The Risk of School Rampage: Assessing and Preventing Threats of School Violence

Assessing and Preventing Threats of School Violence

E. Madfis

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137401656
• eBook ISBN: 9781137399281
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Educational Policy
• Index: Social Sciences

By examining averted school rampage incidents, this work addresses problematic gaps in school violence scholarship and advances existing knowledge about mass murder, violence prevention, bystander intervention, threat assessment, and disciplinary policy in school contexts.

1

Introduction

Madfis, Eric. The Risk of School Rampage: Assessing and Preventing Threats of School Violence. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
DOI: 10.1057/9781137399281.0003.

Over the last ten years in the United States, there have been hundreds of school rampage plots that have successfully been averted (Daniels et al. 2007; O’Toole 2000; Trump n.d.). During this same period, however, American schools have prioritized discipline and security in a manner which has exaggerated the extent of school violence as a social problem and dramatically transformed public education as a social institution. In the wake of numerous highly publicized multiple-victim school homicides that occurred during the 1990s, American schools responded with massive changes to their disciplinary policies and security apparatuses. With the intention of preventing future rampage shootings, schools implemented increased security through school resource officers (hereafter, SROs), cameras, locked doors, and lockdown procedures, and expanded discipline via zero tolerance policies with mandatory arrests and school exclusions. This cluster of practices, which Hirshfield and Celinska (2011) have collectively referred to as “school criminalization,” represent the fairly recent but pervasive incursion of law enforcement personnel, ideology, and technology into the school setting. In addition, many school officials and academics responded with a risk assessment approach by focusing upon the identification of potential school shooters through warning sign check lists, behavioral profiles, and threat assessments.

Whatever failures or successes these varied approaches have had with regard to fighting school crime or violence more generally, no prior scholarship has looked at the numerous cases of rampage plots which have actually been averted in order to discern if and when any of these developments have actually played a preventative role. In fact, with the exception of a few recent studies (Daniels et al. 2007; 2010; Larkin 2009; Pollack et al. 2008), social scientists possess almost no information on the rampage attacks which have been plotted and planned, but never came to fruition. Through their exploration, this study endeavors to understand not only how schools assess violent threats and construct risk generally and at times problematically, but also what social and individual forces have been at work to prevent instances of rampage violence from taking place.

Research questions and background information on averted school rampage incidents

Averted incidents of school rampage offer a unique opportunity for social scientific investigation. As there has been little empirical research on how previous rampage plots have been thwarted, most of the rhetorical arguments regarding how future attacks are to be prevented amount to mere speculation and rely on many problematic assumptions about the unlimited benefits and minimal consequences of enhanced school criminalization and risk assessment.

First, this book will explore the process by which schools engage in the risk assessment of their students. To what extent are school officials aware of various forms of violence risk assessment and what are their perspectives regarding the utility of these techniques? Which approaches are utilized for what purposes? What criteria do police and school officials deem most important in the assessment of student threat? How do school officials manage student threats and maintain a sense of safety in the school community? A second goal of this research was to ascertain how student threats of rampage violence have been successfully averted. In particular, how have these threats come to the attention of authorities? What role did risk assessment and the expansion of punitive discipline and enhanced security in schools play in the prevention of the rampage plots? What additional factors, policies, or procedures permitted the rampage to be averted?

My data reveal that, between the years 2000–2009, there were at least 195 averted incidents where student plots to kill multiple peers and faculty members came to the attention of authorities and thus were thwarted. I conducted in-depth interviews with 32 school and police officials (administrators, counselors, security and police officers, and teachers) directly involved in assessing and preventing potential rampages at 11 middle and high schools located across the Northeastern United States.

All of the 11 schools that granted me permission for interviews were public institutions. Nine were high schools, one was a middle school, and one was a junior/senior high school. Two were located in Pennsylvania, one was in New York, two were in New Jersey, three were in Massachusetts, and three were in Connecticut. All 11 schools were located in communities where the vast majority of residents were white. Six of these schools were located in suburban predominantly middle class communities, four of them were located in affluent suburban areas, and one school was in a lower middle class rural community (please consult Chapter 6 for additional demographic information about schools and their communities). In order to preserve the anonymity of participants, pseudonyms have been used for all individuals and schools, and no sources (whether news media reporting or legal documentation on specific cases) can be explicitly referenced or cited. This is consistent with how Daniels and his colleagues (2007; 2010; 2011) presented their findings on incidents of averted school rampage.

In the first case at Adams High School, a 16-year-old male student, who later admitted to making and exploding more than 40 bombs in the woods near his suburban home, sent videos of himself firing his father’s guns and using the homemade explosives to a friend. The friend’s mother notified the police, and numerous weapons, including two assault rifles, and detailed plans to commit a rampage attack at his school were seized from the teenager’s bedroom.

The second case occurred at the affluent Blane High School, where several students came forward to inform administrators that one of their peers had brought explosives to school with him. When school officials searched this student’s backpack, they discovered tennis balls filled with explosives. Later, police found four additional explosive devices at the student’s home.

In the third incident, a 15-year-old student at Courtside High School stole three handguns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition from his father’s safe. According to the best friend he entrusted to hold onto these weapons for him, he intended to use them in his plan to attack the school.

A fourth incident ended when three teenagers were arrested while walking down a street carrying an arsenal of weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition, after failing in their attempt to steal a car. They intended to use the vehicle to embark on a killing spree throughout their town, including a massacre of students at Donovan High School who had teased them.

The fifth case involved three teenage students at Everton High School creating very detailed and threatening profiles on a social networking website. These profiles featured, among many other disturbing images and words, a digital countdown clock ticking down to the anniversary of the Columbine massacre and several communications and videos expressing the desire to kill lots of people.

Four students at Finley High School, in the sixth incident, were involved in elaborate planning and extensive training to commit a rampage attack at their school. Despite many attempts, these students were never able to attain their own firearms, but they did acquire BB guns, knives, axes, gunpowder, and several homemade explosives. When one of the conspirator’s dedication to carrying out their deadly plans became in question, the other three plotters went to school authorities and blamed everything on their reluctant friend, though the complicity of the whole group was eventually revealed to the police.

In the seventh case, several students at the affluent Greenvale High School expressed serious concern to school administrators about one of their peers having what they perceived to be a hit list of the names of his current and former teachers written in his notebook. The student ultimately left the school voluntarily rather than facing expulsion.

The eighth incident entailed five students at a rural combined middle and high school, Hastings Jr/Sr High School, who made death threats against various members of the football team and other students on a social networking website. One of the threatened students informed his parents about the threats, and this parent, in turn, called the president of the school board to express concern. The school was shut down for the remainder of the week, and several students were suspended.

In case nine, a teacher and several students at affluent Iverson High School noticed threatening messages scribbled onto walls in a boys’ bathroom stall and informed the school principal. An 18-year-old student was arrested and charged with threatening with a deadly device and disturbing a school assembly.

In the tenth case, a teacher at Jefferson Middle School saw one of her students, a 13-year-old girl, writing out a list of people she disliked on a piece of paper at the girl’s desk and subsequently notified the school principal. As the paper was interpreted as a hit list, she was charged with making terrorist threats against her classmates, suspended indefinitely, and forced to undergo psychiatric evaluation.

In the final incident, the eleventh case, students at Kranston High School noticed a threatening message written on the wall in one of the boys’ bathroom stalls. These students then informed teachers who in turn told the school principal and SRO about the written threat, but no one was ever found responsible.

Through the detailed investigation of these cases of averted rampage violence, my research explores how officials explain their concerns about violent threats, the process by which threats are assessed and notions of safety are maintained, and how previous school rampage plots have been averted. The resultant data provide insight into the school cultures, policies, and procedures that enabled rampage attacks to be foiled, but also are a means through which to better understand contemporary perspectives on the fear, risk assessment, and surveillance of American youth. Therefore, the way in which school authorities have reacted to the school rampage phenomenon reveals a great deal about our contemporary justice mindset, which often views the identification, surveillance, and management of potentially dangerous individuals as the best approach to the inevitability of crime. As such, this research contains both practical implications for the assessment and prevention of school violence and significant theoretical insight regarding the causes and consequences of enhanced school discipline and security.

Explaining and reacting to school rampage

School rampage as a social problem

A dramatic series of mass killings took place in the late 1990s at several rural and suburban public middle and high schools across the United States. These events were highly publicized as they shocked the American public not only for their brutality, but because of the prior belief that such schools were “safe havens, free of the dangers of street crime” (Lawrence 2007: 147). That such violence could be perpetrated in middle and upper class school districts away from the plight of urban areas was seen as especially perplexing (Kimmel and Mahler 2003). Perhaps unsurprisingly, a great deal of empirical research has since been conducted on the phenomenon.

While the term school shooting has been defined and operationalized in almost countless ways by many different scholars, Newman et al. (2004: 50) can be credited with delineating the concept as “rampage school shootings” which “take place on a school-related public stage before an audience; involve multiple victims, some of whom are shot simply for their symbolic significance or at random; and involve one or more shooters who are students or former students of the school.” While only a portion of school gun violence fit all of these criteria, many of the most publicized events during the last two decades conform to these specifics. In addition to the aforementioned rampage shootings, Muschert (2007: 62) has filled in this typological picture to form the accompanying school shooting categories of “mass murders” committed by older nonstudent perpetrators, “terrorist attacks” engaged in by individuals or groups to advance their political or ideological goals, “targeted shootings” that involve only specific preplanned victims, and the “government shootings” of student protesters.

Though the reaction to rampage school shootings may have constituted a moral panic in terms of the excesses in media coverage and the overzealous policy reforms that exaggerated their prevalence (Aitken 2001; Best 2002; Burns and Crawford 1999), these events did genuinely occur with greater frequency in middle and high schools in the late 1990s (Fox, Levin, and Quinet 2005) and then on college campuses in the late 2000s (Fox and Savage 2009), and dozens of plots to commit such heinous crimes continue to be revealed and preempted every year (Trump n.d.). Likewise, since the April 1999 Columbine massacre, school shooters in nations around the world have turned to this infamous American case for homicidal inspiration (Larkin, 2009; Madfis and Levin 2013). Rare as these events may be, such incidents warrant serious concern for, when they do occur, they not only cause multiple casualties but leave many survivors and bystanders with post-traumatic stress (James 2009: Schwarz and Kowalski 1991) and create extensive fear among the larger public (Altheide 2009; Burns and Crawford 1999; Harding et al. 2002). In the literature review to follow, the extant scholarship on completed and averted school rampages will be discussed, followed by a review of the current state of discipline, security, and surveillance that has become so widely pervasive in American public schools since the turn of the 21st century and which has resulted, at least in part, as a reaction to the problem of school rampage shootings.

The causes of school rampage

Due to the prolific fear and extensive publicity which school rampages received in the late 1990s, the bulk of social science research has focused on this particular form of school shooting (Muschert 2007). The etiology of school rampage shootings has been explored by a vast array of academics ranging from sociologists and criminologists to anthropologists, social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists. Often, scholars have brought one particular causal factor to the fore, whether it is an individual deficiency, the school or community context, or the larger socio-cultural background.

At the individual-level, some have focused upon the depression, mental illness, and personality disorders of said killers (Langman 2009a; Langman 2009b; McGee and DeBernardo 1999). Others have stressed the role played by negative relationships with peers, such as victimization through bullying (Burgess et al. 2006; Kimmel and Mahler 2003; Klein 2012; Larkin 2007; Leary et al. 2003; Levin and Madfis 2009; Meloy et al. 2001; Newman et al. 2004). Both the exclusionary nature of teenage cliques (Larkin 2007; Lickel et al. 2003) and the cohesion of intolerant homogeneous communities (Aronson 2004; Newman et al. 2004) have been implicated in previous rampage attacks. Finally, at the macro-sociological level, various researchers have clarified the role that masculinity (Kimmel and Mahler 2003; Mai and Alpert 2000) and the widespread accessibility and acceptance of gun culture (Glassner 2010; Haider-Markel and Joslyn 2001; Lawrence and Birkland 2004; Webber 2003) play in reinforcing and legitimizing violent solutions. Of late, scholars (such as Henry 2009; Hong et al. 2011; Levin and Madfis 2009; Muschert and Peguero 2010) have attempted to fuse these disparate etiological concerns to achieve a more multi-faceted, holistic, and cross-disciplinary understanding of the causes of school rampage across the micro, meso, and macro levels of analysis.

Averted school rampage

Despite the breadth of research and theorizing on school rampages, few studies have addressed attacks which have been planned yet have not come to fruition. Whereas incidents of school violence that have resulted in multiple fatalities and injuries are often extensively investigated by numerous parties in the government, the justice system, and the media, far less information exists about “near misses” (Verlinden et al. 2000: 28). Pollack et al. (2008: 9) pointed out that:

few [schools] track threats made against other students or the school (especially if the event did not result in official law enforcement intervention). The result of this failure to collect and maintain records regarding threats is that very little is known about the extent or nature of the problem.

Some academics have tried to make up for the lack of a comprehensive database by gathering their own samples. O’Toole (2000) first noted the importance of studying averted school rampages, and several scholars (Larkin 2009; Newman et al. 2004) have since compiled incidents of averted rampages but only tangentially discussed them. Those interested in advancing the field of violence risk assessment (Borum et al. 2010; Cornell 2003; Cornell et al. 2004; Cornell and Sheras 2006; Fein et al. 2002; Jimerson et al. 2005; O’Toole 2000; Randazzo et al. 2006; Reddy et al. 2001; Pollack et al. 2008) have focused upon understanding averted school attacks as have Langman (2005) and Madfis (2014a), but the lion’s share of scholarship on the topic to date has been conducted by Daniels and his colleagues (Daniels et al. 2007; 2010; Daniels and Bradley 2011).

Daniels and his colleagues (2007) first completed a content analysis of 30 school rampages which were thwarted in 21 states sometime between October 2001 and October 2004. From newspaper accounts, the authors reported data on the details of the plot, how the plot was discovered, what steps were taken by the school and law enforcement once the plot was revealed, and the legal outcomes of the incidents. They discovered that the majority of violent schemes had planned for the attack to occur in public high schools, though several targeted public elementary and middle schools and one was aimed at a private school. In half of the incidents, one student acting alone was implicated, while two to six students were accused in the other half. Guns were the most frequent intended weapon for plotters, though bombs, knives, and swords were mentioned in the reporting of other incidents. The majority of plotters, 65%, communicated their fatal plans to others, with 30% doing so via email or paper notes, 20% verbally informing others, and 15% admitting guilt when questioned by police. Rampage plots were uncovered in a variety of ways. The most common method was other students coming forward to inform school or police officials. This was often a result of plotters informing, and in some cases unsuccessfully recruiting, th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction
• 2  Assessing the Substance and Risk of Student Rampage Threats
• 3  Confidence and Doubts about Assessing Averted Rampage Violence
• 4  Preventing School Rampage Violence through Student Bystander Intervention and Positive School Environments
• 5  Summary of Findings, Policy Implications, and Future Research
• 6  Methodological Appendix
• References
• Index