Crime Prevention in Schools

As a society, how should we respond to violence taking place at schools? How do we respond to the traumatic events of the Columbine shooting and the school killing in Colorado? We feel impotent and concerned and aware that this is a situation that needs immediate attention. Violent behavior that occurs in schools today is constantly changing and increasing.

On the Cleveland Plain Dealer, a day does not go by without talking of the violence coming into schools from the streets. Patrick O'Donnell, a reporter for the Plain Dealer wrote a story on a high school in Strongsville where the school virtually shut down classes due to Internet threats of violence made on the school by an 18-year-old boy. Though the student is charged with misdemeanor counts of aggravated menacing and inducing panic among the students, how can we as abiding citizens of society reduce and even eliminate such violence in schools? Furthermore, last week, seven students were suspended at South High School in Cleveland and one of them was arrested after a sophomore threw a chair that knocked out an assistant principal because of a brawl between students. (Reed, 2005) School is meant to be a safe haven for children, a place where you come to learn and not to plan-out who your next victim will be.

On April 29, 2005, The Plain Dealer reported that Alicia Hardin, 19, an African American student at Trinity International University was accused of mailing racist threats to minorities, for the most part blacks and Hispanics. She was eventually charged with disorderly conduct as well as a hate crime. (The Plain Dealer, 2005) However, the question is what measures can be taken to prevent these unruly behaviors.

Denise C. Gottfredson, a professor of criminology a...

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...nce the violent behavior has been established. Again, prevention is the best policy and through deterrence we can aim to discourage criminality and behaviors not condoned in society.

I was specially intrigued by the school shootings that had occurred in Colorado and wondered at the time what policies and measure had been taken. I had read an article later on how President Clinton visited with the family of victims and survivors and they requested from the President that these horrible losses would not be in vain. The President told the gathering of the Columbine Students "You can give us a culture of values instead of violence." I believe that guns need to be kept away from the wrong hands. Kids that are in trouble, should be identified early, reached and helped as intervention is one of the measures that as individuals of society can start to create and formulate.