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Abstract.
A demonstration project was conducted to field-test guidelines for schools to use in responding to student threats of violence. Results from 188 student threats occurring in 35 schools over the course of one school year are described. School-based teams used a decision-tree model to evaluate the seriousness of a threat and take appropriate action to reduce the threat of violence. Using threat assessment guidelines, the majority of cases (70%) were resolved quickly as transient threats. More serious cases, termed substantive threats (30%), required a more extensive evaluation and intervention plan. Follow-up interviews with school principals revealed that almost all students were able to continue in school or return to school after a brief suspension. Only 3 students were expelled, and none of the threatened acts of violence were carried out. These findings indicate that student threat assessment is a feasible, practical approach for schools that merits more extensive study.
In the late 1990s, a series of school shootings stimulated authorities nationwide to review school safety policies and to seek new practices for preventing student violence (Mulvey & Cauffman, 2001; Walker & Epstein, 2001). The National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC) of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) convened a national conference on school shootings in 1999, and recommended in its report (O'Toole, 2000) that schools adopt a threat assessment approach to prevent similar acts of violence. Likewise, the U.S. Secret Service, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Education, advocated the use of threat assessment, and in 2002 began offering threat assessment training to schools nationwide (Fein et al., 2002). The present study reports on the field-testing of a set of guidelines for schools to use in responding to student threats of violence. The guidelines were developed to implement recommendations of the FBI report (O'Toole, 2000). This appears to be the first demonstration of this threat assessment approach in schools.
The initial reaction to the school shootings by many authorities was to develop a profile or set of characteristics that could be used to identify potentially dangerous students before they engaged in a violent act. The U.S. Department of Education and Department of Justice disseminated to every public school in the nation a series of "warning signs" for identifying potentially...