In our experience, the time required for

this process of building a strong community base for a program—one

that includes both community leaders and service agency colleagues—

is about a year. Many investigators have found the effort to be well

rewarded with the development of new and meaningful personal and

professional relationships for building research and services that make

it more likely that programs will be truly institutionalized and implemented with fidelity.

Establishing the community and

institutional board

Another model, one found to be most beneficial, was introduced to the

author and his colleagues12 in the period from 1963 to 1966 by leaders

of community organizations in Woodlawn (a very disadvantaged black

neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side) and by a centrally important

mentor and highly esteemed friend, the late Saul Alinsky. Woodlawn

community leaders had solicited Alinsky and the Industrial Areas

Foundation to help in their struggle for local oversight of their community services and to engage in collective bargaining with city hall

and other communities for Woodlawn’s share of Chicago’s human

resources.

The approach used in Woodlawn begins with the premise that, for

evidence-based prevention programs to be adopted and implemented

with fidelity, local populations must participate actively in decisions

and ultimately own the kind of prevention programs now being considered nationwide.13 The second premise is that a board of local community and institutional leaders is the central structure for participation.

Through it, leaders can set priorities and negotiate mutual interests

across constituencies, with scientists and other professionals serving

as the technicians for the community’s emerging prevention programs.

The third premise is that local populations can participate in decisions

through leaders of their own community organizations, if these leaders

constitute a local oversight and governance board. Examples of such

local representatives include ministers, block club presidents, welfare
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Community and Institutional Partnerships for School Violence Prevention

union presidents, and presidents of neighborhood or business associations. Constituent organizations, reinforced by professional staff,

should continually seek out citizens who are not members of any

organizations and invite them to participate in decisions.

During a program’s developmental phases, the scientists and program

leaders represent the technical requirements of the research and the

need for fidelity in implementation. The role of board members is to

represent and ensure the protection of their constituents’ values and

priorities and to interpret to their constituents the objectives and plans

of the emerging program(s). Beyond the developmental phases is the

long-term goal of institutionalizing the program (i.e., building it into

the structure of the community) as part of the core programs serving

the community. Institutionalizing the program should be a goal from

the start. The role of the board in achieving this goal is essential, first

in building acceptance within the community and then in bringing the

power of voting constituencies to bear in representing programs and

budget requirements to government officials at the city, State, and

Federal levels.

Board membership and oversight

Who decides on the board membership? Although professional staff

can investigate organizations and leaders, they can only strongly request that the leaders become board members. In practice, the major

role of the professional staff is to urge that all relevant population subgroups be represented to ensure that the community eventually owns

the program and that all people who need the program can benefit from

it. Guided by staff, community leaders can then identify leaders of

other constituencies and organizations within the community for potential board membership and reach a consensus.14 The professional staff

is not in charge of the board but, rather, agrees to work under the oversight of the community through the board.

In the Chicago program, leaders of The Woodlawn Organization (TWO)

took on the initial role of organizing a “watchdog” committee to ensure

that our commitment to work with oversight by the community was

real. TWO leaders, sometimes accompanied by professional staff,

approached other community organization leaders, and the watchdog

committee grew to become our board. In the Baltimore program, Alice

Pinderhughes, the highly esteemed black Superintendent of Baltimore

City Public Schools, provided original support for program development.
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Sheppard G. Kellam, M.D., Johns Hopkins University

She was later joined by a local veteran social services professional, Elva

Edwards, M.S.W., also a member of one of the leading national black

sororities, who brought credentials of long residence and high community leadership status. Ms. Edwards took on the task of teaching program

staff and inviting leaders of community organizations to join the board.

She has played a critical role in promoting the long-term continuity and

acceptance of the program.

Failure to consult with the community board can

lead to distancing and weakening of community

understanding and ownership of the prevention

programs, which may ultimately jeopardize

program fidelity and even survival.

Interaction among board members and staff is a continuous process,

requiring monthly meetings, with subgroup discussions between meetings. In the beginning, the professional leader or program director

should initiate communication, work through trust issues within the

community, and also work to identify mutual interests. As the process

moves forward, senior staff can share this vital role. To ensure the

active participation of board members, project staff should maintain

constant contact with them, including contact before each board meeting to emphasize the importance of their attendance.

Although this repeated contact may seem laborious, it is necessary because, in part, it confirms for members the staff’s commitment to work

continually with the board’s oversight. As trust grows, the staff may be

tempted to make decisions without board oversight.15 Staff failure to

consult with the board can lead to distancing from the community and

weakening of community understanding and ownership of programs,

which may ultimately jeopardize program fidelity and even survival.

Board model variations

The structure of the community board has evolved over the course of

our work in Chicago and Baltimore, taking on three variations, described here as models 1, 2, and 3. Each was designed to fit needs identified through analysis (based on community feedback) of the political
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Community and Institutional Partnerships for School Violence Prevention

structure required to carry out the prevention program at a particular

stage of its work. The first model provided a community and institutional base for work in Woodlawn from 1963 to the present.16 The second provided a partnership for the earlier phase of our prevention work

in Baltimore, which was conducted in the classroom and later involved

parents in school-based programs.17 The third model broadened our

base beyond the schools as the Baltimore children who participated in

the first generation of preventive trials became young adults. (The first

generation involved 2,311 first- and second-graders in 19 schools; the

second generation involved 9 schools and 680 first-graders in 9 schools

who are now entering middle school.) Their followup is also being conducted with the oversight of the current board. The three board models

reflect shared principles but also the somewhat different political structures required for different stages of developmental epidemiological

prevention research in Woodlawn and Baltimore.18

Model 1. The prevention program in Woodlawn was based in a Chicago

Board of Health mental health center. The choice of a mental health center was a matter for intense negotiation. In 1963, Woodlawn was among

the four most economically disadvantaged communities in Chicago, with

infant mortality rates comparable to those in developing countries. The

Chicago Board of Health had planned to establish a mental health center

there but was confronted with a militant community that saw “mental

health” as another bad label and did not see the center as a priority.

After many intense discussions, three psychiatrists (including the author) and a social worker were invited to establish the Board of HealthWoodlawn Mental Health Center, with a services and research mission.

The discussions involved Woodlawn community organization leaders,

Chicago Board of Health officials, a State Department of Mental

Health official (director Harold Visotsky, M.D.), and a representative

of the University of Illinois Department of Psychiatry (Melvin Sabshin,

M.D., Chair of Psychiatry). The University of Chicago, an immediate

neighbor of the Woodlawn community, became part of the group only

when Daniel X. Freedman, M.D., became board chair in 1967.

The issues. In 1963, the Woodlawn community was highly distressed

over the state of its public schools and the lack of parental or community involvement. The central office led the school district, with no

parental participation at the local community level. Parents were not

allowed in classrooms and could talk to teachers in the hall only during
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Sheppard G. Kellam, M.D., Johns Hopkins University

the 20 minutes between 8:40 a.m. and 9 a.m. The community had

recently been the scene of militant organizing, with a resulting confederation of more than 110 block clubs and churches banded together

under the leadership of the major community organizations. As noted

earlier, this group, with the consultation of Saul Alinsky and the Industrial Areas Foundation, became The Woodlawn Organization. TWO’s

goal was to provide a power base to fight for community participation

in collective bargaining at the city and State levels and thus to help the

community gain resources for human services and economic development, including school reform. Again, to emphasize its importance,

trust issues were paramount. This was complicated by the existence

of separate organizations in the more middle-class, western area of

Woodlawn, which were sometimes antagonistic toward tactics employed by TWO.

In building a partnership with The Woodlawn

Organization in Chicago, program staff found

that trust issues were paramount.

During the year it took to develop trust, senior program staff attended

many community meetings held by TWO and other organizations in

West Woodlawn. During these meetings, community members raised

tough questions about the program team’s willingness to work within

the community power structure and to recognize the role of the community in defining its boundaries and setting priorities. Eventually,

25 leaders of community organizations were appointed by both TWO

and the West Woodlawn community organizations to form a board. The

board would oversee and work with prevention program technical staff

and would be chaired by the vice president of TWO, who lived in West

Woodlawn and was acceptable to all groups. (The community board,

not program staff, chose the chair.) The role of program staff was to

ensure that the science and services programs were conducted rigorously, to develop study designs that were mutually acceptable, and to

make certain that community values and interests were respected.

Board members and program staff arrived at decisions through negotiation and collaboration. Members interpreted these decisions to their

organizations and also informed program staff of community concerns.
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Community and Institutional Partnerships for School Violence Prevention

The Woodlawn Mental Health Center board consisted entirely of community organization leaders. Not until much later did board members

accept school officials as part of the collaborative process, because the

officials had engaged in intensive confrontations with major segments

of the Woodlawn community. In order for prevention staff to gain access to the schools, a great deal of negotiation between the board and

local school officials was necessary. At the beginning, parents and

TWO members picketed the district superintendent’s house until he

granted the prevention program access to the schools. Later, the same

district superintendent realized the importance and usefulness of having

parents and community organizations as partners and became an ardent

supporter of local oversight and active parental participation.

The result of board and program staff collaboration has been a 35-year

partnership that continues to this day, as staff (led by Margaret

Ensminger, Ph.D.) conduct followup studies of the total cohort of

1,243 children who were first-graders in 1966–67. Recently, the staff

also conducted followup of mothers of these same first-graders at ages

ranging from 50 to 70.

Defining boundaries and priorities. What did the board do beyond

working through the trust issue? Since prevention science and programming are aimed at reducing incidence and prevalence rates, they are

necessarily epidemiologically based. We can only calculate incidence

and prevalence by knowing the boundaries of the community. (Public

health prevention also needs to be directed toward the total population

and its institutions, not just toward the individuals who participate in

specific programs.) Thus, an early role of the board was to define these

boundaries. In Chicago, this meant that organizations which might

eventually like to expand would now have to define boundaries in their

current position and size. The board finally endorsed the historical definitions of Woodlawn’s boundaries and schools and, after much debate

and expressions of concern, also endorsed the study designs (including

randomization and control groups) to obtain data that would strengthen

their demands for resources to establish new programs.

Priority setting was another early focus of the board. Social service

agencies emphasized the need for a psychiatric professional to serve as

backup to help individuals who had major mental health disorders. The

board felt, however, that because the children represented the future,

prevention was the highest priority. Although in 1963 prevention science in mental and behavioral disorders was a new and uncharted field,
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Sheppard G. Kellam, M.D., Johns Hopkins University

the board members wanted to give it top priority, with services for

people who were ill to be developed later. Program staff saw priority

setting as an issue of community values. They agreed to assess early

risk and developmental modeling in an epidemiological framework

and to develop and test preventive interventions as the new data offered

direction and made targets clear.

Model 2. The research base for the second model was the Department

of Mental Hygiene of the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene

and Public Health, where the author was Chair in the period 1982

through 1993. After much negotiation and work on trust issues, the

Baltimore Prevention Program was developed as a partnership between

the Baltimore City Public Schools (BCPS) and the Department of Mental Hygiene, with funding from the National Institute of Mental Health

(NIMH) Prevention Research Center and supplemental funding from

the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Lessons from Chicago. We had learned much in Woodlawn about elementary school antecedents of teenage depression, aggression, drug abuse, and

other problem behaviors. Our research and that of others indicated that,

among vulnerable (i.e., high-risk) first-graders, failure to master reading

predicted later depression, and early aggressive-disruptive behavior predicted later conduct and drug abuse disorders.19 As a result of this research,

early antecedents of problem behaviors became the focus for new prevention programs.

A first step in Baltimore was working out a partnership with the public

school system that made it possible to mutually agree upon and design

prevention programs directed at these early antecedents. The political

base for these programs was the Board of School Commissioners and

superintendent. The first programs tested were conducted in firstand second-grade classrooms.20 Through the principals of the original

19 participating schools, program staff met with parents in community

meetings. All decisions about program implementation were made

openly, with the involvement of the school system and parents.21 Later

in the programs, a schools committee was formed to bring all principals into active decisionmaking roles and to encourage mutual support.

Meetings with parents continued periodically and as needed.

Convergence of community and research goals. The interest of BCPS

was in developing curriculum and improving classroom behavior. The

researchers’ interests were the same. We wanted to test whether, working
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Community and Institutional Partnerships for School Violence Prevention

together, the program staff and the school staff could improve the targeted behavioral antecedents in first and second grades and thereby

reduce the risk of later aggressive behavior, drug abuse, and depressive

symptoms and disorders. All work on the design was done with school

staff and under the superintendent’s authority.22 In the last generation of

trials, 97 percent of the parents agreed to have their children randomly

assigned to one of three intervention conditions in the nine participating

elementary schools. These figures affirm the extent of mutual interest and

trust among school officials, parents, and researchers.

Model 3. The current stage of prevention research in Baltimore involves

following up the 2,311 children, now young people ages 19 to 21, who

were the program’s original first-grade participants. This first generation

consisted of the entire first-grade population of the 19 participating

elementary schools in the period from 1985 through 1987. A second

generation of 680 children who are now in middle school is also being

contacted again, but it is the first generation, now beyond the public

school years, that requires a broader community base for followup.

Community base. The community base needed for such intensive

followup into adulthood would be an extension of the original base. An

important new partner in this expanded base is Morgan State University

(MSU), a historically black university with strong leadership ties to

other community organizations. The community and institutional board

now includes leaders from MSU, city judges, church leaders, and sorority and fraternity leaders of major black professional groups. The one

problem we have not been able to solve is how to involve the young

adults themselves. There appears today to be a great lack of social and

political organizations among young adults. This issue itself may be

important to address in the context of prevention and of the socialization of young adults.

Expanded collaboration. An outgrowth of the third model was a program for undergraduates at MSU. We developed a mutual interest with

MSU to recruit top undergraduates as research assistants, interviewers,

and observers, obtaining funding from the National Institutes of Health

and the National Institute of Mental Health. This minority undergraduate training provided an opportunity to develop a program of advanced

training for undergraduates that would prepare them for graduate education in public health and prevention science.

MSU faculty and administrative leaders constitute a strong community

power structure, with ties to major branches of public institutions and
15

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Sheppard G. Kellam, M.D., Johns Hopkins University

government. The collaboration among MSU, the Baltimore City Public

Schools Board of School Commissioners, and the Johns Hopkins

School of Public Health created a strong, broad community base and

also made possible a useful undergraduate training program. A community board, consisting of leaders within these institutions and overlapping with other community organizations, provides the authority for the

research program to move forward with ongoing negotiation, understanding, and program support.

Neither prevention research nor prevention

programming can be conducted in the

isolated halls of academia.

Program success: Partnerships are key

Neither prevention research nor prevention programming can be conducted in the isolated halls of academia.23 Both are conducted within

the very structure of society at all levels—from the broad societal level

through the local community, the schools, and the workplace, as well as

families, peers, and intimates, and down to the level of the individual.

Roles of the partners

Strong community partnerships are essential for good prevention research. If children are to participate in school intervention programs,

their parents need to give informed consent. A community board that

can explain research goals and design (including why children are randomly assigned to classrooms) to the parents can be vital in obtaining

such consent. The number of children who are allowed to participate

and the number of schools that agree to participate affect the strength

of a study design, including whether the study is representative of a

given geographic area, whether a sufficient number of children will be

available to assign to intervention groups and control groups large

enough to permit meaningful comparisons, and whether the researchers

are allowed to continue long enough to collect meaningful longitudinal

data about the impact of interventions.

Other partners have equally important roles. Teachers who implement

classroom interventions play a key role in ensuring that the program is
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Community and Institutional Partnerships for School Violence Prevention

conducted with fidelity to the design. Principals and superintendents

who encourage teachers to give priority to the interventions also have

a major role in ensuring fidelity. And community support is vital in

showing local policymakers that successful prevention programs are

a valued priority, deserving funding and institutionalization.

Prevention researchers may gain more credibility

by demonstrating familiarity with the local

situation than by showing academic expertise.

To conduct policy-relevant research, community partnerships are essential if researchers are to gain access to lawmakers and those who enforce laws and policy. Generally, prevention researchers may gain more

credibility by demonstrating familiarity with the local situation than

by showing academic expertise.24 They may also find that community

members have more accurate knowledge about communities than can

be obtained from academic sources.

Centrality of the board

In building community partnerships, community boards have several

functions.25 In communities with racial and social class divisions, a

local university may seem isolated from the community or even perceived as a source of inequality or discrimination.26 Community boards

can help communities recognize that prevention programs serve both

research and community interests. Oversight by the board can also

make possible the cooperation of public mental health, education, and

other human services agencies that might otherwise have felt threatened or territorial when presented with a prevention research proposal,

or that might not have seen similarities between their priorities and

those of researchers.27

Having representatives of diverse constituencies on the board helps

elicit a variety of ideas from the community about how to define the

community,28 about the causes of complex health problems, about

community health priorities,29 and about encouraging involvement of

community members.30 Incorporating the community’s self-identified

health priorities and issues in the proposed program is especially likely

to build trust between the community and the program and promote
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Sheppard G. Kellam, M.D., Johns Hopkins University

long-term support for it.31 In Woodlawn, for example, the community

itself chose to address mental health issues through prevention programming for its children and continues to support the program 33

years later.

Sustaining the partnership

Collaborative relationships mean sharing control.32 Designing successful program and evaluation plans may require a long process of trust

building and negotiation as partnerships resolve differences in philosophies, principles, values, work histories, strategic interests, and vision.33 The partners may need to address and correct inequities in

power and should be certain to speak with one another rather than

for one another.34

Although the commitment of program staff’s time in building relationships and trust is likely to be greatest at the beginning of a project,

cultivating the board’s continuing commitment and support also takes

patience and time. Integrating new participants (and approaches) may

also involve negotiations to accommodate perspectives different from

those at the project’s start. However, with reciprocity and mutual respect,35 combined with trust and long-term commitment,36 community

partnerships have a good chance of succeeding in the long run. Empowered by implementing change for their members, communities may

grow in strength and effectiveness. Indeed, as Saul Alinsky suggested,

community empowerment may also benefit individuals and contribute

to health promotion for all.

Finally, on a personal note, the year-long process of analyzing and

engaging with the political and social structure of each community we

aspired to work with has produced some of the most enduring and rewarding professional and personal relationships. It is truly a powerful

reward to experience the mutual respect that such work generates. On

the basis of our experience, I would venture to say there seems to be

no other way to conduct prevention research and programming if these

efforts are to endure.

Notes

1. This work would not have been possible without the great contributions

over 35 years of many individuals in Woodlawn (Chicago) and Baltimore,

including community and school leaders, parents, teachers, and the adults who

were the participating children. My collaborators over the years in Woodlawn
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Community and Institutional Partnerships for School Violence Prevention

and Baltimore have been partners in every sense and have contributed tremendously to the development of the ideas and programs described here. Dr. Jean

Oggins provided critical reading and literature background, and Natalie

Keegan provided critical reading and editorial refining.

2. Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, Blueprints for Violence

Prevention: Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS), Boulder,

CO: Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, 1998; Mrazek, P.J.,

and Haggerty, R.J., eds., Reducing Risks for Mental Disorders: Frontiers for

Preventive Intervention Research, Washington, DC: National Academy Press,

1994; National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), Preventing Drug Use Among

Children and Adolescents—A Research-Based Guide (NIH No. 97–4212),

Bethesda, MD: NIDA, 1997; National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH),

Prevention of Mental Disorders: A National Research Agenda, Bethesda, MD:

NIMH, 1993; and National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), A Plan for

Prevention Research for the National Institute of Mental Health: A Report

to the National Advisory Council, Bethesda, MD: NIMH, 1996.

3. Kellam, S.G., “Integrating Prevention Science Strategies,” paper presented

to the Society for Prevention Research, New Orleans, LA, June 24–26, 1999.

4. Holder, H.D., Alcohol and the Community: A Systems Approach to

Prevention, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

5. Small, S.A., “Collaborative Community-Based Research on Adolescents:

Using Research for Community Change,” Journal of Research on Adolescence 6 (1) (1996): 9–22.

6. Kellam, S.G., and G.W. Rebok, “Building Developmental and Etiological Theory Through Epidemiologically Based Preventive Intervention

Trials,” Preventing Antisocial Behavior: Interventions from Birth Through

Adolescence, ed. J. McCord and R.E. Tremblay, New York: The Guilford

Press, 1992.

7. Kellam, S.G., and J.D. Branch, “An Approach to Community Mental

Health: Analysis of Basic Problems,” Seminars in Psychiatry 3 (1971):

207–225; and Kellam, S.G., J.D. Branch, K.C. Agrawal, and M.E. Grabill,

“Strategies in Urban Mental Health,” in Handbook of Community Mental

Health, ed. S.E. Golann and C. Eisdorfer, New York: Appleton-CenturyCrofts, 1972: 711–727.

8. Kellam and Branch, “An Approach to Community Mental Health”;

Kellam et al., “Strategies in Urban Mental Health”; and Kellam, S.G., J.D.

Branch, K.C. Agrawal, and M.E. Ensminger, Mental Health and Going to

School: The Woodlawn Program of Assessment, Early Intervention, and
19

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Sheppard G. Kellam, M.D., Johns Hopkins University

Evaluation, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975. Reprinted in paperback by same publisher, 1977.

9. Pillsuk, M., “Power: The Appropriate Target of Community Research,”

Community Mental Health Journal 11 (1975): 257–266.

10. Small, “Collaborative Community-Based Research”; and Wallerstein, N.,

“Power Between Evaluator and Community: Research Relationships Within

New Mexico’s Healthier Communities,” Social Science and Medicine 49 (1)

(1999): 39–53.

11. Ebata, A.T., “Making University-Community Collaborations Work: Challenges for Institutions and Individuals,” Journal of Research on Adolescence

6 (1) (1996): 71–79; Perry, H., N. Robison, D. Chavez, O. Taja, C. Hilari, D.

Shanklin, and J. Wyon, “Attaining Health for All Through Community Partnerships: Principles of the Census-Based, Impact-Oriented (CBIO) Approach to Primary Health Care Developed in Bolivia, South America,” Social Science and

Medicine 48 (8) (1999): 1053–1067; and Weinberg, R.A., and M.F. Erickson,

“Minnesota’s Children, Youth and Family Consortium: A University-Community

Collaboration,” Journal of Research on Adolescence 6 (1) (1996): 37–53.

12. The author’s colleagues included Jeannette Branch, M.S.W.; Edward H.

Futterman, M.D.; and Sheldon K. Schiff, M.D.

13. Saul Alinsky believed that a community achieving decisionmaking and

collective-bargaining power over its institutions and services was itself preventive of social maladaptation and mental and behavioral disorders. This

hypothesis may now be easier to test, given the generally held value of local

community empowerment and what is now known about prevention science

methods, prevention programs, and the availability of economic building

incentives at the community level.

14. Burrus, B.B., L.C. Liburd, and A. Burroughs, “Maximizing Participation

by Black Americans in Population-Based Diabetes Research: The Project

DIRECT Pilot Experience,” Journal of Community Health 23 (1) (February

1998): 15–27; and Pillsuk, “Power: The Appropriate Target.”

15. Kupst, M.J., P. Reidda, and T.F. McGee, “Community Mental Health

Boards: A Comparison of Their Development, Functions, and Powers by

Board Members and Mental Health Center Staff,” Community Mental Health

Journal 11 (1975): 249–256.

16. Kellam et al., Mental Health and Going to School; and Kellam, S.G., C.H.

Brown, B.R. Rubin, and M.E. Ensminger, “Paths Leading to Teenage Psychiatric Symptoms and Substance Use: Developmental Epidemiological Studies
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20

Community and Institutional Partnerships for School Violence Prevention

in Woodlawn,” in Childhood Psychopathology and Development, ed. S.B.

Guze, F.J. Earls, and J.E. Barrett, New York: Raven Press, 1983: 17–51.

17. Dolan, L.J., S.G. Kellam, C.H. Brown, L. Werthamer-Larsson, G.W.

Rebok, L.S. Mayer, J. Laudolff, J. Turkkan, C. Ford, and L. Wheeler, “The

Short-Term Impact of Two Classroom-Based Preventive Interventions on

Aggressive and Shy Behaviors and Poor Achievement,” Journal of Applied

Developmental Psychology 14 (1993): 317–345; Kellam, S.G., and J.C.

Anthony, “Targeting Early Antecedents To Prevent Tobacco Smoking: Findings From an Epidemiologically Based Randomized Field Trial,” American

Journal of Public Health 88 (10) (1998): 1490–1495; Kellam, S.G., L.

Werthamer-Larsson, L.J. Dolan, C.H. Brown, L.S. Mayer, G.W. Rebok, J.C.

Anthony, J. Laudolff, G. Edelsohn, and L. Wheeler, “Developmental Epidemiologically Based Preventive Trials: Baseline Modeling of Early Target

Behaviors and Depressive Symptoms,” American Journal of Community

Psychology 19 (4) (August 1991): 563–584; and Kellam, S.G., X. Ling, R.

Merisca, C.H. Brown, and N. Ialongo, “The Effect of the Level of Aggression

in the First Grade Classroom on the Course and Malleability of Aggressive

Behavior into Middle School,” Development and Psychopathology 10 (2)

(1998): 165–185.

18. The prevention science paradigm developed in Chicago and used in Baltimore consisted of the integration of developmental modeling in epidemiologically defined populations, with preventive interventions directed at early

antecedents (mediators and/or moderators) along developmental trajectories

leading to problem outcomes such as aggression, depression, and drug abuse.

The research designs in Woodlawn and Baltimore required randomly assigning children, teachers, classrooms, and schools to either intervention or control conditions.

19. Ensminger, M.E., S.G. Kellam, and B.R. Rubin, “School and Family Origins of Delinquency: Comparisons by Sex,” in Prospective Studies of Crime

and Delinquency, ed. K.T. VanDusen and S.A. Mednick, Boston: KluwerNijhoff, 1983: 79–97; and Kellam et al., “Paths Leading to Teenage Psychiatric Symptoms and Substance Use.”

20. Ialongo, N., L. Werthamer, S.G. Kellam, C.H. Brown, S. Wang, and Y.

Lin, “Proximal Impact of Two First-Grade Preventive Interventions on the

Early Risk Behaviors for Later Substance Abuse, Depression, and Antisocial

Behavior,” American Journal of Community Psychology 27 (5) (October

1999): 599–642.

21. Kellam, S.G., and R.C. Hunter, “Prevention Begins in First Grade,”

Principal 70 (2) (November 1990): 17–19.

22. Kellam et al., “Developmental Epidemiologically Based Preventive Trials.”
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Sheppard G. Kellam, M.D., Johns Hopkins University

23. Denner, J., C.R. Cooper, E.M. Lopez, and N. Dunbar, “Beyond ‘Giving

Science Away’: How University-Community Partnerships Inform Youth Programs, Research, and Policy,” Social Policy Report: Society for Research in

Child Development 13 (1999): 1–19; Kellam and Branch, “An Approach to

Community Mental Health”; Kellam and Hunter, “Prevention Begins in First

Grade”; and Kellam et al., “Strategies in Urban Mental Health.”

24. McHale, S.M., and R.M. Lerner, “University-Community Collaborations

on Behalf of Youth,” Journal of Research on Adolescence 6 (1) (1996): 1–7.

25. Nelson, J.C., H. Rashid, V.G. Galvin, J.D.K. Essien, and L.M. Levine,

“Public/Private Partners: Key Factors in Creating a Strategic Alliance for

Community Health,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine 16 (3 Supp.)

(April 1999): 94–102.

26. Denner et al., “Beyond ‘Giving Science Away.’”

27. Lamb, S., M.R. Greenlick, and D. McCarty, eds., Bridging the Gap Between Practice and Research: Forging Partnerships with Community-Based

Drug and Alcohol Treatment, Washington, DC: National Academy Press,

1998; and Weinberg and Erickson, “Minnesota’s Children, Youth and Family

Consortium.”

28. Mayo, M., “Partnerships for Regeneration and Community Development,”

Critical Social Policy 17 (1997): 3–26.

29. Perry et al., “Attaining Health for All.”

30. McHale, S.M., and R.M. Lerner, “University-Community Collaborations

on Behalf of Youth,” Journal of Research on Adolescence 6 (1996): 1–7.

31. Perry et al., “Attaining Health for All”; and Burrus et al., “Maximizing

Participation.”

32. McHale and Lerner, “University-Community Collaborations.”

33. Kanter, R.M., “Collaborative Advantage: the Art of Alliances,” Harvard

Business Review (July–August 1994): 96–108; and Perry et al., “Attaining

Health for All.”

34. Wallerstein, “Power Between Evaluator and Community.”

35. Weinberg and Erickson, “Minnesota’s Children, Youth and Family

Consortium.”

36. Ebata, “Making University-Community Collaborations Work.”
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Research-Based Prevention

of School Violence and

Youth Antisocial Behavior:

A Developmental and

Educational Perspective

Ron Prinz, Ph.D., University of South Carolina

Definitions of the term “school violence” range from very narrow—

for example, relating only to the use of guns in school—to very broad,

encompassing all youth misconduct and the many community and societal influences on such behavior. This paper considers the full range of

aggressive and antisocial behavior that occurs among school-age children and adolescents primarily (but not exclusively) in school settings,

including bullying, hostile verbal aggression, fighting, uncontrolled

rage toward others, drug dealing, stealing, vandalism, physical assault,

sexual assault, gun carrying, threats with weapons, use of knives or

blunt weapons, and use of guns.

Understanding the development of

antisocial behavior

During the past 15 years, prevention science—grounded in psychology,

public health, and related behavioral sciences—has grown to play an

important role in understanding and preventing youth antisocial behavior. One lesson learned is that prevention must be considered from a

developmental perspective, with emphasis on how youth trajectories

toward violence evolve. Moreover, a successful plan of action (or intervention) must be based on specific, empirically supported theory.

Developmental antecedents and trajectories

Media reports about youthful perpetrators sometimes give the impression that violent acts are committed totally without warning by individuals with no apparent prior maladjustment. It is rare, however, that
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Research-Based Prevention of School Violence and Youth Antisocial Behavior

youths who initiate school violence have no history of problem behavior of any kind. While the youths previously may have done nothing to

bring their behavior to the attention of school authorities, this does not

indicate the absence of developmental precursors leading up to the

egregious behavior. Invariably, youthful perpetrators have experienced

difficulties such as loneliness or minor misconduct, or they have been

exposed to significant risk factors such as family turmoil, ineffective

parenting, nonstimulating educational environments, peer rejection, or

witnessing of violent acts.

It is rare that youths who initiate school

violence have no history of problem

behavior of any kind.

Role of theory

Unfortunately, some behavioral scientists and program implementers in

the violence prevention field work without a theoretical “net”—that is,

programs and interventions are applied to a problem using what appears

to be a logical and justifiable approach but without specific, empirically

supported theory to guide the way. If the program does not live up to

expectations or fails (as often occurs), the absence of theory makes it

difficult for professionals in the field to proceed with the next steps in the

process. Behavioral scientists may wander aimlessly in frustration, while

administrators may discard the program and replace it with another offering new promise but no theoretical or empirical base.

One might reasonably ask what the role of theory is and on what foundation theory should be based. Use of theory in violence prevention

is twofold. First, investigators consider the operating assumptions

about how youth violence and associated antisocial behavior develop.

Through a series of incremental studies, they try to establish how youth

trajectories toward violence evolve and identify the variables that play

a crucial role. Some theories emphasize parent-child interaction and

parenting gone awry,1

 others implicate larger systems such as neighborhoods and schools,2

 and still others combine the different domains

into a composite picture.3
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Ron Prinz, Ph.D., University of South Carolina

Next, investigators consider how theory underlies the proposed intervention. Given limited time and resources, interventionists must judiciously

choose the area to be targeted. Having a theory-driven intervention

requires that the proposer specify the dimensions the intervention is

supposed to influence and why such an effect is critical to violence

prevention.

The two roles of theory—describing the development of risk for violence and identifying the specific basis for an intervention—work in

tandem. Interventions are sometimes inadequate in one or both areas.

For example, a program developer may articulate an elaborate theory

of how families and neighborhoods influence youth development and

then may propose a school conflict-management program that does not

operate on family and neighborhood dimensions.

A theory of antisocial development provides an important backdrop for

creating an intervention, and an intervention theory is an essential element for testing the intervention. However, scientists and evaluators

may specify their intervention theory and then fall short by not assessing the specified variables. For example, one might consider an intervention predicated on the assumption that effective parenting (close

supervision, nurturing interactions, appropriate discipline) is important

in preventing elementary school children from engaging in aggressive

and antisocial behavior. If a controlled study showed that the intervention could reduce the incidence of aggression, but the study did not

include measures of parenting changes (improvements) over time, we

would not know whether intervention effects were due to the targeted

variables (i.e., parenting practices) or to coincidental factors. Thus, even

under apparently successful conditions, not assessing the hypothesized

theoretical constructs (the previously mentioned parenting dimensions,

for example) would limit the ability to draw useful conclusions.

The problem is even more obvious when an intervention or program

is not successful. Scientists and evaluators do not want to bounce randomly from one unsuccessful program to another, hoping to discover

the right one. Theoretical and empirical guidance, coupled with testing

of both the theory itself and the derived intervention, is necessary to

make progress. Implementing violence prevention programs, whether

in a prevention trial or in an applied evaluation context, can be expensive, and the field cannot afford to gamble on endeavors that are not
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Research-Based Prevention of School Violence and Youth Antisocial Behavior

based on theory and that fail to provide schools with useful information

on how to modify inadequate programs.

Researchers recognize multiple causes of

youth violence and other antisocial behavior,

making the development and testing of

interventions a daunting task.

Theories about the causes of violence have become quite complex and

multidimensional. Researchers recognize multiple causes of youth violence and other antisocial behavior, making the development and testing of interventions an even more daunting task.4

Prevention theories are not the sole province of social scientists—

teachers, principals, parents, and youths are all sources to inform theories. Sometimes school administrators have hunches about why certain

problems are occurring in their schools. Hunches can be developed into

minitheories that can be tested through the systematic collection of key

data. If a hunch is correct, then an intervention can be developed and

tested.

Targeted levels in prevention

Violence prevention involves many choices among the levels targeted

for intervention. A basic issue in prevention science (not just in violence prevention) is how to define the population. The current prevention terminology identifies “universal,” “selected,” and “indicated”

interventions:5

• Universal includes the entire group or population (such as all children in an elementary school), unselected with respect to risk for

the outcome to be prevented.

• Selected refers to a subset of the population for whom there is

elevated risk by virtue of exposure to environmental or organismic

conditions or circumstances (such as elementary school children

who live in neighborhoods where there are high rates of violent

crime).
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Ron Prinz, Ph.D., University of South Carolina

• Indicated refers to a subset of the population that is beginning

to show the forerunners of the outcome to be prevented (such as

first-graders engaging in more disruptive misconduct than their

classmates).

These modes of prevention do not consider only the child as the unit or

level of intervention. As shown in the table, multiple levels may be

chosen as intervention targets, including larger units such as the classroom or school and very large contexts such as media influences and

national policy, each of which can be crossed with the three modes of

prevention. For example, if teacher were the chosen level of intervention, a universal intervention would be applied with all teachers in a

particular grade or school, perhaps to enhance behavioral management

strategies for all classrooms; a selected intervention might involve only

teachers working in schools with high rates of child misconduct; and an

indicated intervention might involve only teachers who are struggling

to cope with frequent misconduct in their classrooms and who have not

yet mastered positive discipline and effective teaching methods (i.e.,

those at risk for feeding into the development of child aggression).

Schema for preventing school violence at multiple levels

of intervention

Selected Indicated mode

Universal mode (subgroup with

mode (subgroup precursor of

Level (entire group) at risk) problem)

Child

Family

Teacher

Classroom

School

Neighborhood

Community

School district, State

Media influences

National policy
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Research-Based Prevention of School Violence and Youth Antisocial Behavior

Levels are often nested within each other, and over time prevention researchers have moved beyond the child as the main unit of intervention

and have increasingly targeted the socialization practices and influences of families, teachers, and peers.6

 Prevention research on the social climates and physical environments of schools can be expected to

focus to a greater degree on the neighborhood, community, and school

district as potentially important contexts for mitigating school violence.

Concepts and practices from

prevention research

Insight gained through prevention research underscores the benefits of

the following practices:

• Intervene early. A large body of research indicates that risk for aggressive and violent behavior begins in early childhood.7

 For youths

exhibiting the greatest risk, waiting until adolescence to begin intensive programming is ill advised.8

 Schools and communities are much

more inclined now than they were 20 years ago to recognize the

need to launch interventions at school entry or earlier. Although recognizing the benefits of early intervention is not yet matched with

sufficient staffing and other resources to institutionalize early prevention, policymakers seem to be moving in that direction.

Attempts to alter the risk for antisocial

behavior and violence that have focused

exclusively on processes internal to the

child have met with limited success.

• Intervene in multiple settings. Several comprehensive preventive

intervention trials include programming in multiple settings. Potential settings include the classroom, school, family, peer group, neighborhood, and one-on-one interactions such as mentoring, tutoring, or

counseling.9

 Multiple-setting programs are needed for a number of

reasons. First, socially determined behaviors, including aggression

and violence, are shaped through interactions in many settings.

Second, intervening in only one setting may not be sufficient to

have a positive impact. Third, interventions across settings permit
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Ron Prinz, Ph.D., University of South Carolina

programming in one setting to compensate for less effective programming in another setting. Fourth, children learn best when environments are more congruent with respect to message and expectations. Unfortunately, multiple-setting programs affecting any given

child are the exception rather than the norm in many schools.

• Move beyond the individual child, taking into account larger

contexts. As the earlier discussion about levels implies, children do

not function in a vacuum. Prevention research has demonstrated that

youth violence and conduct problems are socially embedded phenomena. Attempts to alter the risk for antisocial behavior and violence that have focused exclusively on processes internal to the child

have met with limited success. At minimum, family, classroom, and

peer contexts are integrally related to child functioning and should

be considered in designing a comprehensive prevention plan.

• Motivate children, teachers, and parents. Many of the more effective preventive interventions include elaborate strategies to motivate

and reinforce participants. Social reinforcement is the glue that

makes programs work or the missing element in cases of failure.

Good teaching, good parenting, and good management (by principals, for example) all have in common that people need frequent

positive feedback to develop and sustain desirable habits.

• Set and enforce appropriate limits. An emphasis on building positive behaviors and reinforcing socially desired actions of children

(as well as teachers and parents) may give the false impression that

parents, teachers, and schools should not set and enforce behavioral

limits. On the contrary, positively framed prevention programs can

and do have limit-setting components. For example, one type of

extensive programming to reduce school bullying includes several

prescriptions about effective ways to label and sanction bullying

behavior and thus to create a norm for discouraging such behavior.10

Sometimes prevention programs do not provide enough information

about how to set and enforce limits for misconduct at school, and

administrators are often hungry for such guidance. However, we do

know that programming that emphasizes punishment and harsh consequences (such as expulsion), in the absence of ample opportunity

to earn benefits, runs the risk of backfiring or of moving misbehaving youths to other parts of the community without diminishing their

misconduct.
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Research-Based Prevention of School Violence and Youth Antisocial Behavior

• Use modeling as a powerful influence. Much research has demonstrated that young children will copy both positive and negative

behaviors under various conditions. Some preventive interventions

capitalize on modeling as an influence.11 However, the other side of

this issue is that we need to pay closer attention to how staff (including program staff, teachers, and administrators) accidentally model

coercive or verbally aggressive behaviors that children might copy.

Prevention programs need to build many opportunities for children

to observe the prosocial behaviors of adults and other children and to

diminish their opportunities to observe the antagonistic and inappropriate behaviors that should not be imitated.

• Involve the community. Two of the strongest predictors of school

violence rates are neighborhood crime rate and level of local

community disorganization.12 Both schools and their surrounding

communities suffer from the ill effects of crime and violence. Neighborhood crime feeds school violence, and youths suspended or expelled from school contribute to neighborhood crime. Prevention of

school violence, then, offers a challenge for schools and communities to work together to reduce violence in all settings.

• Provide adequate alternatives. There is no such thing as the absence of behavior. Human beings, including children, always are

doing something. Effective programming is about building positive

alternatives to aggression and violence either to prevent or supplant

such behavior. Examples are plentiful in the prevention research literature. Building positive school bonding to prevent alienation and

subsequent misconduct is one example.13 Another is the Promoting

Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS) program, which is about

teaching emotion-regulation and thinking strategies that supplant

more impulsive or irrational approaches to situations.14 In addition,

the Peer Coping Skills program’s prevention team arms children

with prosocial methods for coping with everyday challenges so that

they do not have to fall back on antisocial and asocial coping.15 All

of these examples and others in prevention share the broadening of

children’s (or families’ or teachers’ or schools’) positive repertoires

to offset less desirable modes of interacting. Many schools recognize

the need to frequently strengthen positive alternatives to aggression.

Unfortunately, much of the effort is directed toward containing or

reacting to aggression and relatively less is allocated toward building

positive alternatives.
31

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Ron Prinz, Ph.D., University of South Carolina

A related issue is the provision of alternative opportunities. We know

that children are more likely to get in trouble after school during the

afternoon and early evening. Schools and communities are painfully

aware of the need to create and maintain well-supervised afterschool

programs offering children positive alternatives to roaming the streets and

getting into problem situations. Prevention research literature provides

some guidance about the kinds of programming that can be integrated

into afterschool settings.16 The physical plant is readily available, and

many schools are using their facilities to good advantage after school

and during evening, weekend, and summer periods. The challenge lies

in how to support such programs with adequate staffing and resources.

Applying the lessons

Policymakers, school administrators, and behavioral scientists have a

broad range of issues to consider in addressing school violence. Useful

sources are listed in the sidebar “Preventing Youth Antisocial Behavior

and School Violence: Information Resources.”

Policymakers

Policymakers would do well to recognize that the term “violence

prevention” does not adequately reflect the nature and scope of the problem. The scope of the issue needs to be broadened to address key processes. Moreover, in dealing with the problem of youth aggressive and

antisocial behavior (including demonstrable violence), the community

needs to consider the early trajectories of children who may be at risk not

only for violence but also for other misconduct, substance abuse, academic

failure, and early parenthood, all of which adversely affect youths and the

community. In addition, policymakers might want to consider—

• Insisting on scientific testing and data-informed programs, resisting

the temptation to promote fads or programs with great marketing but

no empirical basis.

• Asking for explanations (not just outcomes) of prevention programming efforts—policymakers can benefit from guiding theory as

much as scientists can.

• Helping schools increase their resources for early intervention.

Assist communities by providing ways to cope with misbehaving

youths other than simply by turning them loose in neighborhoods

without adequate supervision.
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32

Research-Based Prevention of School Violence and Youth Antisocial Behavior

Preventing Youth Antisocial Behavior and

School Violence: Information Resources

Available resources on school violence include the following:

• Brewer, D.D., J.D. Hawkins, R.F. Catalano, and H.J. Neckerman.

“Preventing Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offending:

A Review of Evaluations of Selected Strategies in Childhood,

Adolescence, and the Community,” in Sourcebook on Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offenders, ed. J.C. Howell,

B. Krisberg, J.D. Hawkins, and J.J. Wilson. Thousand Oaks,

CA: Sage Publications, 1995: 61–141.

• Catalano, R.F., M.W. Arthur, J.D. Hawkins, L. Berglund, and

J.J. Olson. “Comprehensive Community- and School-Based

Interventions To Prevent Antisocial Behavior,” in Serious

and Violent Juvenile Offenders: Risk Factors and Successful

Interventions, ed. R. Loeber and D.P. Farrington. Thousand

Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998: 248–283.

• Dishion, T.J., J. McCord, and F. Poulin. “When Interventions

Harm: Peer Groups and Problem Behavior.” American

Psychologist 54 (9) (September 1999): 755–764.

• Dwyer, K., D. Osher, and C. Warger. Early Warning, Timely

Response: A Guide to Safe Schools. Washington, DC: U.S.

Department of Education, U.S. Department of Health and Human

Services, and U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, 1998. NCJ 172880. (http://www.air-dc.org/cecp/)

School administrators

School administrators can choose programs and strategies that build

the nonviolent and prosocial behaviors children should exhibit at

school. They will want to resist the temptation to emphasize sanctions

without offering opportunities to reward and strengthen appropriate and

desired behaviors. In addition, administrators could consider—

• Examining and, if necessary, changing the school “climate.” School

personnel can make or break any preventive intervention. Effective

programs usually are associated with competent staff who are well

managed and content in their work.
33

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Ron Prinz, Ph.D., University of South Carolina

• Resisting the temptation to stigmatize and dismiss children. Suspensions and expulsions are on the rise, but people are still victimized if

misbehaving youths are simply passed around the community without adequate programming.

Behavioral scientists

Finally, behavioral scientists will want to consider—

• Building interventions based on strategic information from teachers,

parents, administrators, and children, and request their help in

designing and piloting programs before adoption.

• Paying attention to larger contexts. Classroom, peer group, school,

and community contexts are key to understanding school violence.

Revised theories and interventions will need to better integrate these

contexts in meaningful ways.

• Improving measures of settings so their impact on larger systems

can be examined.

• Harvard School of Public Health (Violence Prevention Programs), Education Development Center Inc., and Prevention Institute Inc. Partnerships for Preventing Violence: Six-Part Satellite

Training Forum. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education,

Safe and Drug Free Schools Program, in conjunction with the U.S.

Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Maternal and

Child Health Bureau; DHHS, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; DHHS, Indian Health Service, Center for Injury Prevention; and the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile

Justice and Delinquency Prevention. (http://www.walcoff.com/

partnership/)

• Hawkins, J.D., R.F. Catalano, and D.D. Brewer. “Preventing Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offending: Effective Strategies

From Conception to Age 6,” in Sourcebook on Serious, Violent,

and Chronic Juvenile Offenders, ed. J.C. Howell, B. Krisberg,

J.D. Hawkins, and J.J. Wilson. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1995: 47–60.

• McCord, J., and R.E. Tremblay. Preventing Antisocial Behavior.

New York: Guilford, 1992.
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34

Research-Based Prevention of School Violence and Youth Antisocial Behavior

Notes

1. Patterson, G.R., Coercive Family Process, Eugene, OR: Castalia, 1982; and

Patterson, G.R., J.B. Reid, and T.J. Dishion, Antisocial Boys, Eugene, OR:

Castalia, 1992.

2. Sampson, R.J., S.W. Raudenbush, and F. Earls, “Neighborhoods and

Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy,” Science 277

(August 1997): 918–924.

3. Blechman, E.A., R.J. Prinz, and J.E. Dumas, “Coping, Competence, and

Aggression Prevention,” Applied and Preventive Psychology 4 (4) (Fall 1995):

211–232.

4. American Psychological Association, Violence and Youth: Psychology’s

Response, Summary Report of the American Psychological Association

Commission on Violence and Youth, vol. I, Washington, DC: American

Psychological Association, 1993; Elliott, D.S., B.A. Hamburg, and K.R.

Williams, eds., Violence in American Schools: A New Perspective, New York:

Cambridge University Press, 1998; National Institutes of Health, Report of

the Panel on NIH Research on Antisocial, Aggressive, and Violence-Related

Behaviors and Their Consequences, Bethesda, MD: National Institutes of

Health, 1994.

5. Mrazek, P.J., and R.J. Haggerty, eds., Reducing Risks for Mental Disorders:

Frontiers for Preventive Intervention Research, Washington, DC: National

Academy Press, 1994.

6. Prinz, R.J., and C. Connell, “Prevention of Conduct Disorders and Antisocial Behavior,” in Handbook of Prevention and Treatment With Children and

Adolescents: Intervention in the Real World Context, ed. R.T. Ammerman and

M. Hersen, New York: Wiley, 1997: 238–258.

7. Loeber, R., and D. Hay, “Key Issues in the Development of Aggression and

Violence From Childhood to Early Adulthood,” Annual Review of Psychology

48 (1) (1997): 371–410; Maughan, B., and M. Rutter, “Continuities and

Discontinuities in Antisocial Behavior From Childhood to Adult Life,” in

Advances in Clinical Child Psychology, vol. 20, ed. T.H. Ollendick and R.J.

Prinz, New York: Plenum Press, 1998: 1–47; and Patterson, G.R., M.S.

Forgatch, K.L. Yoerger, and M. Stoolmiller, “Variables That Initiate and

Maintain an Early-Onset Trajectory for Juvenile Offending,” Development

and Psychopathology 10 (3) (1998): 531–547.

8. Kazdin, A.E., “Treatment of Antisocial Behavior in Children: Current

Status and Future Directions,” Psychological Bulletin 102 (1987): 187–203.
35

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Ron Prinz, Ph.D., University of South Carolina

9. Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, “A Developmental and

Clinical Model for the Prevention of Conduct Disorder: The FAST Track Program (Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group),” Journal of Development and Psychopathology 4 (1992): 509–527; Dumas, J.E., R.J. Prinz, E.P.

Smith, and J. Laughlin, “The Early Alliance Prevention Trial: An Integrated

Set of Interventions To Promote Competence and Reduce Risk for Conduct

Disorder, Substance Abuse, and School Failure,” Clinical Child and Family

Psychology Review 2 (1) (March 1999): 37–52; Hawkins, J.D., and J.G. Weis,

“The Social Development Model: An Integrated Approach to Delinquency

Prevention,” Journal of Primary Prevention 6 (1985): 73–97; Kellam, S.G.,

G.W. Rebok, N. Ialongo, and L.S. Mayer, “The Course and Malleability of

Aggressive Behavior From Early First Grade Into Middle School: Results of a

Developmental Epidemiology-Based Preventive Trial,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines 35 (2) (February 1994): 259–

281; Reid, J.B., “Prevention of Conduct Disorder Before and After School

Entry: Relating Interventions to Development Findings,” Journal of Development and Psychopathology 5 (1993): 243–262; and Reid, J.B., and J.M. Eddy,

“The Prevention of Antisocial Behavior: Some Considerations in the Search

for Effective Interventions,” in The Handbook of Antisocial Behavior, ed.

D.M. Stoff, J. Breiling, and J.D. Maser, New York: Wiley, 1997: 343–356.

10. Olweus, D., “Bullying at School: Basic Facts and Effects of a SchoolBased Intervention Program,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry

35 (7) (October 1994): 1171–1190; and Olweus, D., Bullying at School:

What We Know and What We Can Do, Oxford, England: Blackwell, 1994.

11. Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, “A Developmental and

Clinical Model”; Foster, S.L., R.J. Prinz, and K.D. O’Leary, “Impact of Problem-Solving Communication Training and Generalization Procedures on Family Conflict,” Child and Family Behavior Therapy 5 (1983): 1–23; Greenberg,

M.T., C.A. Kusche, E.T. Cook, and J.P. Quamma, “Promoting Emotional

Competence in School-Aged Children: The Effects of the PATHS Curriculum,” Development and Psychopathology 7 (1) (1995): 117–136; Miller, G.E.,

and R.J. Prinz, “The Enhancement of Social Learning Family Interventions

for Childhood Conduct Disorder,” Psychological Bulletin 108 (2) (September

1990): 291–307; and Prinz, R.J., E.A. Blechman, and J.E. Dumas, “An Evaluation of Peer Coping-Skills Training for Childhood Aggression,” Journal of

Clinical Child Psychology 23 (2) (June 1994): 193–203.

12. Laub, J.H., and J.L. Lauritsen, “The Interdependence of School Violence

With Neighborhood and Family Conditions,” in Violence in American

Schools: A New Perspective, 127–155.

13. Hawkins and Weis, “The Social Development Model.”
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36

Research-Based Prevention of School Violence and Youth Antisocial Behavior

14. Greenberg et al., “Promoting Emotional Competence.”

15. Prinz et al., “An Evaluation of Peer Coping-Skills Training.”

16. Beck, E.L., “Prevention and Intervention Programming: Lessons From an

After-School Program,” Urban Review 31 (1999): 107–124; Chaiken, M.R.,

“Tailoring Established After-School Programs To Meet Urban Realities,” in

Violence in American Schools: A New Perspective, 348–375; Flannery, D.J.,

L.L. Williams, and A.T. Vazsonyi, “Who Are They With and What Are They

Doing? Delinquent Behavior, Substance Use, and Early Adolescents’ AfterSchool Time,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 69 (2) (April 1999):

247–253; and Prinz and Connell, “Prevention of Conduct Disorders,” 238–258.
37

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Controlling Violence:

What Schools Are Doing

Joseph F. Sheley, Ph.D., California State University

Recent shootings of students by peers on suburban and rural school

grounds have heightened public concern about weapons in the hands of

youths. Horrifying as such incidents might be, however, we must resist

the temptation to conceptualize the problem of school violence around

them. Episodes in which students seek to harm large numbers of their

schoolmates fairly at random are not the challenges most commonly

faced by the average school administrator. Administrators are more

likely to deal with students bringing weapons (primarily guns and

knives) to campus to settle scores with specific individuals, to show

off, or to protect themselves in an environment they perceive as hostile.

Indeed, the problem administrators most often encounter is how to address the day-to-day verbal and physical confrontations that may lead

a student to carry a weapon to school or spontaneously use a weapon

already brought to campus.

Some of the efforts undertaken in America’s schools to prevent youths

from bringing weapons to—and using them on—school grounds are

described in this paper. An analysis of data gathered in 1996 from a

nationwide survey of 48 high school administrators is presented in the

context of the youth violence trends observed over the past several

years.

What we know

While national trends indicate that youth violence appears to be declining, the quality of response to these trends will reflect the quality of

information available to policymakers and administrators. We are just

beginning to implement a systematic approach to using information

about patterns of youth involvement in weapon-related activity—and

other information—in our efforts to protect young people in our

schools.
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Controlling Violence: What Schools Are Doing

National trends

Even at its worst, violence in schools has paled compared with the violence occurring in the communities where students live. Violent acts

have not been committed only, or even mainly, at school. Rather, most

school-related violence has spilled over from the community onto the

campus. After years of increases in youth attacks upon one another1

and, especially, a surge of such violence in the late 1980s and early

1990s, we appear to be experiencing a downturn in violence generally

and in youth violence in particular2

 and a decline in homicide rates

across the age spectrum and especially in cities. The violent crime arrest rate for youths younger than age 17 has declined steadily since

1994,3

 and gun-related homicides committed by youths ages 14 through

17 have declined steadily since 1993.4

Although violence has declined, we should not

be lulled into thinking that all is well—the rates

of violence among youths remain appalling.

The reasons for such declines are not fully apparent. Much of the

change has been attributed to a bottoming out of the crack trade that,

beginning in the mid-1980s, seemed to spawn a wave of firearm-related

homicides by youths and young adults.5

 Much also has been linked to

criminal justice crackdowns on serious juvenile offenders and to more

sophisticated community and criminal justice efforts to address youth

violence, especially as related to gangs.6

 Others relate changes to such

demographic trends as the aging (and death and jailing) of the violenceprone juveniles in the most recent cohorts of high-crime age groups.7

Although violence has declined, we should not be lulled into thinking

that all is well—the rates of violence among youths remain appalling.

The rate for homicides committed by juveniles remains about 70 percent higher than it was from 1970 to 1985. While the numbers are

down from previous years, the 1996 U.S. homicide victimization rate

per 100,000 black males aged 14 to 17 was a shocking 53.3; for their

white counterparts, the rate was 8.4 per 100,000, low actually only in

comparison to the rate for black youths.8

 Certainly, school administrators may not yet relax their vigilance. More information is needed, and

the higher the quality of information supplied to policymakers and
39

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Joseph F. Sheley, Ph.D., California State University

school administrators, the higher the potential quality of response to

the youth violence problem.

What research tells us

Sufficient investigation has been conducted to permit us to state with

confidence that certain subsets of youth, by virtue of their lifestyles,

are more likely than others to be involved in weapon-related violence.9

Ignoring for now the specific causal tracks by which these variables are

linked to harmful outcomes, research results indicate, for example, that

juveniles who report serious infractions of the law (such as robbery),

are arrested many times, sell drugs (and, to a lesser extent, use drugs),

and are gang members generally will report higher levels of gun ownership, carrying, and use.10

Yet, involvement in illegal behaviors does not predict all weaponrelated activity. For example, we have learned that if we hold constant

recreational use of guns (such as hunting), problem handgun activities

occur even among relatively “good boy” populations. Results of a 1996

survey indicate that 3 of every 100 male high school students (youths

from a broad range of socioeconomic backgrounds and with little

involvement in serious crime) possessed a revolver or automatic or

semiautomatic handgun; in addition, 6 of every 100 had carried a gun

(generally a handgun) outside the home (more likely in the car than on

the person) during the 12 months before the survey interview.11

We also know that, although weapon use and transport by juveniles is

a problem to some extent for all communities, including suburban and

rural populations,12 traditionally the most serious firearm-related activities have apparently occurred in less affluent urban populations. Onethird of a sample of inner-city male high school students surveyed in

1991, for example, said they had carried a gun outside the home at least

occasionally—although, as important, two-thirds had not.13 We know,

however, that once we look at broader populations rather than at innercity populations, the rates of nonrecreational gun carrying (not carried

for hunting purposes, for example)—though not the carrying of other

types of weapons—appear to be higher in rural areas than in urban

areas and higher in urban settings than in suburban settings.14

Finally, we know that juveniles apparently do not encounter major

difficulties in obtaining firearms. Until recently, rates of gun-related

crimes committed by juveniles have been at record levels,15 amounts

and quality of guns in the hands of gang members have appeared to be
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40

Controlling Violence: What Schools Are Doing

high,16 and survey after survey has indicated that youths of all socioeconomic backgrounds generally believe that they can acquire a firearm with relative ease.17

Juveniles carry guns and other weapons because

they believe their social worlds are dangerous

places and that they need protection.

If, through all our research, we have learned anything significant that

may be applied to making schools safer, it is that most violence committed against juveniles by juveniles and most weapon-carrying by

youths is not done for criminal-, drug-, or gang-related ends.18 Status

enhancement (the need for attention and respect from peers) appears to

motivate some adolescents to carry firearms outside the home and, by

definition, to make the social environments of other youths more dangerous.19 However, our studies of juveniles’ motivation to carry firearms—whether the subjects already are hardened criminals or “good

boys,” whether they are from the inner city or the farm—persistently

point to fear. Juveniles carry guns and other weapons because they

believe their social worlds are dangerous places and that they need

protection.20

Are they wrong? Clearly, individuals easily can misjudge levels of

threat to them. Yet, National Crime Victimization Survey data indicate

that, in 1997, approximately 1 of every 100 people between ages 12

and 19 was the victim of a robbery, and about 2 of every 100 fell victim

to aggravated assault.21 In 1995, approximately 4 percent of U.S. students aged 12 through 19 were victims of physical attacks or had property taken from them by force or threat of force on school grounds;

of those victims, 12 percent reported seeing a student with a gun at

school.22 Four in 10 inner-city youths surveyed in 1991 reported they

had been threatened with a gun or shots had been fired at them. Three

in 10 had been beaten up at or on the way to school, and nearly 2 in 10

had been injured with a weapon other than a gun or knife in or on the

way to school.23 Eight percent of a broader national survey of male students, conducted in 1996, had experienced firearm threats, and 13 percent had been threatened with a knife. One in 4 had a friend and 1 in 20

a family member who had been the victim of a firearm-related crime.
41

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Joseph F. Sheley, Ph.D., California State University

In addition, 13 percent reported attending parties where shots had been

fired.24

Perceptions undoubtedly matter. Nationally, 28 percent of students

characterize their school as harboring street gangs, and 65 percent indicate that drugs are available on school grounds.25 Forty-two percent of

the inner-city students who took part in the 1991 survey reported that

their friends carried guns, and 8 percent knew someone who had brought

a gun to school.26 Of the broader (1996) student sample noted above,

14 percent reported that their friends carried weapons. Also, 7 percent

estimated their chances of becoming the victim of a shooting as at

least “somewhat likely.”27

In summary, although students’ level of fear and perception of the need

for protection may vary greatly across social strata, it is a mistake to

dismiss such concerns as confined to the urban core. Furthermore,

whether or not the perception of danger that leads a student to carry a

weapon is empirically grounded, the carrying nonetheless shapes the

reality of others. Research suggests that, on average, most violence

among students stems from unprovoked offensive touches, interference

with “personal space,” perceived slights, insults, accusations, and so

forth.28 The eventual outcome of these disputes will depend significantly on the presence or absence of a lethal weapon in the hands of

one or both disputants.

What schools are doing to respond

The context of youth violence established, we turn to the question of

measures taken by schools to address prevention and control. What

seems to be a fairly simple research question is not. Until recently,

relatively little information had been gathered systematically regarding

safety in schools, including the large number of options and programs

available to schools as they attempted to provide secure learning environments.29 Although there would seem to be clear differences in the

potential effectiveness of a range of commonly used school safety measures,30 one of the few national-level studies of types of standard school

security measures (for example, hall monitors, visitor sign-ins) found

no significant relationship between these measures and students’

chances of violent victimization.31 Now viewing the issue as more

critical, government agencies are beginning to disseminate information

about youth violence prevention programs throughout the Nation32 and

to call for evaluations of aspects of the U.S. Safe Schools/Healthy
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42

Controlling Violence: What Schools Are Doing

Students Initiative.33 The movement to produce better quality information inspired the research described below.

School antiviolence measures—survey of administrators

In the course of a larger 1996 study of weapon acquisition and use by

male students in 53 high schools, the opportunity arose to ask administrators of 48 of those schools about school characteristics, levels of

weapon-related activity in the schools, and antiviolence strategies

employed by the schools.34 Information from the administrators was

supplemented with census data for the cities and towns in which the

sampled schools were located. These data included size of city or town;

racial and ethnic populations; age, gender, and educational attainment;

median household and per capita income; poverty rates; labor force and

unemployment rates; and violent and property crime rates. The national

directory, Patterson’s American Education, from which the sample of

schools for the study was derived, provided information about type of

school, grades taught, enrollment, and size of community.35 These data

also were integrated with the administrator survey data. Although the

number of administrators who did not participate (5 of 53) was too

small to include evaluation of statistically significant differences between them and survey participants, they were somewhat more likely to

be located at smaller schools in the South and West and in cities or

towns with higher than average male populations and higher than average violent crime rates.

The 53 schools themselves were part of a sample of 132 selected randomly from Patterson’s American Education. Sampling probabilities

were proportionate to the size of the 10th- and 11th-grade populations

enrolled in a given school. At both bivariate and multivariate levels, the

53 participating schools were compared with nonparticipating schools

across several variables: region of country, grades offered (6 years, 4

years, 2 years, and so forth), size of enrollment, and public or private

status.36 In addition, they were compared in terms of numerous characteristics of the cities and towns in which they were located: population

size, racial and ethnic distributions, age and gender, average educational attainment, income, unemployment rate, percentage in poverty,

and crime levels. In all instances except one, no significant differences

were apparent between the two samples. The exception was related to

the fact that participating schools tended to be located in cities with

higher percentages of the population aged 65 and older, but this variable ultimately proved to be unrelated to participation status.
43

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Joseph F. Sheley, Ph.D., California State University

As the findings (table 1) indicate, in the aggregate, the schools ultimately participating in this project displayed considerable variation

in all but a few categories. They were roughly evenly divided among

regions of the country. The majority served high school students only.

More than half of the schools sampled enrolled more than 1,000 pupils,

although few exceeded 2,500. Nearly 9 of every 10 schools were public

institutions, and 7 of every 10 were located in towns with populations

of 10,000 or fewer, although most of these schools served regional or

county populations.

The population characteristics of the cities and towns in which participating schools were located also varied considerably. In nearly one of

every four cities and towns, more than 30 percent of the citizens were

nonwhite, and in nearly one in six more than a third of the population

was younger than 25. Male-female distributions were roughly equal;

more than 51 percent of the population was male in only 4 percent of

the sites, and the male population was less than 45 percent of the total

population in only 2 percent. In 6 of 10 cities and towns, at least 70

percent of the population had earned a high school diploma. At least 3

of every 10 households in 51 percent of the sample cities and towns

were headed by less affluent females. One in four sites had unemployment rates exceeding 8 percent, and half had median household incomes below $25,000. Finally, 1 in 3 had violent crime rates exceeding

900 per 100,000 population.

How administrators view the problems. The high school administrators surveyed in this study were asked to describe weapon-related problems in their schools and how they were confronting the problems. As

the findings (table 2) indicate, while one in five (19 percent) considered

violence either a “somewhat serious” or “very serious” problem in their

schools, far fewer saw guns (2 percent) and other weapons (8 percent)

as at least “somewhat serious.” Only 2 percent considered it even somewhat likely that the average male junior routinely would carry a gun

while off campus. The administrators also tended to estimate as relatively low the physical threat to their students. Only 10 percent felt it at

least somewhat likely that the average male junior would be physically

threatened at school; 10 percent also considered the possibility that the

same junior would be physically threatened while out of school as at

least somewhat likely. It is also important to note that 50 percent of the

administrators considered drugs at least a somewhat serious problem in

their schools.
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44

Controlling Violence: What Schools Are Doing

Table 1. Characteristics of schools surveyed

Characteristic % of schools surveyed*

Region

New England 4

Mid-Atlantic 10

East-North Central 13

West-North Central 13

South Atlantic 13

East-South Central 8

West-South Central 8

Mountain 14

Pacific Coast 17

School type

Elementary through high school 4

Middle through high school 4

High school only 92

School size

101–500 17

501–1,000 29

1,001–2,500 50

2,501–5,000 4

Public-private

Public 86

Private, not Catholic 8

Catholic 6

City/town size

Fewer than 2,501 8

2,501–5,000 23

5,001–10,000 38

10,001–25,000 10

25,001–100,000 13

100,001–250,000 2

More than 250,000 6

*N = 48.
45

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Joseph F. Sheley, Ph.D., California State University

Table 2. Administrators’ perceptions of violence as a school problem

% of administrators

Perception responding “yes”*

Violence on campus as a problem

Very serious 4

Somewhat serious 15

Not too serious 56

Not at all serious 25

Guns on campus as a problem

Very serious 2

Somewhat serious 0

Not too serious 27

Not at all serious 71

Other weapons on campus as a problem

Very serious 2

Somewhat serious 6

Not too serious 50

Not at all serious 42

Likelihood that an average male junior would—

Routinely carry gun on campus

Somewhat or very likely 0

Not too likely 6

Not at all likely 94

Routinely carry gun off campus

Somewhat or very likely 2

Not too likely 27

Not at all likely 71

Be physically threatened in school

Somewhat or very likely 10

Not too likely 44

Not at all likely 46

Be physically threatened out of school

Somewhat or very likely 10

Not too likely 50

Not at all likely 40

*N = 48.
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46

Community and Institutional Partnerships for School Violence Prevention

Frequency of actual incidents of violence. The administrators also

reported actual experiences with the problem of weapons among students (table 3). Only 42 percent reported not recalling any incidents

involving guns on school grounds during the past 3 years. Twenty-one

percent recalled three or more such incidents. Forty-six percent recalled

at least three incidents involving knives on school grounds during the

past 3 years; only 17 percent remembered none. Twenty-eight percent

indicated that three or more oncampus incidents had involved weapons

other than guns or knives; 40 percent indicated no such incidents.

Finally, 45 percent of the respondents reported that at least one of their

students had been shot, on or off school grounds, during the past 3

Table 3. Administrators’ recollection of violence during the

past 3 years

% of administrators

Number of incidents surveyed*

Gun incidents on campus

0 42

1 27

2 10

3+ 21

Knife incidents on campus

0 17

1 15

2 23

3+ 46

 “Other weapon” incidents on campus

0 40

1 15

2 17

3+ 28

Students shot on or off campus

0 55

1 17

2 13

3+ 15

*N = 48.
47

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Sheppard G. Kellam, M.D., Johns Hopkins University

years; in fact, one in four administrators (28 percent) reported at least

two such shootings.

Links among perceptions, incidents, and school characteristics. Not

surprisingly, the level of association among most of the problem, threat,

and incident variables just described was statistically significant. A

sense of violence as a campus problem also suggested a view of guns

and other weapons on campus as problems. To the extent that administrators viewed violence on campus as a problem, so also did they offer

higher estimates of the likelihood that their students would carry guns

off campus. The likelihood of threats of physical violence to students

both on and off campus was related to the sense of the campus itself as

violent. Finally, recollections of gun- and knife-related incidents on

school grounds during the past 3 years were themselves related statistically significantly. Both were linked to recollections of shootings of

students, on or off campus, during the same period.

Given the high level of attention to guns and violence in the urban

youth culture, we had expected to find most of the above variables

related to size of city or town in which the survey participant lived and

the urban, suburban, or rural character of the school’s neighborhood.

However, administrators’ perceptions of the school having a problem

with violence, guns, or other weapons were unrelated to either variable.

Estimates of the likelihood of gun carrying out of school and of threat

in or out of school also were unrelated to either variable. Only the numbers of gun incidents on school grounds and shootings of students in or

out of school were significantly statistically associated with city size

and with urban character of school neighborhood.

Most of the problem, threat, and incident variables were significantly

associated with the administrator’s perception of drugs as a problem at

his or her school; the sense of a drug problem was highly related to

sense of a violence problem, for example. The administrator’s estimate

of the percentage of the student body whose families received public

assistance also was related significantly to many of the problem, threat,

and incident variables—to the number of gun incidents on campus, for

example. An estimate of the percentage of students who drop out of

school was related to half of the variables in question—for example,

to the likelihood of a threat to a student off campus.
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Controlling Violence: What Schools Are Doing

Measures to limit violence on campus

Administrators were asked to identify which measures, from a long list,

their schools had implemented to reduce violence. The more common

devices (table 4) included revised disciplinary codes, locker searches,

conflict resolution programs, establishment of dress codes, multicultural

sensitivity training, designation of schools as “gun-free” and “drugfree” zones, and suspensions for weapons violations. Relatively few

schools (10 percent or fewer) used ID checks at school entrances, metal

detectors at school entrances, and video monitoring of hallways and

classrooms (although 31 percent used such monitors on school buses).

Police patrols in hallways and on school grounds found slightly more

Table 4. Measures taken to reduce violence

% of administrators

Measure surveyed*

Taken by a majority of the schools

Automatic suspensions for weapons violations 96

Revised disciplinary codes 81

Designation of school as a “drug-free” zone 74

Conflict resolution and mediation programs 71

Designation of school as a “gun-free” zone 66

Dress codes 63

Multicultural sensitivity training 60

Locker searches 55

Taken by fewer than a majority of the schools

Nonpolice monitors in hallways or on school grounds 40

Photo IDs for staff and students 33

Video monitoring of school buses 31

Police on campus 27

Extra police patrols around school property 21

Police in school hallways 15

Rarely taken by the schools

Video monitoring of hallways 10

ID checks at school entrances 6

Metal detectors at school entrances 2

Video monitoring of classrooms 2

Mandatory “see through” book bags 0

*N = 48.
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Joseph F. Sheley, Ph.D., California State University

favor (15 percent and 27 percent, respectively), as did extra police

patrols around school property (21 percent). Photo ID systems for students and staff had been introduced in 33 percent of the schools.

It is important to note that obvious clustering of mechanisms to address

violence generally was not apparent. First, there was no cumulative

pattern in which those who used more directly security-oriented devices,

such as metal detectors at entrances, also used less directly securityoriented devices, such as revised dress codes. Second, the ability to

predict use of certain devices based on use of others was moderate at

best. Schools that had a dress code, for example, also were statistically

significantly more likely to use police patrols in hallways and on school

grounds, photo ID systems, and gun-free and drug-free zone designations. They were not more likely to use revised disciplinary codes, suspensions for weapons violations, ID checks at school entrances, locker

searches, conflict resolution programs, nonpolice monitors, extra police

patrols around school property, metal detectors, or various video monitoring devices. Finally, other than sharing the use of dress and disciplinary

codes, the devices chosen by schools declared gun-free zones and those

declared drug-free zones were dissimilar.

Links among control measures, school characteristics, and

perceptions of problems

None of the violence-limiting measures discussed above was related

statistically significantly to size of city or town of residence of the survey participant. Only three—suspension for weapons violations, a dress

code, and a photo ID system for staff and students—were related, and

one (suspension) negatively so, to degree of urban character of the

neighborhood in which the school was located. Only three—conflict

resolution programs, photo IDs, and video monitoring of buses—were

related, one (bus video) negatively, to perception of drugs as a problem

for the school.

The percentage of students who drop out of school was the predictor of

the greatest number of violence-limiting measures used. Its association

with use of police on campus and in school hallways, deployment of

extra police patrols around school property, use of nonpolice monitors

at the school, use of photo IDs for staff and students, and establishment

of the school as a gun-free zone was statistically significant. The

administrator’s estimate of the percentage of students from families

receiving public assistance was linked to the use of police patrols in
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Controlling Violence: What Schools Are Doing

hallways as well as the use of video monitoring in classrooms and

buses (negative association).

The percentage of students who drop out of school

was the predictor of the greatest number of

violence-limiting measures used.

In sum, differing pictures of school safety emerge depending on

whether we focus on administrators’ estimates of the degree of danger

on campus or on their recollections of weapon-related incidents on

campus or those involving their pupils more generally. The latter suggest the more serious situation. While it may be that the incidents to

which administrators referred were not very serious, it is also important

to note that nearly half of the administrators (45 percent) recalled

that at least one of their pupils had been shot during the past 3 years

(though, again, such shootings did not necessarily occur on school

grounds).37 Neither the estimates of level of danger nor the recollections of actual weapon-related incidents were related to the urban, suburban, or rural character (city or neighborhood) of the school. However,

they were related to administrators’ estimates of level of campus drug

problem and to school dropout rate.

Most schools had adopted some form of institutional response to the

problem of violence. Generally, the measures were not extreme and,

during the past decade, they have become fairly common in schools

nationally. Such measures have included conflict resolution and

multicultural programs, designation of the schools as gun-free and

drug-free zones, revised disciplinary and dress codes, and suspensions

for weapon violations. Far fewer schools had turned to law

enforcement for assistance. Again, the choice of violence-limiting

mechanism was not related to the urban, suburban, or rural character

(city or neighborhood) of the school, although it was related to the

administrator’s estimate of the school’s dropout rate.

The search for better answers

During the past several years, communities, their criminal justice

systems, and their school systems have made serious strides toward
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Joseph F. Sheley, Ph.D., California State University

preventing violence by and against children. Trends in violence are

sloping downward. We know more about the patterns of youth involvement in weapon-related activity than we ever have before—not only

about crime, drugs, gangs, and weaponry but also about children’s perceptions of danger in their social environments and their relationship to

the transport and use of firearms and other weapons. Nonetheless, we

are only at the beginning of a systematic approach to using this and

other information in our schools’ efforts to protect their pupils.

Little pattern in use of violence control measures

At least as of 1996, most schools were using some techniques, and

many schools many techniques, to lower the risk of weapon-related

violence on their premises. The most striking aspect of the study findings,

however, is the general absence of patterning in which schools employ

which mechanisms. No stacking or cumulative effect is apparent. There

is little that is systematic in the relationship of the use of one measure

to the use of another. While the dropout rate and, to a lesser extent, other

variables are related to use of certain measures against violence, the

underlying reason for choosing those measures is unclear. The choice

of mechanisms seems unrelated to the level of an administrator’s perception of violence as a problem on his or her campus and even to the

urban, suburban, or rural nature of that campus.

Little systematic sense of what works

In trying to make sense of these findings, we need to recall that administrators do not make decisions about the prevention of violence in

schools in a vacuum. The political liability of administrators and

political leaders who “fail to act” before a crisis is enormous. Those

who cannot show that they have introduced all or most of the available

“common” preventive measures will pay dearly if a serious incident

occurs on their watch, whether or not the common preventive measures

would have prevented the incident. Thus, to the degree that certain

mechanisms have been introduced into some schools, they likely will

be introduced into others. We do not know—and we should find out—

whether the choices are tied to knowledge about the record of success

(or failure) of a given violence prevention technique.

We have reached a point at which enough programs are being used in

enough schools to enable us to sort out the more effective programs

from the less effective within subsets of school settings. It is highly
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Controlling Violence: What Schools Are Doing

unlikely that there are many generic violence prevention mechanisms.

Mechanisms employed in some schools (inner-city schools, for example) may not work well in others (rural schools, for example).

To discover these patterns, we need to work with a large sample of

schools, all of which will share much of the same information about

what they are doing and what has been happening to the children in

their care. Furthermore, we need to be able to ascertain a “quality”

application of a given program or mechanism; the manner in which

schools introduce conflict resolution programs surely varies, for

example. Only if we have this information can we judge whether a

finding of “no effect” regarding the use of a measure across schools

reflects lack of efficacy of the measure itself or lack of its appropriate

application.

Community ties to schools

Increasingly, intervention in the cycle of youth violence is being

framed, quite appropriately, less as a school project and more as a community project.38 While communities must do what they can to remove

guns from the hands of juveniles, they likely will not accomplish this

goal until they have removed the structural and cultural conditions that

now promote gun-related activity in the youth population. If the average community in America has not yet “crossed the line” into truly

unsafe situations, then the key to warding off problems lies in discouraging the conditions that have produced them in other settings (that is,

in discouraging the development of a youth culture that defines gun

possession as necessary to one’s survival). Once such a culture exists,

criminal justice attempts to disrupt gun sales and acquisition markets

may succeed partially but will not rid communities of the problem

because demand for weapons will remain. Indeed, a more organized

supply likely will develop to meet demand.

The study findings suggest that most schools have adopted the fundamental elements of persuasion against a culture of violence—some

combination of deterrence (locker searches, for example) and ideology

(teaching conflict avoidance skills, for example). The education system

is asked to remedy yet another social problem. However, we must

guard against the danger of assigning control of violence solely or even

primarily to the school curriculum. Communities may gain schools that

are safe havens and permit education to occur—quite reasonable goals.

Yet, schools rarely are the source of violence as much as they are the

place where disputes arising in the neighborhood are acted upon. To the
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Joseph F. Sheley, Ph.D., California State University

extent that schools succeed in pushing violence off campus, it likely

will be displaced back into the surrounding community.

We must guard against the danger of assigning

control of violence solely or even primarily

to the school curriculum.

The issue for communities, then, is how to dissuade youths from resolving disputes through violent means and thereby convince them that

weapons are not necessary to the conduct of everyday living. Conflict

resolution and multicultural sensitivity training in schools clearly are

helpful, but they do not address the conditions that produce neighborhood disputes in the first place. Nor do they touch deeply, if at all,

youths only marginally committed to education, those with extensive

school absence records, and certainly, youths who have dropped out

of school. The current findings have suggested that schools with high

dropout rates appear to encounter greater weapon-related problems

on campus. This, it would seem, is more a community problem than

a school problem. Communities with such problems understandably

must turn to the criminal justice system for help.39 Communities without such problems, or that have them to a lesser degree, should be

exploring policy initiatives that identify and address the antecedents

of weapon-related activities among juveniles.

Notes

1. Cook, P., and J. Laub, “The Unprecedented Epidemic in Youth Violence,” in

Crime and Justice: An Annual Review of Research, vol. 24, eds. M. Tonry and

M. Moore, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

2. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States, 1997: Uniform

Crime Reports, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, 1998; Rand, M.,

Criminal Victimization 1997: Changes 1996–97 with Trends 1993–97, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1998,

NCJ 173385; and Rand, M., J. Lynch, and D. Cantor, Criminal Victimization,

1973–95, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice

Statistics, 1997, NCJ 163069.

3. Puzzanchera, C., The Youngest Offenders, 1996, Washington, DC: U.S.

Department of Justice, 1998.
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Controlling Violence: What Schools Are Doing

4. Fox, J., and M. Zawitz, Homicide Trends in the United States, Washington,

DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1999, NCJ

173956.

5. Blumstein, A., “Youth Violence, Guns, and the Illicit-Drug Industry,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 86 (1) (Fall 1995): 10–36; Fagan, J.,

and D. Wilkinson, “Firearms and Youth Violence,” in Handbook of Antisocial

Behavior, eds. D. Stoff, J. Breiling, and J. Maser, New York: Wiley, 1997; and

Sheley, J., and J. Wright, In the Line of Fire: Youth, Guns, and Violence in

Urban America, New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1995: 155.

6. Curry, D., and S. Decker, Confronting Gangs: Crime and Community, Los

Angeles: Roxbury, 1998; Ingersoll, S., “National Juvenile Justice Action Plan:

A Comprehensive Response to a Critical Challenge,” Juvenile Justice 3 (2)

(September 1997): 11–20; Kennedy, D., “Pulling Levers: Chronic Offenders,

High-Crime Settings, and Theory of Prevention,” Valparaiso University Law

Review 31 (2) (Spring 1997): 449–484; Roth, J., The Detroit Handgun Intervention Program: A Court-Based Program for Youthful Handgun Offenders,

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice,

1998; Sheppard, D., Promising Strategies To Reduce Gun Violence, Washington,

DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency

Prevention, 1999.

7. Blumstein, A., “The Context of Recent Changes in Crime Rates,” in What

Can the Federal Government Do To Decrease Crime and Revitalize Communities? Research Forum, U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of

Justice, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of

Justice and Executive Office for Weed and Seed, October 1998, NCJ 172210;

Zimring, F., “Kids, Guns, and Homicide: Policy Notes on an Age-Specific

Epidemic,” Law and Contemporary Problems 59 (1) (Winter 1996): 24–38;

and Zimring, F., American Youth Violence, New York: Oxford University

Press, 1998.

8. Fox, J., Trends in Juvenile Violence, Boston: Northeastern University Press,

1998.

9. Lauritsen, J., J. Laub, and R. Sampson, “Conventional and Delinquent

Activities: Implications for the Prevention of Violent Victimization Among

Adolescents,” Violence and Victims 7 (2) (Summer 1992): 91–108; Lowry, R.,

K. Powell, L. Kann, J. Collins, and L. Kolbe, “Weapon-Carrying, Physical

Fighting, and Fight-Related Injury Among U.S. Adolescents,” American

Journal of Preventive Medicine 14 (2) (February 1998): 122–129.

10. Decker, S., S. Pennell, and A. Caldwell, “Arrestees and Guns: Monitoring

the Illegal Firearms Market,” final report submitted to the National Institute of
55

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Joseph F. Sheley, Ph.D., California State University

Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, 1996, grant no. 95–IJ–R–014; Huff, R.,

Comparing the Criminal Behavior of Youth Gangs and At-Risk Youths, Research in Brief, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, October 1998, NCJ 172852; Sheley and Wright, In the Line of

Fire; and Sheley, J., and J. Wright, High School Youths, Weapons, and Violence: A National Survey, Research in Brief, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, October 1998, NCJ 172857.

11. Sheley and Wright, High School Youths, Weapons, and Violence.

12. Sheley, J., and V. Brewer, “Possession and Carrying of Firearms Among

Suburban Youth,” Public Health Reports 110 (1) (January–February 1995):

18–26; and Sheley and Wright, High School Youths, Weapons, and Violence.

13. Sheley and Wright, In the Line of Fire; Blumstein, “Youth Violence, Guns,

and the Illicit-Drug Industry”; and Callahan, C., and F. Rivara, “Urban High

School Youth and Handguns,” Journal of the American Medical Association

267 (22) (June 1992): 3038–3042.

14. Sheley and Wright, High School Youths, Weapons, and Violence.

15. Greenbaum, S., “Kids and Guns: From Playgrounds to Battlegrounds,”

Juvenile Justice 3 (2) (September 1997): 3–10; U.S. Department of the Treasury, ATF Crime Gun Trace Analysis Report: Youth Crime Gun Interdiction

Initiative, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Treasury, Bureau of

Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, 1997.

16. Huff, Comparing the Criminal Behavior of Youth Gangs and At-Risk

Youths.

17. Callahan and Rivara, “Urban High School Youth and Handguns”;

Greenbaum, “Kids and Guns”; Decker et al., “Arrestees and Guns”; Sheley

and Wright, In the Line of Fire; and Sheley and Wright, High School Youths,

Weapons, and Violence.

18. Lockwood, D., Violence Among Middle School and High School Students:

Analysis and Implications for Prevention, Research in Brief, Washington, DC:

U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, October 1997, NCJ

166363; Sheley and Wright, In the Line of Fire; Wilkinson, D., and J. Fagan,

“The Role of Firearms in Violence ‘Scripts’: The Dynamics of Gun Events

Among Adolescent Males,” Law and Contemporary Problems 59 (1) (Winter

1996): 55–89.

19. Sheley and Wright, High School Youths, Weapons, and Violence.

20. Decker et al., Arrestees and Guns; Lizotte, A., J. Tesoriero, T. Thornberry,

and M. Krohn, “Patterns of Adolescent Firearms Ownership and Use,” Justice
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Controlling Violence: What Schools Are Doing

Quarterly 11 (1) (March 1994): 51–73; Lizotte, A., G. Howard, M. Krohn,

and T. Thornberry, “Patterns of Illegal Gun Carrying Among Young Urban

Males,” Valparaiso University Law Review 31 (2) (Spring 1997): 375–393;

and Sheley, J., and J. Wright, “Motivations for Gun Possession and Carrying

Among Serious Juvenile Offenders,” Behavioral Sciences and the Law 11 (4)

(Autumn 1993): 375–388.

21. Rand, Criminal Victimization 1997.

22. Chandler, K., C. Chapman, M. Rand, and B. Taylor, Students’ Reports of

School Crime: 1989 and 1995, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice,

1998.

23. Sheley and Wright, In the Line of Fire.

24. Sheley and Wright, High School Youths, Weapons, and Violence.

25. Chandler et al., Students’ Reports of School Crime.

26. Sheley and Wright, In the Line of Fire.

27. Sheley and Wright, High School Youths, Weapons, and Violence.

28. Lockwood, Violence Among Middle School and High School Students.

29. National School Safety Center, School Safety Check Book, Malibu, CA:

National School Safety Center, Pepperdine University, 1988; and Ross, J., K.

Einhaus, L. Hohenemser, B. Greene, L. Kann, and R. Gold, “School Health

Policies Prohibiting Tobacco Use, Alcohol and Other Drug Use, and Violence,” Journal of School Health 65 (8) (October 1995): 333–338.

30. Butterfield, G., and J. Arnette, Weapons in Schools, NSSC Resource Paper,

Malibu, CA: National School Safety Center, 1993; and Dwyer, K., D. Osher,

and C. Warger, Early Warning, Timely Response: A Guide to Safe Schools,

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 1998.

31. Bastion, L.D., and B.M. Taylor, School Crime: A National Crime Victimization Survey Report, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau

of Justice Statistics, September 1991: 13, NCJ 131645.

32. Dwyer et al., Early Warning, Timely Response; U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, What Can the Federal Government Do To

Decrease Crime and Revitalize Communities?; Office of Juvenile Justice and

Delinquency Prevention, Juvenile Mentoring Program: 1998 Report to Congress, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, December 1998; and

Sheppard, D., Promising Strategies To Reduce Gun Violence, Washington,

DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency

Prevention, 1999, NCJ 173950.
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Joseph F. Sheley, Ph.D., California State University

33. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, National Evaluation of the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative (Solicitation for Proposals), Washington, DC: Office of Justice Programs, 1999.

34. Sheley and Wright, High School Youths, Weapons, and Violence.

35. Educational Directories, Inc., Patterson’s American Education, Mount

Prospect, IL: Educational Directories, Inc., 1994.

36. Studies of the topic of violence in schools are becoming increasingly difficult. The political climate of the late 1990s differs considerably from that of

the early 1990s. Although only a few years before we had gained easy access

to students in studies of virtually the same subject, access in 1996 often was

effectively denied. Most principals (especially in the western States) who decided against participating in this study stated that their school boards would

not permit a survey of students concerning exposure to weapons and violence.

The topic was deemed far too politically sensitive for the community, in the

sense that it might lead to embarrassing findings (even though the schools

would not be identified) or that it would introduce impressionable students to

ideas they should not be considering. In many instances, principals who had

pledged cooperation were ordered by their superintendents or their school

boards to reverse their decision.

37. The time referent “past 3 years” used in the survey perhaps somehow

softens the effect of the incidents in question. That is, an administrator who

recalls a student having been shot 3 years ago may not indicate the sense of

“problem” perceived by the administrator who recalls a more recent shooting.

38. U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, What Can the

Federal Government Do To Decrease Crime and Revitalize Communities?

39. Methods to reduce firearm-related violence among youths are now being

tested in Boston. They target reductions without necessarily addressing larger

community structural issues. The results have been encouraging, but considerably more research must be conducted in this area. See Kennedy, D., A. Piehl,

and A. Braga, “Youth Violence in Boston: Gun Markets, Serious Youth

Offenders, and a Use-Reduction Strategy,” Law and Contemporary Problems

59 (1) (Winter 1996): 147–196; and Kennedy, “Pulling Levers.”
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58

The Federal Government Responds to

School Violence

Acutely aware of the problem of school violence, Federal Government agencies are working to reduce it, both through their own

initiatives and in collaboration with other agencies and with States

and local communities.

Among these agencies are the Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention (Department of Health and Human Services [DHHS]),

Department of Education, Department of Housing and Urban

Development, Department of Justice, National Institutes of Health

(DHHS), Office of National Drug Control Policy, and Substance

Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (DHHS).

An inventory of their activities, categorized by type and updated

twice a year, is at http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dash.* It consists

of ongoing and recently completed activities that either directly

address violence in or around schools or indirectly address school

violence by focusing on its precursors, associated factors, or

prevention mechanisms.

The Federal activities. The list of Federal activities comprises—

• Surveys/monitoring.

• Evaluation research.

• Other research.

• Research synthesis and application.

• Programs.

• Resource development.

• Resource and technical assistance centers.

Youth violence information resource. PAVNET (Partnerships Against

Violence Network) is a virtual library of information about efforts,

many of them federally funded, to reach children and young people

at risk for violence. Compiled with input from several Federal

agencies, it is a “one-stop,” searchable information resource to help

reduce redundancy in information management and provide easy

access to information for States and local communities.
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The PAVNET Web address is http://www.pavnet.org/, where programs, curricula, and technical information are listed and periodically updated. Information about funding sources is also included.

Recent NIJ publications on school violence

The Appropriate and Effective Use of Security Technologies in U.S.

Schools, by Mary W. Green, Research Report, Washington, DC:

U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, September

1999, NCJ 178265. Offers practical guidance for high school

administrators and their law enforcement colleagues on video

surveillance, weapons detection devices, entry controls, duress

alarms, operational issues, and security concepts.

Crime in the Schools: Reducing Conflict With Student Problem

Solving, by Dennis Jay Kenney and Steuart Watson, Research

in Brief, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National

Institute of Justice, July 1999, NCJ 177618. Reports on the

effectiveness of the School Safety Program, a problem-solving

approach in which students themselves take part in devising

solutions.

Both publications can be downloaded from the NIJ Web site:

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/. Copies may be obtained from

the National Criminal Justice Reference Service by calling

800–851–3420.

* “DASH” (the Division of Adolescent and School Health), which compiled the inventory with contributions from several other Federal agencies,

is a component of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The

mission of DASH, created in 1988, is to identify the highest priority health

risks among youths, monitor the incidence and prevalence of those risks,

implement national programs to prevent risks, and evaluate and improve

those programs.
About the National Institute of Justice

The National Institute of Justice (NIJ), a component of the Office of Justice Programs, is the research agency of the U.S. Department of Justice. Created by the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe

Streets Act of 1968, as amended, NIJ is authorized to support research, evaluation, and demonstration programs, development of technology, and both national and international information

dissemination. Specific mandates of the Act direct NIJ to:

• Sponsor special projects and research and development programs that will improve and

strengthen the criminal justice system and reduce or prevent crime.

• Conduct national demonstration projects that employ innovative or promising approaches for

improving criminal justice.

• Develop new technologies to fight crime and improve criminal justice.

• Evaluate the effectiveness of criminal justice programs and identify programs that promise to

be successful if continued or repeated.

• Recommend actions that can be taken by Federal, State, and local governments as well as by

private organizations to improve criminal justice.

• Carry out research on criminal behavior.

• Develop new methods of crime prevention and reduction of crime and delinquency.

In recent years, NIJ has greatly expanded its initiatives, the result of the Violent Crime Control

and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (the Crime Act), partnerships with other Federal agencies and

private foundations, advances in technology, and a new international focus. Examples of these

new initiatives include:

• Exploring key issues in community policing, violence against women, violence within the

family, sentencing reforms, and specialized courts such as drug courts.

• Developing dual-use technologies to support national defense and local law

enforcement needs.

• Establishing four regional National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Centers

and a Border Research and Technology Center.

• Strengthening NIJ’s links with the international community through participation in the

United Nations network of criminological institutes, the U.N. Criminal Justice Information

Network, and the NIJ International Center.

• Improving the online capability of NIJ’s criminal justice information clearinghouse.

• Establishing the ADAM (Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring) program—formerly the Drug

Use Forecasting (DUF) program—to increase the number of drug-testing sites and study

drug-related crime.

The Institute Director establishes the Institute’s objectives, guided by the priorities of the Office

of Justice Programs, the Department of Justice, and the needs of the criminal justice field. The

Institute actively solicits the views of criminal justice professionals and researchers in the continuing search for answers that inform public policymaking in crime and justice.

To find out more about the National Institute of Justice,

please contact:

National Criminal Justice Reference Service

P.O. Box 6000

Rockville, MD 20849–6000

800–851–3420

e-mail: askncjrs@ncjrs.org

To obtain an electronic version of this document, access the NIJ Web site

(http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij).

If you have questions, call or e-mail NCJRS.