Lethal School Violence Research Articles

Lethal school violence in Scandinavia: development of an incident typology and suggestions for prevention

In this paper, we address the question of lethal school violence and suggest some preventive strategies. Previous studies in the field have been dominated of cases from the U.S. or Germany, but in this paper we instead focus on lethal violence which has occurred in Scandinavia. Previous research of lethal violence and prevention against it often stresses the complexity and limitations in research. Mainly since the impossibility to profile perpetrators or make lists of warnings signs. In addition, since lethal violence are rare events, there are methodologic challenges related to studies of the phenomena. In the study, the included cases are different acts of lethal violence, occurred 1961–2016 (n = 12). In the first analysis, the aim is to construct a typology, and in the second analysis the typology is used for analysing suitable prevention strategies. The study emphasizes the relation between perpetrator, victim, school and traceable motive in the typology, and the result concludes three different types of lethal violence. The first is based on interpersonal revenge, the second institutional revenge and the third societal revenge. Two prevention strategies seem suitable: one aiming at schools organizational structure and the second to architectural decisions in the design process.

Preventing lethal school violence

Preventing lethal school violence

A Qualitative Investigation of Averted School Shooting Rampages

The recent rash of school violence has again brought to the fore a need to investigate ways to enhance the safety of America’s children. With its emphases on prevention and collaboration with schools, a counseling psychology perspective can add much to the growing body of research on lethal school violence. This article aims to understand school violence prevention from the perspectives of school personnel who intervened to avert deadly shootings. As such, this study used consensual qualitative research methodology. Six primary domains emerged from the data, including school conditions, intervention, crisis planning, relationship, prevention efforts, and problematic issues. A seventh other domain captured important data that did not fit with the aforementioned six domains. From all domains, data were collapsed into 42 core ideas.

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Research in School Shootings

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Research in School Shootings

Peer Victimization and Mental Health During Early Adolescence

In this article, the authors describe recent research on peer victimization and its mental health consequences during early adolescence. They begin with a working definition of peer victimization that distinguishes it from lethal school violence and from simple conflict between peers. They then present a psychosocial profile of youth who are chronic victims of harassment, with a particular focus on their mental health challenges. To aid the understanding of the plight of victims, the authors contrast their profiles with those of bullies and with those of adolescents who have characteristics of both bullies and victims. Some unanswered questions in the peer victimization literature are then considered, such as whether there are gender and ethnic differences in the experience of victimization and the stability of victim status. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for both school-wide and targeted interventions to reduce victimization and with suggestions to teachers for concrete actions they can take to promote a safer environment for their students.

Book Review: Deadly Lessons: Understanding Lethal School Violence

Book Review: Deadly Lessons: Understanding Lethal School Violence

Newman, Katherine S., Cybelle Fox, David Harding, Jal Mehta, and Wendy Roth., RAMPAGE: THE SOCIAL ROOTS OF SCHOOL SHOOTINGS

Newman, Katherine S., Cybelle Fox, David Harding, Jal Mehta, and Wendy Roth., RAMPAGE: THE SOCIAL ROOTS OF SCHOOL SHOOTINGS. New York: Basic Books, 2004, $27.50 hardcover.Rampage highlights two low-crime, family-centered U.S. communities that spawned and survived rampage school shootings. The 1997 incident at Heath High School on the outskirts of West Paducah, Kentucky, was perpetrated by a lone fourteen-year-old gunman named Michael Carneal. He killed three classmates and injured five others. The second incident occurred the following year at Westside Middle School near Jonesboro, Arkansas, where Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden, 11, killed five and injured another ten unsuspecting victims, including a teacher. This study, conducted by Katherine Newman and four of her Harvard doctoral candidates, commenced as part of the National Academy of Sciences study of lethal school violence mandated by Congress as part of the 1999 Missing, Runway, and Exploited Children's Act. One provision of that Act required that the U.S. Department of Education study rampage shootings in schools. Newman was invited to contribute to a comparative study of six communities around the country that had experienced rampage school shootings; her charge was to analyze Heath and Westside in the context of those bloody massacres.First the authors detail in case study fashion the two rampage shootings, including accounts of the massacres, biographies of the shooters, and descriptions of the social structures of the schools and the communities. The study data are derived mostly from interviews with 163 people in Heath and Westside along with neighboring communities, including those from families of the victims; students who were in the schools at the time of the shootings as well as current students who were not; teachers; administrators; lawyers; officials of the court; psychologists; newspaper and television reporters; and friends, family members, and fellow congregation members of the shooters. National and local news coverage was also used as a source of information.Next, Newman and her students conducted an exhaustive review of national and local news coverage of all other rampage school shootings that had occurred over the previous thirty years. With that information they were able to place the Health and Westside cases in comparative context, and they were equipped to test a theoretical model of contributing factors to rampage school shootings.Chapter 10, Testing the Theory, emphasizes the importance of sociological as well as psychological factors in explaining the tragedies of rampage school shootings. The Newman study focuses on two organizational structures as major contributors to the shootings: (1) the organizational structure of schools, which leads teachers and administrators to overlook the scattered evidence of the building rage characteristic of those who become shooters, and (2) the organizational structures of small towns, which stifles the flow of information about marginal and troubled youth. …

Deadly Lessons: Understanding Lethal School Violence: Case Studies of School Violence Committee

Deadly Lessons: Understanding Lethal School Violence: Case Studies of School Violence Committee

First and Last Words

Urban school violence is common and when it becomes fatal constitutes a neglected theoretical counterpoint to highly publicized rural and suburban school shootings. Joseph White shot and killed Delondyn Lawson and injured two other youths at Tilden High School in the last fatal Chicago school shooting nearly a decade ago. This event was portrayed in extensive news coverage as random and senseless and by a jury trial as a first-degree homicide that was inexcusable as self-defense. Journalism often is described as the first draft of history, and trials often are seen as the more definitive record. Yet neither journalism nor trials are comprehensive sources of social history, especially of social conflict. The authors demonstrate that journalistic accounts can prejudge and stereotype lethal school violence, that trials often further depict these conflicts in legally authoritative but restricted and misleading ways, and that an exclusive focus on rural and suburban settings obscures a broader theoretical understanding of deadly school shootings.