School-Based Violence Prevention Programs

Abstract

School violence in the United States is an issue of grave concern for educators, students, parents, and communities. Many schools have responded to the problem by initiating prevention interventions without empirical evidence of effectiveness, assuming it is better to do something rather than to do nothing. In some cases though, more harm than good may result when such intervention strategies and programs are implemented only for the sake of doing something in response to the problem. The literature review examines research on school violence and provides a review of selected school-based violence prevention programs with beginning empirical support of their effectiveness. The authors stress the importance of schools implementing school-based violence prevention programs that have produced empirical evidence of effectiveness.