Prevention & School Safety

This article was published in the winter–spring 2012 edition of Forensic Digest, and is reprinted with permission.

This is an excerpt from Chapter 8, “What Can Be Done to Prevent School Shootings,” in Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters.

This document lists nicknames, usernames, quotations, and other items that may be used by potential attackers to refer to previous killers or incidents of violence. Knowing these references is important to anyone conducting threat assessments. For examples of cases in which shooters used such insider references prior to their attacks, see the companion document “Reading Between the Lines: Recognizing Insider References to School Shootings.”

School shooters sometimes quote previous shooters in their online posts and homework assignments. This article, originally published in Campus Safety magazine, presents examples of such insider references, which may point to the intention to commit a shooting. For a glossary of insider references, see the companion document “A Guide to Insider References Used by School Shooters and Other Attackers.”

This document presents data on how 48 school shootings ended, whether with police intervention, civilian intervention, or perpetrator suicide. It also looks at other aspects of school shootings that can inform first responders on what they might encounter when they arrive at the scene.

This article is by Dr. Brian Van Brunt and was originially published in the Journal of Campus Behavioral Intervention, (2013), 111–151. It is reprinted with permission of the National Association of Behavioral Intervention and Threat Assessment (NABITA). The article compares three potential perpetrators of violence across four assessment tools: the Workplace Assessment of Violence Risk (WAVR-21), the Structured Interview of Violence Risk Assessment (SIVRA-35), the NABITA Threat Assessment Tool, and History, Clinical, Risk (HCR-20) version 3. 

The VRAW² is a newly created instrument by Brian Van Brunt, Ed.D., used to assess e-mails, letters, or creative writing that contain direct threats or violent themes of concern. The article reviews the five factors and corresponding sub-factors used to assess the potential for threat. Scoring considerations and case examples are provided to illustrate how to score each of the sub-factors informing the overall factors. The VRAW² is then discussed in context of the NABITA Threat Assessment Tool and the Structured Interview for Violence Risk Assessment (SIVRA-35). This article originally appeared in the Journal of Campus Behavioral Intervention, 3 (2015), 12-25. It is reprinted with permission from the National Association of Behavioral Intervention and Threat Assessment  (NABITA).

This article was originally published in the Journal of Campus Behavioral Intervention, 1 (2013), 6-39. It is reprinted here with permission of the National Association of Behavioral Intervention and Threat Assessment  (NABITA).

This article originally appeared in the Journal of Health Service Psychology, 2017 (spring), vol. 43, pp. 32–40. It is posted here with permission.

This document from 2002 is the result of collaboration between the Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education.

This is a collaboration between the Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education. The focus of this 2008 study was investigating students with prior knowledge of impending school attacks.

This is the FBI report on school shootings (primary author, Dr. Mary Ellen O'Toole).

This report was prepared by the National Threat Assessment Center of the United States Secret Service.

This document from 2002 is the result of collaboration between the Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education.

This is a report by the FBI. Though it is not focused on school shootings, it provides important guidelines on do’s and don’t’s for implementing threat assessment programs that are also relevant to educational environments. Though school shootings most commonly are committed by current or recent students, several perpetrators have been university employees (e.g., Edward Allaway, Valery Fabrikant, and Amy Bishop). Finally, for anyone working in a school setting, school shootings constitute a form of workplace violence.

This report was produced by the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) of the U.S. Department of Justice. It contains eight case studies as a guide to conducting campus threat assessments. 

This is the Massachusetts Task Force Report on School Safety and Security.

This report focuses on physical security and crisis response.

This report was published in 2010 as a joint effort from the Secret Service, Department of Education, and FBI.

This white paper was created by the National Behavioral Intervention Team Association (NaBITA) in 2014. It is included here with permission. 

This analysis was published by the FBI.

This is an addendum to the FBI’s study of active shooter incidents from 2000 to 2013. 

This is the FBI’s follow-up report to its previous analysis of active shooter incidents between 2000 and 2013.

This report from the U.S. Department of Justice is not about violence prevention, but it is included here because it presents statistics on firearm violence. Despite the common perception that gun violence is an ever-increasing phenomenon, the report notes that firearm-related homicides decreased 39% from 1993 to 2011. In addition, it states that school-related homicides of youth between the ages of 5 and 18 decreased from an average of 29 per year in the 1990s to an average of 20 in the first decade of this century (a decline of 31%).

This document was written by Dewey Cornell, Ph.D., one of the leading experts on school safety and director of the Virginia Youth Violence Project. 

This is a report from the U.S. Department of Education that presents data on multiple facets of school safety.

This report presents recommendations on school safety in three domains: Safe School Design and Operation; Law Enforcement, Public Safety, and Emergency Response; and Mental Health/Mental Wellness.

This report was produced by the New York City Police Department. Besides the recommendations, the document contains a long listing of active shooter incidents, dividing them into several categories based on the location of the attacks: office buildings, open commercial, factories and warehouses, schools, and other.

This is a report by the National Threat Assessment Center of the United States Secret Service. 

This report by the United States Department of Justice was released in 2013.

This report was released in 2014 by the Police Executive Research Forum.

Understanding the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is essential for threat assessment. This document presents key points relating to primary and secondary educational settings. 

Understanding the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is essential for threat assessment. This document addresses issues relating to FERPA in colleges and universities.

This document contains media guidelines for how to appropriately report on mass shootings so as to minimize the likelihood of copycat attacks, to respect the victims and their families, and to address other relevant issues. This project was led by SAVE (Suicide Awareness Voices of Education) and included national and international experts from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), the CDC; Columbia University; International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP) Media Task Force; JED; NAMI­-NH; SPRC; and multiple media industry experts. It is posted here with permission from SAVE.org.

This brief review was done in the wake of Sunghee Kwon’s attack in 2015 to evaluate the university’s response and recommend improvements.

This report was compiled in the wake of the Umpqua Community College attack.

This report was created by the FBI through their Behavioral Analysis Unit—National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime.

This is an article by Adam Lankford and Eric Madfis containing recommendations for media coverage of mass shootings. The article first appeared in American Behavioral Scientist. It is posted here with the authors’ permission. 

This was published by the U.S. Secret Service in 2018.

This was published by the U.S. Secret Service in 2018.

This publication was the result of collaboration among numerous national and governmental organizations. It was published by the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice, American Institutes for Research.

This document was created by the United States Attorney’s Office, District of Minnesota, along with the Minnesota Department of Education and the Minnesota Department of Public Safety. It covers multiple aspects of school safety, including preventing school shootings, improving school climate, addressing bullying, increasing community engagement, and many other issues.  

This was published by Colorado’s Attorney General in 2018. 

This report was published by the FBI in 2015. 

This report, written by Jeffrey A. Daniels, presents the findings from the Averted School Violence database created by Police Foundation. The findings are drawn from 51 incidents of averted school violence since the attack at Columbine High School (20 April 1999). Recommendations and lessons learned regarding school safety are also included.

This report, written by Peter Langman and Frank Straub, presents findings on 51 incidents of school violence that have occurred since the attack at Columbine High School and compares the findings to 51 incidents of averted school violence. Recommendations and lessons learned regarding school safety are also included.

This document was originally created by the Colorado School Safety Resource Center in 2009, but has been updated as of 2018.

The subtitle of this document is “A National Police Foundation Interim Review of the Impact of Communication Systems and Processes on the Response to the February 14, 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Shooting.”

This report was produced by Police Foundation and released in August, 2019.

This is a report to the Illinois State Board of Education in 2016.

This report was created by the National Threat Assessment Center of the United States Secret Service. It presents data on school attacks from 2008 through 2017, along with recommendations on threat assessment as a violence prevention strategy. 

This report was released in 2021 by the National Threat Assessment Center of the United States Secret Service.

This report was produced by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the U.S. Secret Service. It was released in 2023.