School Violence Prevention

In view of the horrific mass shooting at Virginia Tech, other campuses will be evaluating their own security measures. Documents resulting from a collaboration between the United States Department of Education and the National Threat Assessment Center of the United States Secret Service can help in that evaluation. Their 2001 report Implications for Prevention of School Attacks in the United States: Final Report and Findings recommends threat assessment as a promising strategy for preventing school violence. Threat assessment is a fact-based analytical approach that focuses not on what a potential shooter looks like, but on what he/she does or says. The second report, Threat Assessment in Schools: A Guide to Managing Threatening Situations and to Creating Safe School Climates, details how to conduct a school threat assessment, manage a threatening situation, and create action plans to maintain a safe school climate.