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How to Identify and Prevent School Violence

Sanjana is a health writer and editor. Her work spans various health-related topics, including mental health, fitness, nutrition, and wellness.

Ann-Louise T. Lockhart, PsyD, ABPP, is a board-certified pediatric psychologist, parent coach, author, speaker, and owner of A New Day Pediatric Psychology, PLLC.

Yasser Chalid / Getty Images

Recognizing the Signs of School Violence

School violence refers to violence that takes place in a school setting. This includes violence on school property, on the way to or from school, and at school trips and events. It may be committed by students, teachers, or other members of the school staff; however, violence by fellow students is the most common.

An estimated 246 million children experience school violence every year; however, girls and gender non-conforming people are disproportionately affected.

"School violence can be anything that involves a real or implied threat—it can be verbal, sexual, or physical, and perpetrated with or without weapons. If someone is deliberately harming someone or acting in a way that leaves someone feeling threatened, that‘s school violence,” says Aimee Daramus , PsyD, a licensed clinical psychologist.

This article explores the types, causes, and impact of school violence and suggests some steps that can help prevent it.

Types of School Violence

School violence can take many forms. These are some of the types of school violence:

• Physical violence , which includes any kind of physical aggression, the use of weapons, as well as criminal acts like theft or arson.
• Psychological violence , which includes emotional and verbal abuse . This may involve insulting, threatening, ignoring, isolating, rejecting, name-calling, humiliating, ridiculing, rumor-mongering, lying, or punishing another person.
• Sexual violence , which includes sexual harrassment, sexual intimidation, unwanted touching, sexual coercion, and rape .
• Bullying , which can take physical, psychological, or sexual forms and is characterized by repeated and intentional aggression toward another person.
• Cyberbullying , which includes sexual or psychological abuse by people connected through school on social media or other online platforms. This may involve posting false information, hurtful comments, malicious rumors, or embarrassing photos or videos online. Cyberbullying can also take the form of excluding someone from online groups or networks.

Causes of School Violence

There often isn’t a simple, straightforward reason why someone engages in school violence. A child may have been bullied or rejected by a peer, may be under a lot of academic pressure, or may be enacting something they’ve seen at home, in their neighborhood, on television, or in a video game.

These are some of the risk factors that can make a child more likely to commit school violence:

• Poor academic performance
• Prior history of violence
• Hyperactive or impulsive personality
• Mental health conditions
• Witnessing or being a victim of violence
• Alcohol, drug, or tobacco use
• Dysfunctional family dynamic
• Domestic violence or abuse
• Access to weapons
• Delinquent peers
• Poverty or high crime rates in the community

It’s important to note that the presence of these factors doesn’t necessarily mean that the child will engage in violent behavior.

Impact of School Violence

Below, Dr. Daramus explains how school violence can affect children who commit, experience, and witness it, as well as their parents.

Impact on Children Committing Violence

Children who have been victims of violence or exposed to it in some capacity sometimes believe that becoming violent is the only way they‘ll ever be safe.

When they commit violence, they may experience a sense of satisfaction when their emotional need for strength or safety is satisfied. That‘s short-lived however, because they start to fear punishment or retribution, which triggers anger that can sometimes lead to more violence if they’re scared of what might happen to them if they don’t protect themselves. 

Children need help to try and break the cycle; they need to understand that violence can be temporarily satisfying but that it leads to more problems.

Impact on Children Victimized by School Violence

Victims of school violence may get physically injured and experience cuts, scrapes, bruises, broken bones, gunshot wounds, concussions, physical disability, or death.

Emotionally speaking, the child might experience depression , anxiety, or rage. Their academic performance may suffer because it can be hard to focus in school when all you can think about is how to avoid being hurt again.

School violence is traumatic and can cause considerable psychological distress. Traumatic experiences can be difficult for adults too; however, when someone whose brain is not fully developed yet experiences trauma, especially if it’s over a long time, their brain can switch to survival mode, which can affect their attention, concentration, emotional control, and long-term health. 

According to a 2019 study, children who have experienced school violence are at risk for long-term mental and physical health conditions, including attachment disorders, substance abuse, obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and respiratory conditions.

The more adverse childhood experiences someone has, the greater the risk to their physical and mental health as an adult.

Impact on Children Who Witness School Violence

Children who witness school violence may feel guilty about seeing it and being too afraid to stop it. They may also feel threatened, and their brain may react in a similar way to a child who has faced school violence.

Additionally, when children experience or witness trauma , their basic beliefs about life and other people are often changed. They no longer believe that the world is safe, which can be damaging to their mental health.

For a child to be able to take care of themselves as they get older, they need to first feel safe and cared for. Learning to cope with threats is an advanced lesson that has to be built on a foundation of feeling safe and self-confident.

Children who have experienced or witnessed school violence can benefit from therapy, which can help them process the trauma, regulate their emotions, and learn coping skills to help them heal.

Impact on Parents

Parents react to school violence in all kinds of ways. Some parents encourage their children to bully others, believing that violence is strength. Some try to teach their children how to act in a way that won’t attract bullying or other violence, but that never works and it may teach the child to blame themselves for being bullied. 

Others are proactive and try to work with the school or challenge the school if necessary, to try and keep their child safe. 

It can be helpful to look out for warning signs of violence, which can include:

• Talking about or playing with weapons of any kind
• Harming pets or other animals
• Threatening or bullying others
• Talking about violence, violent movies, or violent games
• Speaking or acting aggressively

It’s important to report these signs to parents, teachers, or school authorities. The child may need help and support, and benefit from intervention .

Preventing School Violence

Dr. Daramus shares some steps that can help prevent school violence:

• Report it to the school: Report any hint of violent behavior to school authorities. Tips can be a huge help in fighting school violence. Many schools allow students to report tips anonymously.
• Inform adults: Children who witness or experience violence should keep telling adults (parents, teachers, and counselors) until someone does something. If an adult hears complaints about a specific child from multiple people, they may be able to protect other students and possibly help the child engaging in violence to learn different ways.
• Reach out to people: Reach out to children or other people at the school who seem to be angry or upset, or appear fascinated with violence. Reach out to any child, whether bullied, bullying, or neither, who seems to have anxiety, depression, or trouble managing emotions. Most of the time the child won’t be violent, but you’ll have helped them anyway by being supportive.

A Word From Verywell

School violence can be traumatic for everyone involved, particularly children. It’s important to take steps to prevent it because children who witness or experience school violence may suffer physical and mental health consequences that can persist well into adulthood.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Preventing school violence .

UNESCO. What you need to know about school violence and bullying .

UNESCO. School violence and bullying .

Nemours Foundation. School violence: what students can do .

Ehiri JE, Hitchcock LI, Ejere HO, Mytton JA. Primary prevention interventions for reducing school violence . Cochrane Database Syst Rev . 2017;2017(3):CD006347. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD006347.pub2

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Understanding school violence .

Ferrara P, Franceschini G, Villani A, Corsello G. Physical, psychological and social impact of school violence on children . Italian Journal of Pediatrics . 2019;45(1):76. doi:10.1186/s13052-019-0669-z

By Sanjana Gupta Sanjana is a health writer and editor. Her work spans various health-related topics, including mental health, fitness, nutrition, and wellness.

Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Youth Violence — School violence, causes and solution

How to Prevent School Violence: Analysis of Causes and Solutions

• Categories: Bullying Youth Violence

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Published: Mar 1, 2019

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Primary causes of school violence, potential solutions, works cited:.

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• Hubble, E. (1929). A Relation between Distance and Radial Velocity among Extra-Galactic Nebulae. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 15(3), 168–173.
• Liddle, A. R. (2003). An Introduction to Modern Cosmology. Wiley.
• Penrose, R. (1965). Gravitational collapse and space-time singularities. Physical Review Letters, 14(3), 57–59.
• Planck Collaboration, Ade, P. A. R., Aghanim, N., Armitage-Caplan, C., Arnaud, M., Ashdown, M., ... & Zonca, A. (2015). Planck 2015 results—XIII. Cosmological parameters. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 594, A13.
• Rees, M. J. (2003). Our Cosmic Habitat. Princeton University Press.
• Riess, A. G., Filippenko, A. V., Challis, P., Clocchiatti, A., Diercks, A., Garnavich, P. M., ... & Tonry, J. (1998). Observational evidence from supernovae for an accelerating universe and a cosmological constant. The Astronomical Journal, 116(3), 1009-1038.
• Silk, J. (2001). The Big Bang. W. H. Freeman.
• Weinberg, S. (1972). Gravitation and cosmology: principles and applications of the general theory of relativity. Wiley.

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Violence in Schools Seems to Be Increasing. Why?

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Following the return of most U.S. schoolchildren to full-time, in-person learning, a raft of anecdotal reports indicate that violence may be rising in K-12 schools.

Teachers are reporting breaking up fights in schools and are raising concerns about their own safety. Students have been caught with guns or other weapons on campuses in several high-profile incidents. And school shootings in 2021, though still very rare, are on track to surpass their pre-pandemic high.

But if an actual surge is taking place, what’s causing it? Will it reshape the contours of the fractious school-safety conversation? And what do district leaders need to consider as they try to respond?

Criminologists note that the nation is in the grip of a general spike of violence probably due to the pandemic and social unrest accompanying the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Their best guess is that those trends are trickling inexorably, and tragically, down to K-12 students.

“You study these things for so long and then you throw the rule book out. No one really knows why we’ve got the trends and violence we’re seeing right now,” said James A. Densley, a professor of criminal justice at Metropolitan State University, in St. Paul, Minn., who studies gun violence. “But I think at the same time, we’re coming to the same sorts of conclusions.

“It’s a combination of the pandemic; a lack of trust in our institutions, particularly law enforcement; the presence of guns; the toxic, divisive, contentious times we live in. They’re all interacting together.”

What do we know about rates of school crime?

No recent, nationally representative data set exists to confirm that there have been more violent incidents so far in the 2021-22 school year, due to reporting lags and the generally disparate nature of the data across thousands of school systems.

The most-recent federal collection on school safety found that some types of violent crimes were on the rise as of the 2017-18 school year, though the figures still fell far below overall crime levels in schools in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Anecdotally, though, teachers, principals, and educators now say they are seeing an increase that has roughly paralleled the return of most students to in-person schooling.

In Anchorage, Alaska, fights and assaults are making up more of the suspensions issued so far this year. A brawl and stabbing in an Annapolis, Md., high school led to seven juvenile arrests. Pupils damaged elementary classrooms in Vermont, overturning furniture and supply bins. Parents in Baltimore County, Md., organized a protest in response to a perceived increase in violence. In Shreveport, La., a group of fathers are now taking shifts greeting students at the high school after 23 students were arrested in a one-week period.

The rhetoric surrounding these kinds of incidents is often red hot, with administrators and parents warning about even more-dire consequences if district leaders don’t do something now.

“Our students are sending us warning shots. Literal warning shots,” said Peter Balas, a principal at Alexandria City High School, in Alexandria Va., at a city council meeting earlier this month. Shortly after, the council voted to temporarily restore school police officers, who had been pulled from buildings last year in the wake of a wave of national protests about police violence. (A spokeswoman for the district denied a request to follow up with the principal.)

Teachers, too, have reported being victims of violence at school.

In Rochester, N.Y., high school English teacher Corrine Mundorff was in the middle of trying to break up a fight when, she says, a student sexually assaulted her , repeatedly groping her after she told the student not to.

The troubled city has long suffered from generational poverty and high crime rates. With so many kids out of school last year, some seem to have pulled into neighborhood turf squabbles, she said.

“We have some issues that we’ve been dealing with for years and years. This year, however we have brought our kids back—23,000 of them—and for some reason we’ve decided we were going to pretend the pandemic had never happened and ignore 18 months of trauma induced by the pandemic students have experienced,” Mundorff said in an interview. “And we’ve just had these arguments, these conflicts that ignited on day one. The violence that had been happening outside of the school just carried over.”

School shooting on par with pre-pandemic levels

Disparate sources of data generally support the notion that what’s happening in schools this year is actually a reflection of general trends.

National homicide rates soared in 2020 , according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, although other types of crime generally continued a steady decline. And Americans have been on a gun-buying spree during the pandemic. There are now simply more guns in desk drawers, on the streets, and in cabinets.

School shootings are also on track to outpace the figures in 2018 and 2019.

Education Week began its own tracker of school related shootings in 2018 in an attempt to cut through the morass of different definitions used by federal agencies and researchers. Our criteria are more restrictive than other collections. It includes only those incidents that take place during school hours or events, on school property, and in which at least one individual is wounded by a bullet.

According to EdWeek’s criteria, as of Monday of this week, there have been 24 incidents so far this year, resulting in 40 deaths or injuries . Two-thirds of these incidents occurred on or after Aug 1. There were also 24 incidents each in 2018 and 2019.

(The gun-control organization Everytown USA, which has more expansive criteria, also shows this year’s school shooting figures paralleling 2019’s.)

Recent Data: School Shootings

In 2018, Education Week journalists began tracking shootings on K-12 school property that resulted in firearm-related injuries or deaths. There is no single right way of calculating numbers like this, and the human toll is impossible to measure. We hope only to provide reliable information to help inform discussions, debates, and paths forward. Below, you can find big-picture data on school shootings since 2018. (This chart will be updated as new information becomes available.)

See Also: School Shootings This Year: How Many and Where

Details of the incidents are distressingly familiar. At least six began with fights or altercations between students that spilled over into gun violence. Six occurred at—or just following— football games . Three appear to have been precipitated by a pattern of bullying.

School shootings nevertheless remain exceptionally rare, and the small sample makes EdWeek’s collection a limited proxy for trying to determine overall violence trends. But the Gun Violence Archive , a nonprofit that tracks and confirms shootings from thousands of data sources, found that more children, not fewer, were harmed by gun violence in 2020, when many students were working from home, than in each of the past seven years.

Finally, children, like adults, are tired, isolated, and traumatized by the last 20 months. The numbers of children visiting emergency rooms for mental-health issues increased dramatically in a seven-month period in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, causing three children’s health organizations recently to declare a mental health state of emergency.

The nation is still in the crisis of the pandemic with no real end in sight, pointed out Margaret A. Sedor, a school psychologist and a member of the National Association of School Psychologists’ school safety and crisis response committee. And students can display a range of crisis reactions, which may include aggression, in response to the losses of the last two years.

“They’ve had almost two years of being socialized and acculturated in a different way, and we need to acknowledge and support community re-engagement,” she said.

What it all adds up to, said Densley, is this: The global pandemic has exacerbated risk factors for violence in general, like loneliness, isolation, and economic instability. Violence also tends to rise at times of uncertainty, especially when distrust in public institutions is high. And social media serves as an accelerant, whipping up anger and frenzy.

“Now you tie that together with last year’s record gun sales—and we’ve got more people carrying guns in public because of more lax laws in that regard,” he said. “And you can sort of put two and two together and say guns are just more likely to be found in the hands of juveniles.”

Some districts consider a return to school-based policing

Those sobering conclusions seem primed to restart an already searing debate over the role that school resource officers and other safety personnel play in schools.

Earlier this summer, Education Week found that a small number of U.S. school districts remove d police officers or cut their school-policing budgets in the wake of racial-justice protests in 2020. Some of those communities, like Alexandria, Va., are now beginning to have second thoughts.

In Rochester, the president of the teachers’ union and three other labor groups representing educators recently demanded that the district consider several options, including restoring SROs in high schools, increasing the number of school safety officers, and offering evening or remote learning options for disruptive students.

The district did not respond to a request for comment on its safety plans. Its superintendent has acknowledged the concerns about violence in public statements.

In other places, advocates fear that more violence could put paid to longstanding efforts there to remove school officers.

The Shelby County district, which includes Memphis, has resuscitated the idea of a “peace force” staffed by district-hired police officers in the wake of a harrowing shooting at a public K-8 school in late September, apparently prompted by bullying, that left one student in critical condition.

“I’m very concerned about the child, obviously. But my second thought is, ‘Oh no, what does this do to trying to get law enforcement out of schools?’ Because so many people think [having a police officer] is like a Band-Aid,” said Cardell Orrin, the Memphis executive director at Stand for Children Tennessee, which has pushed to remove sheriffs’ deputies from schools. “It makes people feel better rather than solving the challenges, and it potentially further criminalizes children. That is the fear, and I think that’s the fear nationally, too.”

Researchers continue to learn more about SROs and the tradeoffs that having them can mean for students. In an important study released earlier this month , a team of researchers studying federal data found that having an SRO did reduce some violent incidents in schools, mainly fights, but did not appear to reduce shootings or firearm-related incidents.

And their presence came at a high price: It meant that a higher proportion of students were suspended, arrested, or referred to the juvenile-justice systems, and the toll fell disproportionately on Black students. (The research has not yet been peer reviewed.)

Districts will need to honor the complexities

Even these new insights, though, don’t always make it clear what’s happening in the black box. For one thing, it’s ultimately principals who make the call on whether to suspend students, not officers themselves, and principals who, alongside officers, can refer students into the juvenile justice system. Put another way, the research appears to point to broader cultural problems in schools.

People want to see what you’re doing for safety, and police are very visible. Connecting kids with resources or using social workers or school psychologists—those things are not as kind of in-your-face or apparent.

The body of school safety literature invariably recommends that improved school culture and safety hinge on strong relationships between adults and students.

Getting kids back into school and back in routines and being reconnected with their peers and classmates is a critical step, said Sedor, the school psychologist. But it demands that districts think systematically about how to support students, and that they move from merely reacting to incidents to intervention and wellness-promotion efforts.

“I think it’s bringing folks together and acknowledging that things have changed and talking about fear and loss, and then problem-solving and strengthening coping strategies,” she said. “It’s about relationships and being able to listen.”

But desperate to respond to frightened communities, districts often seek out immediate, tangible improvements rather than the painstaking work of improving school culture. For good or ill, police officers and other hardening measures—fences, metal detectors, bulletproof glass—signify safety, even though, for the most part, not much evidence suggests they contribute to safer schools.

“People want to see what you’re doing for safety, and police are very visible. Connecting kids with resources or using social workers or school psychologists—those things are not as kind of in-your-face or apparent,” noted Joe McKenna, a senior research associate at WestEd’s Justice & Prevention Research Center.

Even teachers who say they’re close to their breaking points acknowledge the complex calculus.

“I know that teachers are annoyed that the focus keeps going to school resources officers because there are so many more levels to it, and everyone just focuses on them,” said Mundorff, the Rochester teacher. “Would it be helpful to have one? Sure. Does that solve all our problems? Absolutely not. We have three social workers for 952 students who are carrying tons of trauma. And now we have students who weren’t carrying trauma before the pandemic and the ones before are carrying a ton more.”

In Madison, Wis., Gloria Reyes represents the radical middle when it comes to the ongoing school safety conversation.

A former law enforcement officer, she served on the city school board when it voted in June 2020 to remove SROs. She now teaches classes, including on racism within the criminal justice system at Madison College, and runs a local nonprofit.

She strongly supports the restorative justice programs that have replaced school policing in the district, but she’s also concerned that teachers and other educators aren’t well trained to respond to incidents of violence. And while she agrees that communities have for far too long relied on police for things they shouldn’t, they’ve simultaneously neglected other critical social investments, she notes.

If rising violence is due to a simple equation—that hurt kids hurt other kids—the solution, she fears, is complex.

“We have to have professionals out in our communities, visiting with families and visiting with children and doing the outreach and support,” Reyes said. “You know, it’s going to take families, parents, teachers, social workers—it’s going to take everyone to prevent fighting.”

A version of this article appeared in the November 17, 2021 edition of Education Week as Violence in Schools Seems To Be Increasing. Why?

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What you need to know about school violence and bullying

Bullying in schools deprives millions of children and young people of their fundamental right to education. A recent UNESCO report revealed that more than 30% of the world's students have been victims of bullying, with devastating consequences on academic achievement, school dropout, and physical and mental health.

The world is marking the first International Day against Violence and Bullying at School Including Cyberbullying , on 5 November. Here is what you need to know about school violence and bullying.

What is school violence?

School violence refers to all forms of violence that takes place in and around schools and is experienced by students and perpetrated by other students, teachers and other school staff. This includes bullying and cyberbullying. Bullying is one of the most pervasive forms of school violence, affecting 1 in 3 young people.

What forms may school violence take?

Based on existing international surveys that collect data on violence in schools, UNESCO recognizes the following forms of school violence:

• Physical violence, which is any form of physical aggression with intention to hurt perpetrated by peers, teachers or school staff.
• Psychological violence as verbal and emotional abuse, which includes any forms of isolating, rejecting, ignoring, insults, spreading rumors, making up lies, name-calling, ridicule, humiliation and threats, and psychological punishment.
• Sexual violence, which includes intimidation of a sexual nature, sexual harassment, unwanted touching, sexual coercion and rape, and it is perpetrated by a teacher, school staff or a schoolmate or classmate.
• Physical bullying, including hitting, kicking and the destruction of property;
• Psychological bullying, such as teasing, insulting and threatening; or relational, through the spreading of rumours and exclusion from a group; and
• Sexual bullying, such as making fun of a victim with sexual jokes, comments or gestures, which may be defined as sexual ‘harassment’ in some countries.
• Cyberbullying is a form of psychological or sexual bullying that takes place online. Examples of cyberbullying include posting or sending messages, pictures or videos, aimed at harassing, threatening or targeting another person via a variety of media and social media platforms. Cyberbullying may also include spreading rumours, posting false information, hurtful messages, embarrassing comments or photos, or excluding someone from online networks or other communications.

Who perpetrates school violence?

School violence is perpetrated by students, teachers and other school staff. However, available evidence shows that violence perpetrated by peers is the most common.

What are the main reasons why children are bullied?

All children can be bullied, yet evidence shows that children who are perceived to be “different” in any way are more at risk. Key factors include physical appearance, ethnic, linguistic or cultural background, gender, including not conforming to gender norms and stereotypes; social status and disability.

What are the consequences of school violence?

Educational consequences: Being bullied undermines the sense of belonging at school and affects continued engagement in education. Children who are frequently bullied are more likely to feel like an outsider at school, and more likely to want to leave school after finishing secondary education. Children who are bullied have lower academic achievements than those who are not frequently bullied.

Health consequences: Children’s mental health and well-being can be adversely impacted by bullying. Bullying is associated with higher rates of feeling lonely and suicidal, higher rates of smoking, alcohol and cannabis use and lower rates of self-reported life satisfaction and health. School violence can also cause physical injuries and harm.

What are the linkages between school violence and bullying, school-related gender-based violence and violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression?

School violence may be perpetrated as a result of gender norms and stereotypes and enforced by unequal power dynamics and is therefore referred to as school-related gender-based violence. It includes, in particular, a specific type of gender-based violence that is linked to the actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity or expression of victims, including homophobic and transphobic bullying. School-related gender-based violence is a significant part of school violence that requires specific efforts to address.

Does school-related gender-based violence refer to sexual violence against girls only?         

No. School-related gender-based violence refers to all forms of school violence that is based on or driven by gender norms and stereotypes, which also includes violence against and between boys.

Is school violence always gender-based?           

There are many factors that drive school violence. Gender is one of the significant drivers of violence but not all school violence is based on gender. Moreover, international surveys do not systematically collect data on the gendered nature of school violence, nor on violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression. 

Based on the analysis of global data, there are no major differences in the prevalence of bullying for boys and girls. However, there are some differences between boys and girls in terms of the types of bullying they experience. Boys are much more exposed to physical bullying, and to physical violence in general, than girls. Girls are slightly more exposed to psychological bullying, particularly through cyberbullying. According to the same data, sexual bullying the same proportion of boys and girls. Data coming from different countries, however, shows that girls are increasingly exposed to sexual bullying online.

How does UNESCO help prevent and address school violence and bullying?

The best available evidence shows that responses to school violence and bullying that are effective should be comprehensive and include a combination of policies and interventions. Often this comprehensive response to school violence and bullying is referred to as a whole-school approach. Based on an extensive review of existing conceptual frameworks that describe that whole-school approach, UNESCO has identified nine key components of a response that goes beyond schools and could be better described as a whole-education system or whole-education approach.  These components are the following:

• Strong political leadership and robust legal and policy framework to address school violence and bullying;
• Training and support for teachers on school violence and bullying prevention and positive classroom management
• Curriculum, learning & teaching to promote, a caring (i.e. anti- school violence and bullying) school climate and students’ social and emotional skills
• A safe psychological and physical school and classroom environment
• Reporting mechanisms for students affected by school violence and bullying, together with support and referral services
• Involvement of all stakeholders in the school community including parents
• Student empowerment and participation
• Collaboration and partnerships between the education sector and a wide range of partners (other government sectors, NGOs, academia)
• Evidence: monitoring of school violence and bullying and evaluation of responses

More on UNESCO’s work to prevent and address school violence and bullying

Read UNESCO's publication Behind the numbers: Ending school violence and bullying

Photo: Eakachai Leesin/Shutterstock.com

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Cause & Effect Essay: School Violence

School violence is a major problem around the world. The effects of school violence can lead to division and severe mental and physical trauma for both perpetrators and victims alike. The main cause of school violence is a combination of weak community relations and a lack of a firm hand within both schools and communities. To effectively deal with the issue, both of these need addressing.

The beginnings of school violence often stem from differences between teenagers. Children are natural herd creatures and will gravitate towards people who are similar in looks, mentality, and those who have the same interests. Other groups are seen as enemies, and this is where conflict begins.

A lack of education is one of the main causes of school violence. If young people aren’t taught from an early age about the consequences and wrongs of violence there’s a high chance they’ll indulge in it later. Education must occur in the home, alongside parents, and in the classroom.

Furthermore, when violence does happen, a lack of will to punish the perpetrators encourages them to participate in it again later. Teachers and law enforcement officers must stamp down on violence. It’s simple mentality. A punishment says mentally and physically violence is wrong. Allowing them to get away with it says to them they haven’t done anything wrong. This is a trend we have seen replicated in UK prisons and the high reoffending rates.

Weak community relations start school violence. Inter-racial schools where students come from different backgrounds sow the seeds of conflict. Many students haven’t come into contact with people from these backgrounds before, and this creates suspicion and wariness. It’s highly unlikely violence will occur if they have been in contact with people from these backgrounds before.

Divisive communities are more likely to suffer from violence than harmonious ones. It’s why schools in East London and international cities like Los Angeles have a reputation for violence in schools and between schools. Too often, schools act on violence within schools, but they fail to work with other schools and community representatives to tackle the problem between academic facilities.

Parental guidance in the home has a large effect on school violence. If a student’s parents are violent or prejudiced, they are likely to develop the same aggressive characteristics. Even if there’s only one person like this in a school, it can still lead to violence in the classroom.

Overall, it’s not so much the risk factors of violence which become the problem. It’s the lack of will to act on it when it does happen. It’s impossible to stamp out all types of violence. Children make mistakes and it will happen. To stop it happening again, schools and community officers must act.

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How to Prevent School Violence Essay

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Introduction

Selected solutions to school violence.

Today no special mechanism is standard for preventing school violence due to diversity in social status, economical status, and location. Schools implement various measures to prevent violence such as warning signals, checklists and, policies for zero tolerance but the dangers still persists, because some of these measures end up exacerbating the issue.

Hypothetically, the school-based violence has a close link to poverty, which is the key factor for discontent and frustration and consequently the anger especially in developing nation. Other cases have a close link to the experiences and development. The domestic violence also has a close link to behavioural and learning problems.

During development, a child may feel the need for retaliation. Other possible sources may include discrimination, the societal background, the common school drug related problems, cultural imagery on the television and audio shows, materialism, competitiveness and lack of identity.

A good example of the school violence is the April 16, 2007 tragedy at Virginia Tech University, which remains a big sear for the hearts of those who were directly involved as well as those affected such as the victims’ families or friends. On that terrible day, the struggling loss of lives due to one disturbed young man make many people ask what made Cho to act in a beastly manner like he did, and likewise, what can be done to prevent such kind of massacre form happening again.

According to Hauser of “The New York Times” newspaper on the day of the tragedy, thirty-three people were involved in a mass murder at the university after one of the student: Cho went round the bend to a shooting rampage, in a close link to the reports made by federal law enforcement officials at the site. Many of the victims were students shot in classrooms and dorms.

In a close link to Feldman (2009), we can only stop inquiring ways of preventing such scenarios or why they occur if we realize that all the requirements for prevention are within reach. There is need for commitment over the facts and full transparency concerning logical understanding.

The universities need to be on the forefront in ensuring they are well equipped with required facilities to handle health related matters. This may include the student’s counselling centres, mental health programs or support groups, procedures for making referrals and, emergency psychiatric services to encourage students to seek and share feelings before they are out of hand.

There is an urgent need for the educators and parents to have the initiatives of pursuing this issue through a coordinated procedure. It is possible to implement the violence prevention programs based on the specific school setups through solicited funds and, the government or sponsors grants.

Secondly, it is promising to utilize the intelligent and well-planned campaigns to stop the violence issue and thus the need for proper and critical considerations over such crusades. This is an awareness program to fight violence especially among the teenagers.

Teachers need to consider the strategy of enhancing the responsibility aspects in the minds of the learners in the effort of making them understand the importance of stopping the violence at all costs. The learners should know that the act is illegal and immoral. Today the youth have tightly embraced the extremely dynamic and advancing technology.

This means that the “websites, television and radio programs, public service announcements are some vital aspects the campaigns against violence in schools ought to focus” (Prinstein and Dodge, 2008).

The government/sponsors also need to tighten use of technology as a teaching aid through ample sponsorship since the youth are today highly conversant with technology. Learning programs or curriculums should avail access to information on bullying prevention and support implementation of activities that support unity at school or community level.

Violence in schools is an act that erodes the learning atmosphere by impairing the teaching and learning processes. The act is very tactless to individual inner being or conscious and thus often lead to short-term and long-term consequences such as suicide and homicide as experienced at the Virginia Tech a couple of years back. For this reason, it is the responsibility of every person to work aggressively to reduce the wicked act.

According to Webb and Terr (2007), healthy and productive education process cannot occur in an environment full of fear. All students have a right to a safe learning environment without the worry of attendance for the fear of unfriendly treatments or worst still abusive acts.

The educators cannot fully depend on the government to solve all the cases or provide full protection. It would therefore be wise for everyone in the society to take initiative and commit to the issue. This can highly reduce or better still demise of the offense and the schools will thus be safe and enjoyable for everyone.

Feldman, R.S. (2009) Discovering the Life Span . (First Ed). Pearson/Prentice Hall Publishers.

Hauser, Christine. (2007). Virginia Tech Shooting . The New York Times. Web.

Prinstein M and Dodge K, (2008), Understanding Peer Influence in Children and Adolescents. Guilford Press publishers, P. 239.

Webb N and Terr L, (2007), Play Therapy with Children in Crisis: Individual, Group, and Family Treatment. Guilford Press publishers, P. 251.

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IvyPanda. (2018, May 10). How to Prevent School Violence. https://ivypanda.com/essays/preventing-school-violence/

"How to Prevent School Violence." IvyPanda , 10 May 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/preventing-school-violence/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'How to Prevent School Violence'. 10 May.

IvyPanda . 2018. "How to Prevent School Violence." May 10, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/preventing-school-violence/.

1. IvyPanda . "How to Prevent School Violence." May 10, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/preventing-school-violence/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "How to Prevent School Violence." May 10, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/preventing-school-violence/.

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School Violence-Prevention, Essay Example

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School violence has become a matter of serious concern in recent times in many countries in general, but of more significance in the United States.  School violence can be seen as any behavior that goes against the educational mission of a school or climate of respect or obstructs the intent of the school to be free of aggression against persons, property, drugs, weapons, destruction and disorder. Violence in schools has taken various dimensions and in most cases dangerous weapons such as guns and knives have been involved.  The violence has been carried out by students towards their fellow students and also in some cases towards the school staff. The resultant effects have been injuries to other students and in extreme cases death has occurred as a result of school violence. School violence is just one aspect of youth violence. Youth violence has increasingly become a major public health concern in the country (Bennett, 108).  Youth violence can be seen as harmful behaviors that start early and become more profound during young adulthood. Some examples of youth violence include acts of bullying, use of weapons and rape.  Those who are on the receiving end of these acts of violence suffer physical injuries, momentous social and emotional damage and to some unfortunate extent, even death.

Research findings from a study done by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in 2007 show that a significant number of students carried some kind of weapon to school; and the most common weapons of choice included guns and knives (16).  More findings from the study indicated that about twelve percent of students had been involved in a physical fight while at school more than once (8).  There have been several incidences in the recent past where school violence has resulted in death of other students. Data from the U.S Center of Educational Statistics for the  past seven years indicate that one hundred and sixteen students were killed  in one hundred and nine separate incidents- approximately 17 students being killed each year ( 26). Most of these deaths occurred as a result of school shootings that were carried out either by a fellow student or an intruder from outside the school. Some of the most high profile shooting events in the United States that resulted in the death of other kids include the Columbine High school shooting in 1999 where 2 students killed 13 fellow students before taking their own lives (23). Another incident occurred at Virginia Tech Institute in 2007 where 33 students were killed.  Majority of the violence occur in densely populated inner city public schools. The fact that these acts of violence have in most cases been carried out by students on their fellow students is an indication that this is a problem that requires radical approach by authorities and communities at large.

There are many factors contributing to school violence and these factors are multifaceted and varied.  These factors may be social, physical or behavioral.  According to forensic psychologists, students who kill or injure their fellow students are very different from other criminals like drug dealers or people who peddle drugs (Philipott, 33). Many of these students usually begin having obsessions of killing or causing injury to their colleagues.  These students make threats directed towards those whom those they feel are taunting or intimidating them (34).  Generally, all these are ignored by other students until when it is too late. Coming up with a decision to kill or harm fellow students is not an impulsive occurrence, but something that takes long periods of cold planning. By using weapons like guns towards their fellow colleagues, the perpetrators of these acts of violence gain a sense of power which they feel deprived as a result of being offended by others who in that instance are powerless and cannot do anything.  Through use of violence and death, these students are able to get the power and attention that they seek (35).  Physical factors that might predispose one to violent behavior include birth complications that might lead to one’s brain receiving less oxygen which ultimately leads to brain dysfunction and future learning challenges. Furthermore, violent behaviors among kids have also been linked to head injuries.

Some kids also have problems conforming due to a difficult personality as a result of behavioral problems. They find it difficult to blend and participate in general school activities and hence in most cases they are ignored or taunted by other students. Some become rebellious while others become depressed and opt to take medication which ends up producing severe behavioral reactions.  These reactions could be in the form of acts of violence towards others.  Coming from a broken family is also another key likely contributing factor to violent behavior at school. Moreover, bullying has been cited as one of the major cause of violent behavior by the victims who undergo the bullying. Persistent exposure to bullying by fellow students often leads troubled youths to violent revenge or retribution (Bennett, 118). Most of the 1990’s school shooting incidents occurred to some extent as a result of the perpetrators having undergone constant bullying by other kids.

Other kids who kill or injure others in schools do so as a result of having learned violent behavior by virtue of coming from a dysfunctional family. These could be families where domestic abuse is rampant or parents have poor relationships with authority figures like the police officers. Kids who come from this type of environment are more likely to react with aggression to school authority and fellow kids at school. Increasing changes in the schools culture in the last fifty years has brought about challenges as result of students from markedly different social backgrounds learning together (122). Differences in attitudes and perceptions are more likely to promote cliques based on social and racial backgrounds. An example is the emergence of gangs in schools and whose activities have more often than not resulted in violence. Yet another cause of school killings and injuries has been the easy accessibility of firearms and other weapons (124). Recent estimates on the number of weapons, especially guns and knives being brought to schools indicate that almost a quarter a million guns and double the number of knives are being brought to schools at any given day (National Center for Education Statistics, 67). These weapons are the same ones being used to propagate violence to fellow students. Almost two million cases of school violence were reported in 2008. Most of these involved children between the ages of 12 and 18. Almost two hundred thousand of these involved cases of serious violent crimes including rape, sexual assault, murder and robbery (69).

There are several measures that can be put in place by the state or the county to prevent violence in schools. There is need to include all the relevant stakeholders to work together so as a team to identify the sources of violence and how best to deal with it. The various levels of government need to work together as a team. School districts, police departments and other government agencies such as the health and homeland security should be involved in identifying and preventing likely factors that might lead to violence in schools. There is need to involve different professionals in monitoring students lives in school. A student’s life would be better understood if different professionals are involved in the student’s day to day life at school. There is therefore need to bring on board law enforcement officers, mental health professionals and those involved in school administration so that a complete picture of a student is understood and hence it becomes easy to handle whatever complex problems students might be going through.  There is need for states to come up with acts that provide professional development when it comes to classroom management by teachers. Local educational boards should be compelled to come up with appropriate codes of conduct for all students and teachers which should specify specific action points that need to be taken in case of violation of weapon prohibitions.

Furthermore, states and counties should consider coming up with legislative changes and reforms that are aimed at reducing juvenile violence in schools. They could consider putting under custody for evaluation any kid or teenager found with dangerous weapons, especially firearms and knives. They should also consider legislation that will compel all schools to make reports to law enforcement agencies of all crimes committed in the schools. Schools should also be compelled to come up with toll free call lines from where potential crimes can be reported and appropriate measures put in place to prevent the possibility of happening. In addition to toll free hotline, websites dedicated to preventing violence should be formed in each state so that different people and stakeholders can be able to share resources on the best way to reduce school violence in their areas. States should also come up with clearly defined anti-bullying policies which should apply across all schools and which should be strictly enforced. Schools should also be encouraged to develop curriculum which are specifically designed to assist students develop the necessary skills that would assist them to effectively interact with other students from different cultures, socio-economic backgrounds and academic ability. The curriculum should emphasize on helping students develop interpersonal skills, self-control and emotional awareness. Finally, states should carry out regular safety assessment of schools to assess any potential threats and put in place appropriate measures to counter them.  States should also consider passing tough laws that would consider giving tough punishments like expulsions to any students found to be in possession of weapons in school. There is need for a zero tolerance policy towards possession of weapons around all public and private schools. Much effort should also be directed towards ensuring that violence on the streets does not enter the school environment.  Therefore putting in place programmes that seek to change the school environment to be different from that of the streets in which the schools are located should be a priority. Putting metal detectors and cameras will ensure that weapons from the streets do not cross over to the classroom.

In conclusion, violence in schools has continued to be a major challenge in the current learning institutions. Violence in school has been associated with various causes, most of them being physical, social and behavioral in nature. Efforts to reduce violence should involve a multi-dimensional approach that involves different stakeholders in the state as well as legislative and social reforms that would tackle the complex nature of this issue. All in all, the adoption of any of these measures will only succeed if they fully consider the unique requirements of kids growing up and facing numerous challenges both at home, in the neighborhood and the school.

Works Cited

Bennett, Johnson. The root of school crime and violence Chicago: McGraw Hill. (2008)

Philipott, Scott. “School violence and teacher professional disengagement.” British Journal of Educational Psychology , 77 , 465-477(2007)

United States. National Center for Education Statistics. Violence and discipline problemsin U.S. Public Schools. Washington, D. C.: The United States Department of Education (2007)

United States. Center for Disease Control. Youth violence: School violence. April, 2008, 06, December 2009 <http.cdc.gov/resources/violence>

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Tip Lines Can Lower Violence Exposure in Schools

The most visible school security measures — police officers, cameras, metal detectors — have dominated research and public debate on school safety for decades. School administrators looking for the best ways to protect students and reassure families now have evidence for another, less visible tool: anonymous reporting systems.

The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) funded a randomized controlled trial in Miami, which found that students at schools with an anonymous reporting system experienced 13.5% fewer violent incidents than students at schools without it. [1]

Why might anonymous reporting systems help prevent school violence? In most planned school attacks, at least one person close to the attacker knows about the plan ahead of time. [2] But a “code of silence” often keeps students from reporting on a classmate. [3] Tip lines and other systems that allow students to share their safety concerns anonymously — by phone, online, or in a mobile app — offer a way to overcome that barrier.

Some stakeholders have voiced concern over potential unintended consequence of tip lines. Specifically, anonymous tip lines could be misused, for example, to make prank calls or to wrongly implicate a student as a form of bullying. Misuse could waste the time of the team administering the anonymous reporting system or harm the reputation of a falsely accused student. While this concern should be more fully explored in future research, a few studies have found that false reporting was rare, or that it decreased after students saw the tips were followed up and handled appropriately. [4]

Read more about the history and theory behind tip lines for school safety .

By 2019, around half of public middle and high schools had tip lines, though most of those lines had been operating for three years or less. [5] Researchers are just starting to understand how students, schools, and communities use these reporting systems and what kind of impact they have.

Students Report Less Violence at School

The NIJ-funded study looked at an anonymous reporting system called Say Something, which includes 24/7 support for tips in addition to schoolwide training on recognizing and reporting warning signs of violence. [6]

This research on Say Something is the first randomized controlled trial of an anonymous reporting system in schools, noted Jen Grotpeter, the social scientist who oversees school safety research at NIJ.

Led by Hsing-Fang Hsieh and Justin Heinze at the University of Michigan, the study asked students in 29 Miami-Dade County public schools (13 with the Say Something system and 16 without it) how many times they had encountered violence at school — such as bullying, gang activity, and weapons — in the past three months. In schools with access to Say Something, students reported approximately one fewer encounter with violence nine months after the system launched at their school than they had reported at the time of the launch. Students at schools without Say Something reported no such decrease in violence over time. [7]

Hsieh and Heinze’s team also asked students to rate how confident they were in their ability to recognize and report threats through multiple channels, including the Say Something app. In addition, they surveyed students’ perceptions of safety, trust in their classmates, and feelings of connectedness at school. Say Something appeared to prevent these measures of self-efficacy and school climate from declining over the course of the school year, as they did in the schools without it. [8]

Grotpeter cautioned that this type of survey data does not measure whether schools recorded fewer violent incidents after adopting the anonymous reporting system or whether students used the system to report threats as they said they would. But, she said, “it’s an important first step.”

Describing how these results can begin to answer broader questions about the efficacy of anonymous report systems. Hsieh said, “If the school climate improves, we expect to see the violence drop.”

School Administrators Must Support Ongoing Training

“[Training] is the key element that we think will make anonymous reporting systems have an effect,” said Hsieh.

When implementing anonymous reporting in schools, it is not true that “if you build it, they will come,” Heinze added. He explained that the Say Something program has multiple facets — the reporting system, schoolwide training events, and student activities focused on safety — that work together to increase students’ ability to recognize and report events. In this model, educating both students and staff about how to recognize signs of violence and when to report them is a necessary first step, which in turn leads to a growing awareness throughout the school community and ultimately more people using the system.

To measure this effect in the Miami-Dade County schools, Hsieh and Heinze compared each school’s student survey results to the number of students who attended that school’s kick-off assembly for Say Something where the students first learned about the system. They found that more positive student surveys tracked closely with higher attendance at the Say Something training assemblies. Within schools that trained most of their students, “The students who got trained had better outcomes than students at the same schools who didn’t get trained,” said Hsieh.

Adoption of the reporting system appeared to depend on reaching the most students possible at that initial, schoolwide training event. [9] Training on the anonymous reporting system also needs to become a regular part of the school calendar to have a “long-term, school-level effect,” Hsieh noted.

For schools trying to understand the costs and benefits of reporting tools, the importance of training as many students as possible has budget implications. Schools may focus on the up-front costs of buying an anonymous reporting system, said Heinze. But implementing the system “is not just a one-time cost. Sustainability costs need to be incorporated.”

Hsieh and Heinze cited data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggesting that a single violent incident at school may cost society $2,200 to $15,100. [10] They calculated that the annual cost of the Say Something program was less than $3,000 for each school in their study. They concluded that an anonymous reporting system “may be [a] highly cost-effective method for school violence prevention.” [11]

About This Article

The work described in this article was supported by NIJ award number 2017-CK-BX-0002 , awarded to the University of Michigan.

This article is based on the grantee report “ Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Say Something Anonymous Reporting System ” (pdf, 40 pages), by Hsing-Fang Hsieh and Justin Heinze.

[note 1] Hsing-Fang Hsieh et al., “ The Effectiveness of the Say-Something Anonymous Reporting System in Preventing School Violence: A Cluster Randomized Control Trial in 19 Middle Schools ,” Journal of School Violence 21 no. 4 (2022): 413-428; and Hsing-Fang Hsieh and Justin Heinze, “ Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Say Something Anonymous Reporting System ,” Final report to the National Institute of Justice, award number 2017-CK-BX-0002, May 2023, NCJ 306552, 18

[note 2] Bryan Vossekuil et al., The Final Report and Findings of the Safe School Initiative: Implications for the Prevention of School Attacks in the United States , Washington, DC: U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Department of Education, 2004, 25; and National Threat Assessment Center, Protecting America’s Schools: A U.S. Secret Service Analysis of Targeted School Violence , Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Secret Service, 2019, 45. 

[note 3] Susan R.T. Payne and Delbert S. Elliott, “ Safe2Tell®: An Anonymous, 24/7 Reporting System for Preventing School Violence ,” New Directions for Youth Development 2011 no. 129 (2011): 103-111.

[note 4] Dorothy L. Espelage et al., “Implementation of Tiplines and Reporting Apps for School Safety: A Qualitative Analysis of Parent and School Personnel Perspectives,” Journal of School Violence  20 no. 3 (2021): 336-350, https://doi.org/10.1080/15388220.2021.1910518 ; and Al Stein-Seroussi et al., “Nevada SafeVoice,” Final report to the National Institute of Justice, award number 2016-CK-BX-0007, April 2024, NCJ 308905, https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/308905.pdf .

[note 5] Michael Planty et al., Tip Lines for School Safety: A National Portrait of Tip Line Use , Research Triangle Park, NC: RTI International, 2020, 3.

[note 6] “Say Something Anonymous Reporting System,” Sandy Hook Promise, https://www.sandyhookpromise.org/our-programs/say-something-anonymous-reporting-system/ .  

[note 7] Hsieh and Heinze, “ Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Say Something Anonymous Reporting System ,” 18.

[note 8] Hsieh and Heinze, “ Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Say Something Anonymous Reporting System ,” 15-18. Asked to reflect on why measures of student self-efficacy and school safety would decrease over time at control schools in the absence of any intervention, Hsieh and Heinze noted that similar decreases have been observed in other studies and speculated that a “honeymoon” period of optimistic feelings at the beginning of each school year could account for the trend. 

[note 9] Hsieh and Heinze, “ Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Say Something Anonymous Reporting System ,” 20. 

[note 10] Cora Peterson et al., “ Economic Cost of Injury — United States, 2019 ,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 70 no. 48 (December 3, 2021): 1655-1659.

[note 11] Hsieh and Heinze, “ Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Say Something Anonymous Reporting System ,” 26.

Cite this Article

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• Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Say Something Anonymous Reporting System

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• Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Say Something Anonymous Reporting System to Improve School Safety

Gun Violence: Prediction, Prevention, and Policy

• Gun Violence and Crime

Gun violence is an urgent, complex, and multifaceted problem. It requires evidence-based, multifaceted solutions. Psychology can make important contributions to policies that prevent gun violence. Toward this end, in February 2013 the American Psychological Association commissioned this report by a panel of experts to convey research-based conclusions and recommendations (and to identify gaps in such knowledge) on how to reduce the incidence of gun violence — whether by homicide, suicide, or mass shootings — nationwide.

Following are chapter-by-chapter highlights and short summaries of conclusions and recommendations of the report’s authors. More information and supporting citations can be found within the chapters themselves.

Antecedents to Gun Violence: Developmental Issues

A complex and variable constellation of risk and protective factors makes persons more or less likely to use a firearm against themselves or others. For this reason, there is no single profile that can reliably predict who will use a gun in a violent act. Instead, gun violence is associated with a confluence of individual, family, school, peer, community, and sociocultural risk factors that interact over time during childhood and adolescence. Although many youths desist in aggressive and antisocial behavior during late adolescence, others are disproportionately at risk for becoming involved in or otherwise affected by gun violence. The most consistent and powerful predictor of future violence is a history of violent behavior.  P revention efforts guided by research on developmental risk can reduce the likelihood that firearms will be introduced into community and family conflicts or criminal activity.  Prevention efforts can also reduce the relatively rare occasions when severe mental illness contributes to homicide or the more common circumstances when depression or other mental illness contributes to suicide. Reducing incidents of gun violence arising from criminal misconduct or suicide is an important goal of broader primary and secondary prevention and intervention strategies. Such strategies must also attend to redirecting developmental antecedents and larger sociocultural processes that contribute to gun violence and gun-related deaths.

Antecedents to Gun Violence: Gender and Culture

Any account of gun violence in the United States must be able to explain both why males are perpetrators of the vast majority of gun violence and why the vast majority of males never perpetrate gun violence. Preliminary evidence suggests that changing perceptions among males of social norms about behaviors and characteristics associated with masculinity may reduce the prevalence of intimate partner and sexual violence. Such interventions need to be further tested for their potential to reduce gun violence. The skills and knowledge of psychologists are needed to develop and evaluate programs and settings in schools, workplaces, prisons, neighborhoods, clinics, and other relevant contexts that aim to change gendered expectations for males that emphasize self-sufficiency, toughness, and violence, including gun violence.

What Works: Gun Violence Prediction and Prevention at the Individual Level

Although it is important to recognize that most people suffering from a mental illness are not dangerous, for those persons at risk for violence due to mental illness, suicidal thoughts, or feelings of desperation, mental health treatment can often prevent gun violence. Policies and programs that identify and provide treatment for all persons suffering from a mental illness should be a national priority. Urgent attention must be paid to the current level of access to mental health services in the United States; such access is woefully insufficient. Additionally, it should be noted that behavioral threat assessment is becoming a standard of care for preventing violence in schools, colleges, and the workplace and against government and other public officials. Threat assessment teams gather and analyze information to assess if a person poses a threat of violence or self-harm, and if so, take steps to intervene.

What Works: Gun Violence Prevention at the Community Level

Prevention of violence occurs along a continuum that begins in early childhood with programs to help parents raise emotionally healthy children and ends with efforts to identify and intervene with troubled individuals who are threatening violence. The mental health community must take the lead in advocating for community-based collaborative problem-solving models to address the prevention of gun violence. Such models should blend prevention strategies in an effort to overcome the tendency within many community service systems to operate in silos. There has been some success with community-based programs involving police training in crisis intervention and with community members trained in mental health first aid. These programs need further piloting and study so they can be expanded to additional communities as appropriate. In addition, public health messaging campaigns on safe gun storage are needed. The practice of keeping all firearms appropriately stored and locked must become the only socially acceptable norm.

What Works: Policies to Reduce Gun Violence

The use of a gun greatly increases the odds that violence will lead to a fatality: This problem calls for urgent action. Firearm prohibitions for high-risk groups — domestic violence offenders, persons convicted of violent misdemeanor crimes, and individuals with mental illness who have been adjudicated as being a threat to themselves or to others — have been shown to reduce violence. The licensing of handgun purchasers, background check requirements for all gun sales, and close oversight of retail gun sellers can reduce the diversion of guns to criminals. Reducing the incidence of gun violence will require interventions through multiple systems, including legal, public health, public safety, community, and health. Increasing the availability of data and funding will help inform and evaluate policies designed to reduce gun violence.

Dewey Cornell, PhD, and Nancy G. Guerra, EdD

Gun violence is an important national problem leading to more than 31,000 deaths and 78,000 nonfatal injuries every year. Although the rate of gun homicides in the United States has declined in recent years, U.S. rates remain substantially higher than those of almost every other nation in the world and are at least seven times higher than those of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and many others (see Alpers & Wilson).

Guns are not a necessary or sufficient cause of violence and can be used legally for a variety of sanctioned activities. Still, they are especially lethal weapons that are used in approximately two thirds of the homicides and more than half of all suicides in the United States. Every day in the United States, approximately 30 persons die of homicides and 53 persons die of suicides committed by someone using a gun (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2013a). Guns also provide individuals with the capacity to carry out multiple-fatality shootings that inflict great trauma and grief on our society, and the public rightly insists on action to make our communities safer.

Gun violence demands special attention. At the federal level, President Barack Obama announced a new “Now Is the Time” plan (White House, 2013) to address firearm violence to better protect children and communities and issued 23 related executive orders to federal agencies. The importance of continued research to address firearm violence is reflected in the 2013 report of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and the National Research Council (NRC) "Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence. "  This report calls for a public health approach that emphasizes the importance of accurate information on the number and distribution of guns in the United States, including risk factors and motivations for acquisition and use, the association between exposure to media violence and any subsequent perpetration of gun violence, and how new technology can facilitate prevention. The report also outlines a research agenda to facilitate programs and policies that can reduce the occurrence and impact of firearm-related violence in the United States.

Psychology can make an important contribution to policies that prevent gun violence. Rather than debate whether “people” kill people or “guns” kill people, a reasonable approach to facilitate prevention is that “people with guns kill people.” The problem is more complex than simple slogans and requires careful study and analysis of the different psychological factors, behavioral pathways, social circumstances, and cultural factors that lead to gun violence. Whether prevention efforts should focus on guns because they are such a powerful tool for violence, on other factors that might have equal or greater impact, or on some combination of factors should be a scientific question settled by evidence.

Toward this end, the American Psychological Association (APA) commissioned this report, with three goals. First, this report is intended to focus on gun violence, recognizing that knowledge about gun violence must be related to a broader understanding of violence. Second, the report reviews what is known from the best current science on antecedents to gun violence and effective prevention strategies at the individual, community, and national levels. Finally, the report identifies policy directions, gaps in the literature, and suggestions for continued research that can help address unresolved questions about effective strategies to reduce gun violence. For over a decade, research on gun violence has been stifled by legal restrictions, political pressure applied to agencies not to fund research on certain gun-related topics, and a lack of funding. The authors of this report believe the cost of gun violence to our society is too great to allow these barriers to remain in place.

The Role of Mental Health and Mental Illness

An important focus of this report is the role that mental health and mental illness play in why individuals commit firearm-related violence and how this can inform preventive efforts. This focus undoubtedly brings to mind shootings such as those in Newtown, Conn., Aurora, Colo., and Tucson, Ariz. However, it is important to realize that mass fatality incidents of this type, although highly publicized, are extremely rare, accounting for one tenth of 1 percent of all firearm-related homicides in the United States (CDC, 2013a). Moreover, serious mental illness affects a significant percentage of the U.S. population, with prevalence estimates in the general population as high as 5 percent (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [SAMHSA], 2012). This is quite significant, given that the term serious mental illness is typically reserved for the most debilitating kinds of mental disorder, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the most severe forms of depression, but can include other mental disorders that result in acute functional impairment.

Although many highly publicized shootings have involved persons with serious mental illness, it must be recognized that persons with serious mental illness commit only a small proportion of firearm-related homicides; the problem of gun violence cannot be resolved simply through efforts focused on serious mental illness (Webster & Vernick, 2013a). Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of people with serious mental illness do not engage in violence toward others and should not be stereotyped as dangerous (Sirotich, 2008).

It also is important to recognize that for the small proportion of individuals whose serious mental illness does predispose them to violence, there are significant societal barriers to treatment. Psychiatric hospitalization can be helpful, but treatment can be expensive, and there may not be appropriate follow-up services in the community. Civil commitment laws, which serve to protect individuals from being unreasonably detained or forced into treatment against their will, can also prevent professionals from treating someone who does not recognize his or her need for treatment.

Other kinds of mental disorders that do not rise to the level of serious mental illness also are associated with gun violence and criminal behavior generally. For example, conduct disorder and antisocial personality disorder are associated with increased risk for violence. (This link is not surprising because violent behavior is counted as one of the symptoms that helps qualify someone for the diagnosis.) Nevertheless, there are well-established, scientifically validated mental health treatment programs for individuals with these disorders, such as multisystemic therapy, that can reduce violent recidivism (Henggeler, 2011). Substance abuse is another form of mental disorder that is a risk factor for violence in the general population and also increases the risk for violence among persons with serious mental illness (Van Dorn, Volavka, & Johnson, 2012).

These observations reflect the complexity of relationships among serious mental illness, mental disorders, and violence. In contrast to homicide, suicide accounts for approximately 61 percent of all firearm fatalities in the United States (CDC, 2013a), and more than 90 percent of persons who commit suicide have some combination of depression, symptoms of other mental disorders, and/or substance abuse (Moscicki, 2001). This suggests that mental health and mental illness are especially relevant to understanding and preventing suicide, the leading type of firearm-related death.

Prediction and Prevention

The prediction of an individual’s propensity for violence is a complex and challenging task for mental health professionals, who often are called upon by courts, correctional authorities, schools, and others to assess the risk of an individual’s violence. Mental health professionals are expected to take action to protect potential victims when they judge that their patient or client poses a danger to others. However, decades of research have established that there is only a moderate ability to identify individuals likely to commit serious acts of violence. Much depends on the kind of violence and the time frame for prediction. For example, there are specialized instruments for the assessment of violence risk among sex offenders, civilly committed psychiatric patients, and domestic violence offenders. However, the time frame and focus for these predictions often are broadly concerned with long-term predictions that someone will ever be violent with anyone rather than whether a person will commit a particular act of targeted violence.

Research has moved the field beyond the assessment of “dangerousness” as a simple individual characteristic applicable in all cases to recognize that predictive efforts must consider a range of personal, social, and situational factors that can lead to different forms of violent behavior in different circumstances. Moreover, risk assessment has expanded to include concepts of risk management and interventions aimed at reducing risk.

In making predictions about the risk for mass shootings, there is no consistent psychological profile or set of warning signs that can be used reliably to identify such individuals in the general population. A more promising approach is the strategy of behavioral threat assessment , which is concerned with identifying and intervening with individuals who have communicated threats of violence or engaged in behavior that clearly indicates planning or preparation to commit a violent act. A threat assessment approach recognizes that individuals who threaten targeted violence are usually troubled, depressed, and despondent over their circumstances in life. A threat assessment leads to interventions intended to reduce the risk of violence by taking steps to address the problem that underlies the threatening behavior. Such problems can range from workplace conflicts to schoolyard bullying to serious mental illness. One of the most influential threat assessment models was developed by the U.S. Secret Service (Fein et al., 2002; Vossekuil, Fein, Reddy, Borum, & Modzelski, 2002) and has been adapted for use in schools, colleges, business settings, and the U.S. military.

The limited ability to make accurate predictions of violence has led some to question whether prevention is possible. This is a common misconception, because prevention does not require prediction of a specific individual’s behavior . For example, public health campaigns have reduced problems ranging from lung cancer to motor vehicle accidents by identifying risk factors and promoting safer behaviors even though it is not possible to predict whether a specific individual will develop lung cancer or have a motor vehicle accident (Mozaffarian, Hemenway, & Ludwig, 2013). A substantial body of scientific evidence identifies important developmental, familial, and social risk factors for violence. In addition, an array of rigorously tested psychological and educational interventions facilitate healthy social development and reduce aggressive behavior by teaching social skills and problem-solving strategies. It is important that policymakers and stakeholders recognize the value of prevention.

Prevention measures also should be distinguished from security measures and crisis response plans. Prevention must begin long before a gunman comes into a school or shopping center. Prevention efforts are often conceptualized as taking place on primary, secondary, and tertiary levels:

• Primary prevention (also called universal prevention) consists of efforts to promote healthy development in the general population. An example would be a curriculum to teach all children social skills to resist negative peer influences and resolve conflicts peacefully.
• Secondary prevention (also called selective prevention) involves assistance for individuals who are at increased risk for violence. Mentoring programs and conflict-mediation services are examples of such assistance.
• Tertiary prevention (also called indicated prevention) consists of intensive services for individuals who have engaged in some degree of aggressive behavior and could benefit from efforts to prevent a recurrence or escalation of aggression. Programs to rehabilitate juvenile offenders are examples.

Throughout this report, we discuss evidence-based prevention programs relevant to the issue of firearm-related violence.

Research can help us understand and prevent gun violence. The psychological research summarized in this report can inform public policy and prevention efforts designed to promote public safety and reduce violence. Gun violence is not a simple, discrete category of crime; it shares characteristics with other forms of violence, and it can be a product of an array of cultural, social, psychological, and situational factors. Nevertheless, there is valuable psychological knowledge that can be used to make our communities safer.

Robert Kinscherff, PhD, JD; Nancy G. Guerra, EdD; and Ariel A. Williamson, MA

Youth gun violence is often sensationalized and misunderstood by the general public, in part because of increasingly public acts of violence and related media coverage (Snyder & Sickmund, 2006; Williams, Tuthill, & Lio, 2008). In truth, only a small number of juvenile offenders commit the majority of violent juvenile crimes in the United States (Williams et al., 2008). Most juvenile offenders commit “nonperson” offenses, usually in terms of property and technical (parole) violations (Sickmund, Sladky, Kang, & Puzzanchera, 2011). For example, in 2010, the majority of juvenile offenses were nonperson offenses such as property offenses (27.2 percent), drug offenses (8.4 percent), public order offenses (10.7 percent), technical violations (14.4 percent), and status offenses (4.6 percent) — that is, crimes defined by minor (under age 18) status, such as alcohol consumption, truancy, and running away from home (Sickmund et al., 2011). Additionally, young adults between the ages of 18 and 34 are the most likely to commit violent crimes like homicide and to do so using a gun, compared with individuals under 18 (Cooper & Smith, 2011).

A subgroup of youth is particularly vulnerable to violence and victimization. Minority males constitute a disproportionate number of youths arrested and adjudicated, with 60 percent of all arrested youths identifying as part of a racial/ethnic minority group (Sickmund et al., 2011). Males also outnumber females in arrest rates for every area except status offenses and technical violations. Urban African American males are at substantially greater risk for involvement in gun-related homicides as perpetrators and as victims (CDC, 2013a; Spano, Pridemore, & Bolland, 2012). However, the majority of the infrequent but highly publicized shootings with multiple fatalities, such as those at Sandy Hook Elementary School or the Aurora, Colo., movie theater, have been committed by young White males.

This presents a picture of a small number of youths and young adults who are at an increased risk for involvement in gun violence. In the United States, these youths are somewhat more likely to be males of color growing up in urban areas. But it also is important to understand that most young males of all races and ethnicities — and most people in general — are not involved in serious violence and do not carry or use guns inappropriately.

How did this small subset of youths and young adults come to be involved in serious gun violence? Is there a “cradle-to-prison” pipeline, particularly for youths of color living in poverty and in disadvantaged urban areas, that triggers a cascade of events that increase the likelihood of gun violence (Children’s Defense Fund, 2009)? A developmental perspective on antecedents to youth gun violence can help us design more effective prevention programs and strategies.

This chapter describes the biological and environmental risk factors that begin early in development and continue into adolescence and young adulthood. Developmental studies that link children’s aggressive behavior to more serious involvement in the criminal justice system suggest the accumulation and interaction of many risks in multiple contexts (Dodge, Greenberg, Malone, & Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, 2008; Dodge & Pettit, 2003). There is no single biological predisposition, individual trait, or life experience that accounts for the development and continuity of violent behavior or the use of guns. Rather, violence is associated with a confluence of individual, family, school, peer, community, and sociocultural risk factors that interact over time during childhood and adolescence (Brennan, Hall, Bor, Najman, & Williams, 2003; Dodge & Pettit, 2003). Risk for gun violence involves similar risk processes, although the complexity and variability of individuals means there is no meaningful profile that allows reliable prediction of who will eventually engage in gun violence. Nevertheless, developmental factors beginning in utero may increase the risk of aggressive behavior and lead to gun violence — especially when guns are readily available and part of an aggressive or delinquent peer culture.

Early-Onset Aggression

Early onset of aggressive behavior significantly increases risk for later antisocial behavior problems. The most consistent and powerful predictor of future violence is a history of violent behavior, and risk increases with earlier and more frequent incidents. Longitudinal work has shown that having a first arrest between 7 and 11 years of age is associated with patterns of long-term adult offending (Loeber, 1982). Children who are highly aggressive throughout childhood and continue to have serious conduct problems during adolescence have been identified as “life-course persistent” (LCP) youths (Moffitt, 1993). Examining longitudinal data from a large birth cohort in New Zealand, Moffitt (1993) created a taxonomy of antisocial behavior that differentiates LCP youths from an “adolescence-limited” subgroup. The latter subgroup characterizes those who engage in antisocial behaviors during adolescence and usually desist by adulthood. By contrast, LCP youths display more severe early aggression in childhood and develop a pattern of chronic violence during adolescence and into adulthood.

Both biological and environmental risks during prenatal development, infancy, and early childhood contribute to the development of early-onset aggression and the LCP developmental trajectory (Brennan et al., 2003; Dodge & Pettit, 2003; Moffitt, 2005). Pre- and postnatal risks associated with early-onset aggression include maternal substance abuse during pregnancy, high levels of prenatal stress, low birth weight, birth complications and injuries (especially those involving anoxia), malnutrition, and exposure to environmental toxins like lead paint (Brennan et al., 2003; Dodge & Pettit, 2003). According to Moffitt (1993), these early developmental risks disrupt neural development and are associated with neuropsychological deficits, particularly in executive functioning and verbal abilities.

Along with neuropsychological deficits, poor behavioral control and a difficult temperament are associated with the development of early-onset aggression (Dodge & Pettit, 2003; Moffitt, 1993). Children with difficult temperaments are typically irritable, difficult to soothe, and highly reactive. These patterns of behavior often trigger negative and ineffective reactions from parents and caregivers that can escalate into early aggressive behavior (Dodge & Pettit, 2003; Wachs, 2006). Family influences, such as familial stress and negative parent–child interactions, can interact with a child’s individual characteristics, leading to increased aggressive behavior during childhood.

Family Influences

Highly aggressive children who engage in serious acts of violence during later childhood and adolescence also are exposed to continued environmental risks throughout development (Dodge et al., 2008). The family context has been found to be quite influential in the development and continuity of antisocial behavior. Particularly for early-onset aggressive youths raised in families that are under a high degree of environmental stress, aggressive child behavior and negative parenting practices interact to amplify early-onset aggression. Examples of family risk factors include low parent–child synchrony and warmth, poor or disrupted attachment, harsh or inconsistent discipline (overly strict or permissive), poor parental monitoring, the modeling of antisocial behavior, pro-violent attitudes and criminal justice involvement, and coercive parent–child interaction patterns (Dodge & Pettit, 2003; Farrington, Jolliffe, Loeber, Stouthamer-Loeber, & Kalb, 2001; Hill, Howel, Hawkins, & Battin-Pearson, 1999; Patterson, Forgatch, & DeGarmo, 2010).

Coercive parent–child interactions have been associated with the emergence of aggressive behavior problems in children (Patterson et al., 2010). In these interactions, children learn to use coercive behaviors such as temper tantrums to escape parental discipline. When parents acquiesce to these negative behaviors, they inadvertently reward children for coercive behaviors, reinforcing the idea that aggression or violence is adaptive and can be used instrumentally to achieve goals. These interaction patterns tend to escalate in their severity (e.g., from whining, to temper tantrums, to hitting, etc.) and frequency, leading to increased aggression and noncompliance (Patterson et al., 2010). Such behaviors also generalize across contexts to children’s interactions with others outside the home, including with teachers, other adults, and peers. Indeed, prevention research has shown that intervening with at-risk families to improve parenting skills can disrupt the pathway from early-onset aggressive behavior to delinquency in adolescence (Patterson et al., 2010).

Other family risk factors for youths with early predispositions to aggression may be especially relevant to increased risk for gun violence. For instance, research has shown that many families with children own firearms and do not keep them safely stored at home (Johnson, Miller, Vriniotis, Azrael, & Hemenway, 2006). Although keeping firearms at home is not a direct cause of youth gun violence, the rates of suicides, homicides, and unintentional firearm fatalities are higher for 5–14-year-olds who live in states or regions in which rates of gun ownership are more prevalent (Miller, Azrael, & Hemenway, 2002). Poor parental monitoring and supervision, which are more general risk factors for involvement in aggression and violent behaviors (Dodge et al., 2008), may be especially salient in risk for gun violence. For example, impulsive or aggressive children who are often unsupervised and live in a home with access to guns may be at risk.

The family also is an important context for socialization and the development of normative beliefs or perceptions about appropriate social behavior that become increasingly stable during early development and are predictive of later behavior over time (Huesmann & Guerra, 1997). These beliefs shape an individual’s social-cognitive understanding about whether and under what circumstances threatened or actual violence is justified. Children who develop beliefs that aggression is a desirable and effective way to interact with others are more likely to use coercion and violence instrumentally to achieve goals or solve problems (Huesmann & Guerra, 1997). Antisocial attitudes and social-cognitive distortions (e.g., problems in generating nonviolent solutions, misperceiving hostile/aggressive intent by others, justifying acts of violence that would be criminal) can also increase risk for violence (Borum & Verhaagen, 2006; Dodge & Pettit, 2003).

Families can play a role in establishing and maintaining normative beliefs about violence and gun usage. For example, pro-violence attitudes and the criminality of parents and siblings during childhood have been found to predict adolescent gang membership and delinquency (Farrington et al., 2001; Hill et al., 1999). Youths from families that encourage the use of guns for solving problems also may be exposed to such attitudes in other contexts (in communities, with peers, and in the media) and may perceive firearms to be an appropriate means to solve problems and protect themselves.

School and Peer Influences

The school setting is another important context for child socialization. Children who enter school with high levels of aggressive behavior, cognitive or neurobiological deficits, and poor emotional regulation may have difficulty adjusting to the school setting and getting along with peers (Dodge et al., 2008; Dodge & Pettit, 2003). Highly aggressive children who have learned to use aggression instrumentally at home will likely use such behavior with teachers, increasing the chances that they will have poor academic experiences and low school engagement (Patterson et al., 2010). Academic failure, low school interest, truancy, and school dropout are all correlated with increased risk for problem behavior and delinquency, including aggression and violence (Dodge & Pettit, 2003). This risk is strongest when poor academic achievement begins in elementary school and contributes to school underachievement and the onset of adolescent problem behaviors, such as substance use and drug trafficking, truancy, unsafe sexual activity, youth violence, and gang involvement (Dodge et al., 2008; Guerra & Bradshaw, 2008).

Involvement in these risk behaviors also is facilitated by affiliation with deviant peers, particularly during adolescence (Dodge et al., 2008). Research has shown that children who are aggressive, victimized, and academically marginalized from the school setting may suffer high levels of peer rejection that amplify preexisting aggressive behaviors (Dodge et al., 2008; Dodge & Pettit, 2003). Longitudinal work indicates that experiences of academic failure, school marginalization, and peer rejection interact to produce affiliations with similarly rejected, deviant, and/or gang-involved peers. Friendships between deviant peers provide youths with “training” in antisocial behaviors that reinforce and exacerbate preexisting aggressive tendencies (Dishion, Véronneau, & Meyers, 2010; Dodge et al., 2008). Peer deviancy training is a primary mechanism in the trajectory from overt, highly aggressive behaviors during childhood to more covert processes during adolescence, such as lying, stealing, substance use, and weapon carrying (Dishion et al., 2010; Patterson et al., 2010).

The larger school context also can interact with youths’ experiences of academic failure, peer rejection, and deviant peer affiliations to influence the continuity of antisocial behavior. Poorly funded schools located in low-income neighborhoods have fewer resources to address the behavioral, academic, mental health, and medical needs of their students. In addition, these schools tend to have stricter policies toward discipline, are less clinically informed about problem behaviors, and have stronger zero tolerance policies that result in more expulsions and suspensions (Edelman, 2007). This contextual factor is important, as youths who are attending and engaged in school are less likely to engage in delinquent or violent behavior, whereas marginalized and rejected youths, particularly in impoverished schools, are at increased risk for aggression and violence at school and in their communities. Schools that provide safe environments that protect students from bullying or criminal victimization support student engagement, reduce incidents of student conflict that could result in volatile or violent behavior, and diminish risks that students will bring weapons to school.

Although few homicides (< 2 percent) and suicides occur at school or during transportation to and from school (Roberts, Zhang, & Truman, 2012) and widely publicized mass school shootings are rare, research indicates that a small number of students do carry guns or other weapons. In 2011, 5.1 percent of high school students in Grades 9–12 reported carrying a gun in the 30 days prior to the survey, and 5.4 percent of students had carried a weapon (gun, knife, or club) on school grounds at least once in the 30 days prior to the survey (Eaton et al., 2012). Studies show that youths who carry guns are more likely to report involvement in multiple problem behaviors, to be affiliated with a gang, to overestimate how many of their peers carry guns, and to have a high need for interpersonal safety. For instance, student reports of involvement in and exposure to risk behaviors at school such as physical fighting, being threatened, using substances, or selling drugs on school grounds have been positively correlated with an increased likelihood of carrying weapons to school (Furlong, Bates, & Smith, 2001).

In another study of high school students, 5.5 percent of urban high school students reported that they carried a gun in the year prior to the study, but students estimated that 32.6 percent of peers in their neighborhoods carried guns, a substantial overestimation of the actual gun-carrying rates. Lawful, supervised gun carrying by juveniles is not the concern of this line of research; however, when unsupervised youths carry guns in high-violence neighborhoods, they may be more likely to use guns to protect themselves and resolve altercations. Gun-carrying youths in this study had higher rates of substance use, violence exposure, gang affiliation, and peer victimization (Hemenway, Vriniotis, Johnson, Miller, & Azrael, 2011). Additionally, many gun-carrying youths had lower levels of perceived interpersonal safety (Hemenway et al., 2011). Research has also revealed that deviant peer group affiliations during specific periods of adolescent development may increase the risk for gun violence. For example, research findings have shown that gang membership in early adolescence is significantly associated with increased gun carrying over time. This changes somewhat in late adolescence and young adulthood, when gun carrying is linked more to involvement in drug dealing and having peers who illegally own guns (Lizotte, Krohn, Howell, Tobin, & Howard, 2000).

Communities Matter

The community context is an additional source of risk for the development and continuity of antisocial behavior. Living in extremely disadvantaged, underresourced communities with high levels of crime and violence creates serious obstacles to healthy development. Recent estimates show that currently in the United States, 16.4 million children live in poverty and 7.4 million of those live in extreme poverty (i.e., an annual income of less than half of the federal poverty level; Children’s Defense Fund, 2012). One in four children under 5 years of age is poor during the formative years of brain development. In addition, 22 percent of children who have lived in poverty do not graduate from high school, compared with 6 percent of children who have never been poor (Children’s Defense Fund, 2012). For families and youths, living in poverty is associated with high levels of familial stress, poor child nutrition, elevated risks of injury, and limited access to adequate health care (Adler & Steward, 2010; Patterson et al., 2010). Ethnic minority youth in the United States are overrepresented in economically struggling communities. These environmental adversities can, in turn, compromise children’s health status and functioning in other environments and increase the risk for involvement in violent behaviors, contributing significantly to ethnic and cultural variations in the rates of violence (Borum & Verhaagen, 2006).

In a community context, the degree to which children have access to adequate positive resources (e.g., in terms of health, finances, nutrition, education, peers, and recreation), have prosocial and connected relationships with others, and feel safe in their environment can significantly affect their risk for involvement in violent behaviors. Aggressive children and adolescents who are living in neighborhoods with high levels of community violence, drug and firearm trafficking, gang presence, and inadequate housing may have increased exposure to violence and opportunities for involvement in deviant behavior. Compared with communities that have better resources, disenfranchised and impoverished communities may also lack social, recreational, and vocational opportunities that contribute to positive youth development. Youths with high levels of preexisting aggressive behavior and emerging involvement with deviant or gang-involved peers may be especially at risk for increased violent behavior and subsequent criminal justice involvement when exposed to impoverished and high-crime communities.

Exposure to violence in one’s community, a low sense of community safety, unsupervised access to guns, and involvement in risky community behaviors such as drug dealing all contribute to youths’ involvement in gun carrying and gun violence. Decreased community perceptions of neighborhood safety and higher levels of social (e.g., loitering, public substance use, street fighting, prostitution, etc.) and physical (e.g., graffiti, gang signs, and discarded needles, cigarettes, and beer bottles) neighborhood disorder have been associated with increased firearm carrying among youths (Molnar, Miller, Azrael, & Buka, 2004). A study of African American youths living in poverty found that those who had been exposed to violence prior to carrying a gun were 2.5 times more likely than nonexposed youths to begin carrying a gun at the next time point, even when controlling for gang involvement (Spano et al., 2012). This study also indicated that after exposure to violence, youths were more likely to start carrying guns in their communities (Spano et al., 2012).

Studies have shown that apart from characteristics like conduct problems and prior delinquency, youths who are involved in gang fighting and selling drugs are also more likely to use a gun to threaten or harm others (e.g., Butters, Sheptycki, Brochu, & Erikson, 2011). Involvement in drug dealing in one’s community appears to be particularly risky for gun carrying during later adolescence and early adulthood, possibly due to an increased need for self-protection (Lizotte et al., 2000). Taken together, these studies show that firearm possession may be due to interactions between the need for self-protection in violent communities and increased involvement in delinquent behaviors.

Sociocultural Context: Exposure to Violent Media

Child and adolescent exposure to violent media, a more distal, sociocultural influence on behavior, is also important when considering developmental risks for gun violence. Decades of experimental, cross-sectional, and longitudinal research have documented that exposure to violent media, in movies and television, is associated with increased aggressive behaviors, aggressive thoughts and feelings, increased physiological arousal, and decreased prosocial behaviors (e.g., Anderson et al., 2003; Anderson & Bushman, 2001; Huesmann, 2010; Huesmann, Moise-Titus, Podolski, & Eron, 2003). In light of ongoing advances in technology, research has been expanded to include violent content in video games, music, social media, and the Internet (Anderson et al., 2010; IOM & NRC, 2013).

Findings on associations between violent media exposure and aggressive behavior outcomes have held across differences in culture, gender, age, socioeconomic status, and intellect (e.g., Anderson et al., 2010; Huesmann et al., 2003). Social-cognitive theory on violent media exposure suggests that these images are part of children’s socialization experiences, similar to violence exposure in interpersonal and community contexts (Huesmann, 2010). The viewing of violent images can serve to desensitize children to violence and normalize violent behavior, particularly when children have previously developed beliefs that aggression and violence are an acceptable means of achieving goals or resolving conflicts.

It is important to note that the link between violent media exposure and subsequent violent behaviors does not demonstrate a direct causal effect but instead shows how some children may be more susceptible to this risk factor than others. For instance, Huesmann et al. (2003) found that identification with aggressive characters on television and the perception that television violence was real were robust predictors of later aggression over time. Additionally, there is no established link between violent media exposure and firearm usage in particular. However, given the substantial proportion of media that includes interactions around firearms (e.g., in video games, movies, and television shows), the IOM and NRC (2013) recently identified a crucial need to examine specific associations between exposure to violent media and use of firearms. Exposure to violent media, especially for youths with preexisting aggressive tendencies and poor parental monitoring, may be an important contextual factor that amplifies risk for violent behavior and gun use.

Summary and Conclusions

The relatively small number of youths most likely to persist in serious acts of aggression (including increased risk of gun violence) have often experienced the following:

• Early childhood onset of persistent rule-breaking and aggression
• Socialization into criminal attitudes and behaviors by parents and caretakers who themselves are involved in criminal activities
• Exposure in childhood to multiple adverse experiences in their families and communities
• Social dislocation and reduced opportunities due to school failure or underachievement
• Persisting affiliation with deviant peers or gangs engaged in delinquent/criminal misconduct and with attitudes and beliefs that support possession and use of guns
• Broad exposure to sociocultural influences such as mass media violence and depictions of gun violence as an effective means of achieving goals or status

Most youths — even those with chronic and violent delinquent misconduct — desist in aggressive and antisocial behavior during late adolescence, and no single risk factor is sufficient to generate persisting violent behavior. Still, many are disproportionately at risk for becoming perpetrators or victims of gun violence. Homicide remains the second leading cause of death for teens and young adults between the ages of 15 and 24. In 2010, there were 2,711 infant, child, and adolescent victims of firearm deaths. In that year, 84 percent of homicide victims between the ages of 10 and 19 were killed with a firearm, and 40 percent of youths who committed suicide between the ages 15 and 19 did so with a gun (CDC, 2013a). 1

There is no one developmental trajectory that specifically leads to gun violence. However, prevention efforts guided by research on developmental risk can reduce the likelihood that firearms will be introduced into community and family conflicts or criminal activity. Prevention efforts can also reduce the relatively rare occasions when severe mental illness contributes to homicide or the more common circumstances when depression or other mental illness contributes to suicide.

Reducing incidents of gun violence arising from criminal misconduct or suicide is an important goal of broader primary and secondary prevention and intervention strategies. Such strategies must also attend to redirecting developmental antecedents and larger sociocultural processes that contribute to gun violence and gun-related deaths.

1 The 2010 data shown here are available online .

Eric Mankowski, PhD

Any account of gun violence in the United States must consider both why males are the perpetrators of the vast majority of gun violence and why the vast majority of males never perpetrate gun violence. An account that explains both phenomena focuses, in part, on how boys and men learn to demonstrate and achieve manhood through violence, as well as the differences in opportunities to demonstrate manhood among diverse groups of males. Although evidence exists for human biological and social-environmental systems interacting and contributing to aggressive and violent behavior, this review focuses on the sociocultural evidence that explains males’ higher rates of gun violence.

Reducing the propensity for some males to engage in violence will involve both social and cultural change. Hence, this section reviews existing research on the relationships between sex, gender (i.e., masculinity), and the perpetration and victimization of gun violence in the United States. The intersection of gender, race/ethnicity, and economic disadvantage is also considered in explaining the rates of gun violence across diverse communities. Finally, the relationships between masculinity, gender socialization, and gun violence are analyzed to identify gender-related risk factors for gun violence that can be targeted for prevention strategies and social policy.

Sex Differences in Gun Violence

Prevalence and Risk Men represent more than 90 percent of the perpetrators of homicide in the United States and are also the victims of the large majority (78 percent) of that violence (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2008; Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI], 2007). Homicide by gun is the leading cause of death among Black youth, the second leading cause of death among all male youth, and the second or third leading cause of death among female youth (depending on the specific age group) (e.g., Miniño, 2010; Webster, Whitehill, Vernick, & Curriero, 2012). In addition, roughly four times as many youths visit hospitals for gun-induced wounds as are killed each year (CDC, 2013a).

Even more common than homicide, suicide is another leading cause of death in the United States, and most suicides are completed with a firearm. Males complete the large majority of suicides; depending on the age group, roughly four to six times as many males as females kill themselves with firearms (CDC, 2013a). Among youth, suicide ranks especially high as a cause of death. It is the third leading cause of death of 15–24-year-olds and the sixth leading cause of death for 5–14-year-olds. However, the rate of suicide and firearm suicide gradually increases over the lifespan. In addition to gender and age differences in prevalence, sizable differences also exist among ethnic groups. Firearm suicide generally is at least twice as high among Whites than among Blacks and other racial groups from 1980 to 2010 (CDC, 2013a), and White males over the age of 65 have rates that far exceed all other major groups.

Perpetrator–Victim Relationship and Location The prevalence of gun violence strongly depends not only on the sex of the offender but also on the offender’s relationship to the victim and the location of the violence (Sorenson, 2006). Both men and women are more likely to be killed with firearms by someone they know than by a stranger. Specifically, men are most likely to be killed in a public place by an acquaintance, whereas women are most likely to be killed in the home by a current or former spouse or dating partner (i.e., “intimate partner”). Women compared with men are especially likely to be killed by a firearm used by an intimate partner.

Women are killed by current or former intimate partners four to five times more often than men (Campbell, Glass, Sharps, Laughon, & Bloom, 2007), including by firearm. These sex differences in victimization do not appear to hold in the limited data available on same-sex intimate partner homicide; it is more common for men to kill their male partners than for women to kill their female partners (Campbell et al., 2007). Notably, these sex differences in gun violence, as a function of the type of perpetrator–victim relationships, are also found in nonfatal gun violence when emergency room visits are examined (Wiebe, 2003).

A disproportionate number of gun homicides occur in urban areas. Conversely, a disproportionate number of firearm suicides occur in rural (compared with urban) areas (Branas, Nance, Elliott, Richmond, & Schwab, 2004). Although they are highly publicized, less than 2 percent of the homicides of children occur in schools (Borum, Cornell, Modzeleski, & Jimerson, 2010; CDC, 2008, 2013b). There are even fewer “random” or “mass” school shootings in which multiple victims are killed at the same time.

Gun Access and Possession A person must own or obtain a gun to be able to commit gun violence. Research shows that there are sex differences in access to and carrying a gun. Males are roughly two to four times as likely as females to have access to a gun in the home or to possess a gun (Swahn, Hamming, & Ikeda, 2002; Vaughn et al., 2012). In turn, gun carrying is a key risk factor for gun violence perpetration and victimization. For example, gun carrying is associated with dating violence victimization among adolescents, with boys more likely to be victimized than girls (Yan, Howard, Beck, Shattuck, & Hallmark-Kerr, 2010).

Conclusions based on sex differences in access to guns should be drawn with some caution, given that there also appear to be sex differences in the reporting of guns in the home. Men report more guns in the home than do women from the same household (e.g., Ludwig, Cook, & Smith, 1998; Sorenson & Cook, 2008), a sex difference that appears to stem specifically from the substantially higher level of contact with and experience in handling and using guns among boys than girls in the same household (Cook & Sorenson, 2006). Nonetheless, the presence of guns in the home remains predictive of gun violence.

Gender and Gun Violence

Robust sex and race differences in firearm violence have been established. Examined next is how the socialization of men as well as differences in living conditions and opportunities among diverse groups of boys and men help explain why these differences occur.

Making Gender Visible in the Problem of Gun Violence Gender remains largely invisible in research and media accounts of gun violence. In particular, gender is not used to explain the problem of “school shootings,” despite the fact that almost every shooting is perpetrated by a young male. Newspaper headlines and articles describe “school shooters,” “violent adolescents,” and so forth, but rarely call attention to the fact that nearly all such incidents are perpetrated by boys and young men. Studies of risk factors for school shootings may refer accurately to the perpetrators generally as “boys” but largely fail to analyze gender (e.g., Verlinden, Hersen, & Thomas, 2000).

The large sex differences in gun violence should not be overlooked simply because the vast majority of boys and men do not perpetrate gun violence or excused as “boys will be boys.” The size of sex differences in the prevalence of gun violence differs substantially within regions of the United States (Kaplan & Geling, 1998) and across countries (e.g., Ahn, Park, Ha, Choi, & Hong, 2012), which further suggests that gender differences in sociocultural environments are needed to explain sex differences in gun violence.

Masculinity, Power, and Guns Status as a “man” is achieved by the display of stereotypically masculine characteristics, without which one’s manhood is contested. Although the particular characteristics defining manhood and the markers of them can vary across subcultural contexts (Connell, 1995), masculinity has, historically, generally been defined by aggressive and risk-taking behavior, emotional restrictiveness (particularly the vulnerable emotions of fear and sadness, and excepting anger), heterosexuality, and successful competition (Brannon, 1976; Kimmel, 1994; O’Neil, 1981). Such normative characteristics of traditional masculinity are in turn directly related to numerous factors that are associated with gun violence. For example, risk taking is associated with adolescent males’ possession of and access to guns (Vittes & Sorenson, 2006).

Social expectations and norms, supported by social and organizational systems and practices, privilege boys who reject or avoid in themselves anything stereotypically feminine, act tough and aggressive, suppress emotions (other than anger), distance themselves emotionally and physically from other men, and strive competitively for power. Men of color, poor men, gay men, and men from other marginalized groups differ substantially in their access to opportunities to fulfill these manhood ideals and expectations in socially accepted ways. For example, men with less formal educational and economic opportunity, who in the United States are disproportionately Black and Latino, cannot fulfill expectations to be successful breadwinners in socially acceptable ways (e.g., paid, legal employment) as easily as White men, and gay men have less ability to demonstrate normative heterosexual masculinity where they cannot legally marry or have children.

At the same time, higher levels of some forms of violence victimization and perpetration (including suicide) are found among these disadvantaged groups. For example, gay youth are more likely than heterosexual males to commit suicide, and African American male youth are disproportionately the victims of gun violence. Such structural discrimination can be seen reflected in implicit cognitive biases against these group members. Virtual simulations of high-threat incidents, such as those used to train police officers, reliably demonstrate a “shooter bias” in which actors are more likely to shoot Black male targets than those from other race-gender groups (i.e., Black women, White men, and White women) (Plant, Goplen, & Kunstman, 2011).

Even to the extent that it is achieved, manhood status is theorized as precarious, needing to be protected and defended through aggression and violence, including gun violence, in order to avoid victimization from (mostly) male peers (Connell, 1995). Paradoxically, as in all competition, the more convincingly manhood is achieved, the more vulnerable it becomes to challenges or threats and thus requires further defending, often with increasing levels and displays of toughness and violence. The dynamic of these expectations of manhood and their enforcement is like a tight box (Kivel, 1998). Boys and men are either trapped inside this box or, in violating the expectations by stepping out of the box, risk being targeted by threats, bullying, and other forms of violence.

Adherence to stereotypic masculinity, in turn, is commonly associated with stress and conflict, poor health, poor coping and relationship quality, and violence (Courtenay 2000; Hong, 2000). Men’s gender role stress and conflict are directly associated with various forms of interpersonal aggression and violence, including the perpetration of intimate partner violence and suicide (Feder, Levant, & Dean, 2010; Moore & Stuart, 2005; O’Neil, 2008). Men with more restricted emotionality and more restricted affection with other men are more likely to be aggressive, coercive, or violent (O’Neil, 2008). These dimensions of masculinity also are related to a number of other harmful behaviors that are, in turn, associated directly with gun violence and other forms of aggression (see O’Neil, 2008, for a review). For example, the effect of alcohol consumption on intimate partner violence is greater among men than women (Moore, Elkins, McNulty, Kivisto, & Handsel, 2011), and alcohol consumption may be associated with lethal male-to-male violence at least partly because it is associated with carrying a gun (Phillips, Matusko, & Tomasovic, 2007).

In addition, accumulating research evidence indicates a relationship between gender and many of the factors that are associated with suicide (e.g., substance abuse, unemployment; Payne, Swami, & Stanistreet, 2008). Beliefs in traditional masculinity are related to suicidal thoughts, although differently across age cohorts (Hunt, Sweeting, Keoghan, & Platt, 2006). Men’s historic role as economic providers in heterosexual families typically ends with their retirement from the workforce. Suicide rates, including firearm suicide, increase dramatically at precisely this point in the life course (i.e., age 65 and older), whereas they decrease among women this age. The increase in suicide rates among White men at age 65 and older does not occur among Black men, who as a group have much higher levels of unemployment throughout their lives and consequently may not experience the same sense of loss of meaning or entitlement. Male firearm suicide also increases dramatically in adolescence and early adulthood, precisely the years during which young men’s sense of manhood is developing.

Beliefs about gender and sexual orientation also help explain sex differences in fatal hate crimes involving guns. Key themes in male gender role expectations are anti-femininity (Brannon, 1976) and homophobia (Kimmel, 1994). Boys are expected to rid themselves of stereotypically feminine characteristics (e.g., “you throw like a girl,” “big boys don’t cry”). Gun violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered persons can be understood in this context. One explanation of these hate crimes is that they are perpetrated to demonstrate heterosexual masculinity to male peer group members. These homicides, compared with violent crimes in which the victim is (or is perceived to be) heterosexual, often are especially brutal and are more commonly perpetrated by groups of men rather than individual men or women. However, such homicides appear to be perpetrated less often using firearms, which suggests motives beyond a desire to kill — for example, expressing intense hatred or transferring negative affect directly onto the victim (Gruenwald, 2012).

Male role expectations for achievement of success and power, combined with restricted emotionality, may have dangerous consequences, particularly for boys who suffer major losses and need help. A majority of the males who have completed homicides at schools had trouble coping with a recent major loss. Many had also experienced bullying or other harassment (Vossekuil et al., 2002). Such characteristics cannot and should not be used to develop risk profiles of attackers because school shootings are such rare events, and so many men who share these same characteristics never will perpetrate gun violence. However, when male gender and characteristics associated with male gender are highly common among attackers, it is responsible to ask how male gender contributes to school shootings and other forms of gun violence.

In their case studies of male-perpetrated homicide-suicides at schools, Kalish and Kimmel (2010) speculated that a sense of “aggrieved entitlement” may be common among the shooters. In this view, the young men see suicide and revenge as appropriate, even expected, responses for men to perceived or actual victimization. Related findings emerged from a similar analysis of all “random” school shootings (those with multiple, nontargeted victims) from 1982 to 2001 (Kimmel & Mahler, 2003). With a small number of exceptions, the vast majority were committed by White boys (26 of 28) in suburban or rural (not urban) areas (27 of 28). Many of these boys also had experienced homophobic bullying.

Masculinity and Beliefs About Guns Sex differences in beliefs about guns may begin at an early age as a function of parental socialization and attitudes. Fathers, particularly White fathers, are more permissive than mothers of their children, particularly sons, playing with toy guns (Cheng et al., 2003). Through the socialization of gender, boys and men may come to believe that displaying a gun will enhance their masculine power. Carrying a weapon is, in fact, instrumental in fulfilling male gender role expectations. Estimates of a person’s physical size and muscularity are greater when they display a gun (or large knife) than other similarly sized and shaped objects (e.g., drill, saw), even when the person is only described and not visible. This perception persists despite no apparent correlation between actual gun ownership and size or muscularity (Fessler, Holbrook, & Snyder, 2012). Guns symbolically represent some key elements of hegemonic masculinity — power, hardness, force, aggressiveness, coldness (Connell, 1995; Stroud, 2012).

Implications for Prevention and Policy

Sex Differences in Attitudes Toward Gun Policies Policies and laws addressing the manufacture, purchase, and storage of guns have been advocated in response to the prevalence of gun violence. Perhaps reflecting their differential access to firearms and differential perpetration and victimization rates, men and women hold different attitudes about such gun control policies. Females are generally much more favorable toward gun restriction and control policies (e.g., Vittes, Sorenson, & Gilbert, 2003).

Prevention Programs Addressing Gender The foregoing analysis of the link between gender and gun violence suggests the potential value of addressing gender in efforts to define the problem of gun violence and develop preventive responses. Preliminary evidence suggests that correcting and changing perceptions among men of social norms regarding beliefs about behaviors and characteristics that are associated with stereotypic masculinity may reduce the prevalence of intimate partner and sexual violence (Fabiano, Perkins, Berkowitz, Linkenbach, & Stark, 2003; Neighbors et al., 2010). However, the effect of such interventions in specifically reducing gun violence remains to be tested. The skills and knowledge of psychologists are needed to develop and evaluate programs and settings in schools, workplaces, prisons, neighborhoods, clinics, and other relevant contexts that aim to change gendered expectations for males that emphasize self-sufficiency, toughness, and violence, including gun violence.

Robert Kinscherff, PhD, JD; Arthur C. Evans Jr., PhD; Marisa R. Randazzo, PhD; and Dewey Cornell, PhD

A natural starting point for the prevention of gun violence is to identify individuals who are at risk for violence and in need of assistance. Efforts focused on at-risk individuals are considered secondary prevention because they are distinguished from primary or universal prevention efforts that address the general population. Secondary prevention strategies for gun violence can include such actions as providing prompt mental health treatment for an acutely depressed and suicidal person or conducting a threat assessment of a person who has threatened gun violence against a spouse or work supervisor.

To be effective, strategies to prevent gun violence should be tailored to different kinds of violence. One example is the distinction between acts of impulsive violence (i.e., violence carried out in the heat of the moment, such as an argument that escalates into an assault) and acts of targeted or predatory violence (i.e., acts of violence that are planned in advance of the attack and directed toward an identified target). The incidents of mass casualty gun violence that have garnered worldwide media attention, such as the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., at a movie theater Aurora, Colo., at the Fort Hood military base, and at a political rally in a shopping center in Tucson, Ariz., are all examples of targeted or predatory violence. Distinguishing between impulsive violence, targeted/predatory violence, and other types of violence is important because they are associated with different risk factors and require different prevention strategies.

Predicting and Preventing Impulsive Gun Violence

Research on impulsive violence has enabled scientists to develop moderately accurate predictive models that can identify individuals who are more likely than other persons to engage in this form of violence. These models cannot determine with certainty whether a particular person will engage in violence — just whether a person is at greater likelihood of doing so. This approach is known as a violence risk assessment or clinical assessment of dangerousness . A violence risk assessment is conducted by a licensed mental health professional who has specific training in this area. The process generally involves comparing the person in question with known base rates for those of the same age/gender who have committed impulsive violence and then determining whether the person in question has individual risk factors that would increase that person’s likelihood of engaging in impulsive violence. In addition, the process involves examining individual protective factors that would decrease the person’s overall likelihood of engaging in impulsive violence. Research that has identified risk and protective factors for impulsive violence is limited in that more research has been conducted on men than women and on incarcerated or institutionalized individuals than on those in the general population. Nevertheless, this approach can be effective for determining someone’s relative likelihood of engaging in impulsive violence.

Some risk factors for impulsive violence are static — for example, race and age — and cannot be changed. But those factors that are dynamic — for example, unmet mental health needs for conditions linked with violence to self (such as depression) or others (such as paranoia), lack of mental health care, abuse of alcohol — are more amenable to intervention and treatment that can reduce the risk for gun violence. Secondary prevention strategies to prevent impulsive gun violence can include having a trained psychologist or other mental health professional treat the person’s acute mental health needs or substance abuse needs. There must be a vigorous and coordinated response to persons whose histories include acts of violence, threatened or actual use of weapons, and substance abuse, particularly if they have access to a gun. This response should include a violence risk assessment by well-trained professionals and referral for any indicated mental health treatment, counseling and mediation services, or other forms of intervention that can reduce the risk of violence.

Youths and young adults who are experiencing an emerging psychosis should be referred for prompt assessment by mental health professionals with sufficient clinical expertise with psychotic disorders to craft a clinical intervention plan that includes risk management. In some cases, secondary prevention measures may include a court-ordered emergency psychiatric hospitalization where a person can receive a psychiatric evaluation and begin treatment. Criteria for allowing such involuntary evaluations vary by state but typically can occur only when someone is experiencing symptoms of a serious mental illness and, as a result, potentially poses a significant danger to self or others. There is an urgent need to improve the effectiveness of emergency commitment procedures because of concerns that they do not provide sufficient services and follow-up care.

Predicting and Preventing Targeted or Predatory Gun Violence

Acts of targeted or predatory violence directed at multiple victims, including crimes sometimes referred to as rampage shootings and mass shootings, 2 occur far less often in the United States than do acts of impulsive violence (although targeted violence garners far more media attention). Acts of targeted violence have not been subject to study that has developed statistical models like those used for estimating a person’s likelihood of impulsive violence. Although it seems appealing to develop checklists of warning signs to construct a profile of individuals who commit these kinds of crimes, this effort, sometimes described as psychological profiling, has not been successful. Research has not identified an effective or useful psychological profile of those who would engage in multiple casualty gun violence. Moreover, efforts to use a checklist profile to identify these individuals fail in part because the characteristics used in these profiles are too general to be of practical value; such characteristics are also shared by many nonviolent individuals.

Because of the limitations of a profiling approach, practitioners have developed the behavioral threat assessment model as an alternative means of identifying individuals who are threatening, planning, or preparing to commit targeted violence. Behavioral threat assessment also emphasizes the need for interventions to prevent violence or harm when a threat has been identified, so it represents a more comprehensive approach to violence prevention. The behavioral threat assessment model is an empirically based approach that was developed largely by the U.S. Secret Service to evaluate threats to the president and other public figures and has since been adapted by the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Department of Education (Fein et al., 2002; Vossekuil et al., 2002) and others (Cornell, Allen, & Fan, 2012) for use in schools, colleges and universities, workplaces, and the U.S. military. Threat assessment teams are typically multidisciplinary teams that are trained to identify potentially threatening persons and situations. They gather and analyze additional information, make an informed assessment of whether the person is on a pathway to violence — that is, determine whether the person poses a threat of interpersonal violence or self-harm — and if so, take steps to intervene, address any underlying problem or treatment need, and reduce the risk for violence.

Behavioral threat assessment is seen as the emerging standard of care for preventing targeted violence in schools, colleges, and workplaces, as well as against government officials and other public figures. The behavioral threat assessment approach is the model currently used by the U.S. Secret Service to prevent violence to the U.S. president and other public officials, by the U.S. Capitol Police to prevent violence to members of Congress, by the U.S. State Department to prevent violence to dignitaries visiting the United States, and by the U.S. Marshals Service to prevent violence to federal judges (see Fein & Vossekuil, 1998). The behavioral threat assessment model also is recommended in two American national standards: one for higher education institutions (which recommends that all colleges and universities operate behavioral threat assessment teams; see ASME-Innovative Technologies Institute, 2010) and one for workplaces (which recommend s similar teams to prevent workplace violence; see ASIS International and Society for Human Resource Management, 2011). In addition, a comprehensive review conducted by a U.S. Department of Defense (2010) task force following the Fort Hood shooting concluded that threat assessment teams or threat management units (i.e., teams trained in behavioral threat assessment and management procedures) are the most effective tool currently available to prevent workplace violence or insider threats like the attack at Fort Hood.

Empirical research on acts of targeted violence has shown that many of those attacks were carried out by individuals motivated by personal problems who were at a point of desperation. In their troubled state of mind, these individuals saw no viable solution to their problems and could envision no future. The behavioral threat assessment model is used not only to determine whether a person is planning a violent attack but also to identify personal or situational problems that could be addressed to alleviate desperation and restore hope. In many cases, this includes referring the person to mental health services and other sources of support. In some of these cases, psychiatric hospitalization may be needed to address despondence and suicidality. Nonpsychiatric resources also can help alleviate the individual’s problems or concerns. Resources such as conflict resolution, credit counseling, job placement assistance, academic accommodations, veterans’ services, pastoral counseling, and disability services all can help address personal problems and reduce desperation. When the underlying personal problems are alleviated, people who may have posed a threat of violence to others no longer see violence as their best or only option.

Predicting and Preventing Violence by Those With Acute Mental Illness

When treating a person with acute or severe mental illness, mental health professionals may encounter situations in which they need to determine whether their patient (or client) is at risk for violence. Typically, they would conduct a violence risk assessment if the clinician’s concern is about risk for impulsive violence, as discussed previously. Clinicians also can conduct — or work with a team to help conduct — a threat assessment if their concern involves targeted violence. The available research suggests that mental health professionals should be concerned when a person with acute mental illness makes an explicit threat to harm someone or is troubled by delusions or hallucinations that encourage violence, but even in these situations, violence is far from certain. Although neither a violence risk assessment nor a threat assessment can yield a precise prediction of someone’s likelihood of violence, it can identify high-risk situations and guide efforts to reduce risk. It is important to emphasize that prevention does not require prediction; interventions to reduce risk can be beneficial even if it is not possible to determine who would or would not have committed a violent act.

When their patients (or clients) pose a risk of violence to others, mental health professionals have a legal and ethical obligation to take appropriate action to protect potential victims of violence. This obligation is not easily carried out for several reasons. First, mental health professionals have only a modest ability to predict violence, even when assisted by research-validated instruments. Mental health professionals who are concerned that a patient is at high risk for violence may be unable to convince their patient to accept hospitalization or some other change in treatment. They can seek involuntary hospitalization or treatment, but civil commitment laws (that vary from state to state) generally require convincing evidence that a person is imminently dangerous to self or others. There is considerable debate about the need to reform civil commitment laws in a manner that both protects individual liberties and provides necessary protection for society.

There is no guarantee that voluntary or involuntary treatment of a potentially dangerous individual will be effective in reducing violence risk, especially when the risk for violence does not arise from a mental illness but instead from intense desperation resulting from highly emotionally distressing circumstances or from antisocial orientation and proclivities for criminal misconduct. When individuals with prior histories of violence are released from treatment facilities, they typically need continued treatment and monitoring for potential violence until they stabilize in community settings. Jurisdictions vary widely in the resources available to achieve stability in the community and in the legal ability to impose monitoring or clinical care on persons who decline voluntary services.

Furthermore, if unable to obtain civil commitment to a protective setting, mental health professionals must consider other protective actions permitted in their jurisdictions, which may include warning potential victims that they are in danger or alerting local law enforcement, family members, employers, or others. Whether their particular jurisdiction mandates a response to “warn or protect” potential victims or leaves this decision to the discretion of the clinician, mental health professionals are often reluctant to take such actions because they are concerned that doing so might damage the therapeutic relationship with their patient and drive patients from treatment or otherwise render effective treatment impossible.

Another post-hospitalization strategy is to prohibit persons with mental illness from acquiring a firearm. The Gun Control Act of 1968 prohibited persons from purchasing a firearm if they had been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric inpatient unit. The Brady Handgun Violence Act (1994), known as the Brady Law, began the process of background checks to identify individuals who might attempt to purchase a firearm despite prohibitions. There is some evidence that rates of gun violence are reduced when these procedures are adequately implemented, but research, consistent implementation, and refinement of these procedures are needed (Webster & Vernick, 2013a).

Predicting and Preventing Gun-Based Suicide

Suicide accounts for approximately 61 percent of all firearm fatalities in the United States — 19,393 of the 31,672 firearm deaths reported by the CDC for 2010 (Murphy, Xu, & Kochanek, 2013). When there is concern that a person may be suicidal, mental health professionals can conduct suicide screenings and should rely on structured assessment tools to assess that person’s risk to self. Behavioral threat assessment also may be indicated in such situations if the potentially suicidal individual may also pose a threat to others.

More than half of suicides are accomplished by firearms and most commonly with a firearm from the household (Miller, Azrael, Hepburn, Hemenway, & Lippmann, 2006). More than 90 percent of persons who commit suicide had some combination of symptoms of depression, symptoms of other mental disorders, and/or substance abuse (Moscicki, 2001). Ironically, although depression is the condition most closely associated with attempted or completed suicide, it is also less likely than schizophrenia or other disorders to prompt an involuntary civil commitment or other legal triggers that can prevent some persons with mental illness from possessing firearms. As in behavioral threat assessment, suicide risk may be reduced through identifying and providing support in solving the problems that are driving a person to consider suicide. In many cases the person may need a combination of psychological treatment and psychiatric medication.

Tragic shootings like the ones at Sandy Hook Elementary School and the movie theater in Aurora, Colo., spark intense debate as to whether specific gun control policies would significantly diminish the number of mass shooting incidents. This debate includes whether or how to restrict access to firearms, especially with regard to persons with some mental illnesses. Another line of debate concerns whether to limit access to certain types of firearms (e.g., reducing access to high-capacity magazines). Empirical evidence documents the efficacy of some firearms restrictions, but because the restrictions often are not well implemented and have serious limitations, it is difficult to conduct the kind of rigorous research needed to fairly evaluate their potential for reducing gun violence.

The often-debated Brady Law (1994) does not consistently prevent persons with mental illness from acquiring a firearm. The prohibition applies only to persons with involuntary commitments and omits both persons with voluntary admissions and those with no history of inpatient hospitalization. The law does not prevent a person with a history of involuntary commitment from obtaining a previously owned firearm or one possessed by a friend or relative. Additional problems with implementing the Brady Law include incomplete records of involuntary commitments, background checks limited to purchases from licensed gun dealers, and exceptions from background checks for firearms purchased during gun shows.

Despite these limitations and gaps, there is some scientific evidence that background checks reduce the rate of violent gun crimes by persons whose mental health records disqualify them from legally obtaining a firearm. A study of one state (Connecticut) found that the risk of violent criminal offending among persons with a history of involuntary psychiatric commitment declined significantly after the state began reporting these individuals to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (Swanson et al., 2013). This study supports the value of additional research to investigate strategies for limiting access to firearms by persons with serious mental illness.

In contrast, access to appropriate mental health treatment can work to reduce violence at the individual level. For example, one major finding of the MacArthur Risk Assessment study (Monahan et al., 2001) was that getting continued mental health treatment in the community after release from a psychiatric hospitalization reduced the number of violent acts by those who had been hospitalized. In other studies, outpatient mental health services, including mandated services, have been effective in preventing or reducing violent and harmful behavior (e.g., New York State Office of Mental Health, 2005; N.Y. Mental Hygiene Law [Kendra’s Law], 1999; O’Keefe, Potenza, & Mueser, 1997; Swanson et al., 2000).

There is abundant scientific research demonstrating the effectiveness of treatment for persons with severe mental illness such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. However, there are social, economic, and legal barriers to treatment. First, there is a persistent social stigma associated with mental illness that deters individuals from seeking treatment for themselves or for family members. Public education to increase understanding of and support for persons with serious mental illness and to encourage access to treatment is needed.

Second, mental health treatment, especially inpatient hospitalization, is expensive, and persons with mental illness often cannot access this level of care or afford it. Commercial insurers often have limitations on hospital care or do not cover intensive services that are alternatives to inpatient admission. Public sector facilities such as community mental health centers and state-operated psychiatric hospitals have experienced many years of shrinking government support; demand for their services exceeds their capacity. Many mental health providers limit their services to the most acute cases and cannot extend services after the immediate crisis has resolved.

Third, there are complex legal barriers to the provision of mental health services when an individual does not desire treatment or does not believe he or she is in need of treatment. A severe mental illness can impair an individual’s understanding of his or her condition and need for treatment, but a person with mental illness may make a rational decision to refuse treatment that he or she understandably regards as ineffective, aversive, or undesirable for some reason (e.g., psychiatric medications can produce unpleasant side effects and hospitalization can be a stressful experience).

When an individual refuses to seek treatment, it may be difficult to determine whether this decision is rational or irrational. To protect individual liberties, laws throughout the United States permit involuntary treatment only under stringent conditions, such as when an individual is determined to be imminently dangerous to self or others due to a mental illness. People who refuse treatment but are not judged to be imminently dangerous (a difficult and ambiguous standard) fall into a “gray zone” (Evans, 2013). Some individuals with serious mental illness pose a danger to self or others that is not imminent, and often it is not possible to monitor them adequately or determine precisely when they become dangerous and should be hospitalized on an involuntary basis. In other situations, the primary risk posed by the individual does not arise from mental illness but from his or her willingness to engage in criminal misconduct for personal gain.

Furthermore, when a person is committed to a psychiatric hospital on an involuntary basis, treatment is limited in scope. Once the person is no longer regarded as imminently dangerous (the criteria differ across states), he or she must be released from treatment even if not fully recovered; that person may be vulnerable to relapse into a dangerous state. In some cases of mass shootings, persons who committed the shooting were known to have a serious mental illness, but authorities could not require treatment when it was needed. In other cases, authorities were not aware of an individual’s mental illness before the attempted or actual mass shooting incident.

A related problem is that the onset or recurrence of serious mental illness can be difficult to detect. Symptoms of mental illness may emerge slowly, often in late adolescence or early adulthood, and may not be readily apparent to family members and friends. A person hearing voices or experiencing paranoid delusions may hide these symptoms and simply seem preoccupied or distressed but not seriously ill. A person who has been treated successfully for a serious mental illness may experience a relapse that is not immediately recognized. There is a great need for public education about the onset of serious mental illness, recognition of the symptoms of mental illness, and increased emphasis on the importance of seeking prompt treatment.

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2 The FBI (n.d.) defines mass murder as incidents that occur in one location (or in closely related locations during a single attack) and that result in four or more casualties. Mass murder shootings are much less common than other types of gun homicides. They are also not a new phenomenon. Historically, most mass murder shootings occurred within families or in criminal activities such as gang activity and robberies. Rampage killings is a term used to describe some mass murders that involve attacks on victims in unprotected settings (such as schools and colleges, workplaces, places of worship) and public places (such as theaters, malls, restaurants, public gatherings). However, these shootings are often planned well in advance and carried out in a methodical manner, so the term rampage is a misnomer.

Ellen Scrivner, PhD, ABPP; W. Douglas Tynan, PhD, ABPP; and Dewey Cornell, PhD

Prevention of violence occurs along a continuum that begins in early childhood with programs to help parents raise healthy children and ends with efforts to identify and intervene with troubled individuals who threaten violence. A comprehensive community approach recognizes that no single program is sufficient and there are many opportunities for effective prevention. Discussion of effective prevention from a community perspective should include identification of the community being examined. Within the larger community, many stakeholders are affected by gun violence that results in a homicide, suicide, or mass shooting.

Such stakeholders include community and public safety officials, schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, mental health and public health systems, and faith-based groups. When it comes to perpetrating gun violence, however, a common thread that exists across community groups is the recognition that someone, or possibly several people, may have heard something about an individual’s thoughts and/or plans to use a gun. Where do they go with that information? How do they report it so that innocent people are not targeted or labeled unfairly — and how can their information initiate a comprehensive and effective crisis response that prevents harm to the individual of concern and the community?

To date, there is little research to help frame a comprehensive and effective prevention strategy for gun violence at the community level. One of the most authoritative reviews of the body of gun violence research comes from the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences (see Wellford, Pepper, & Petrie, 2004). In reviewing a range of criminal justice initiatives designed to reduce gun violence, such as gun courts, enhanced sentencing, and problem-based policing, Wellford et al. concluded that problem-oriented policing, also known as place-based initiatives or target policing, holds promise, particularly when applied to “hot spots” — areas in the community that have high crime rates. They included studies on programs such as the Boston Gun Project (see Kennedy, Braga, & Piehl, 2001), more commonly known as Operation Ceasefire, in their review and concluded that although many of these programs may have reduced youth homicides, there is only modest evidence to suggest that they effectively lowered rates of crime and violence, given the confounding factors that influence those rates and are difficult to control. In other words, the variability in the roles of police, prosecutors, and the community creates complex interactions that can confound the levels of intervention and affect sustainability.

Wellford et al.’s (2004) conclusions were supported by the findings of the 2011 Firearms and Violence Research Working Group (National Institute of Justice, 2011), which also questioned whether rigorous evaluations are possible given the reliability and validity of the data. Wellford et al. advocated for continued research and development of models that include collaboration between police and community partners and for examination of different evaluation methodologies.

There are varied prevention models that address community issues. When it comes to exploring models that specifically address preventing the recent episodes of gun violence that have captured the nation’s attention, however, the inevitable conclusion is that there is a need to develop a new model that would bring community stakeholders together in a collaborative, problem-solving mode, with a goal of preventing individuals from engaging in gun violence, whether directed at others or self-inflicted. This model would go beyond a single activity and would blend several strategies as building blocks to form a workable systemic approach. It would require that community service systems break their tendencies to operate in silos and take advantage of the different skill sets already available in the community — for example:

• Police are trained in crisis intervention skills with a primary focus on responding to special populations such as those with mental illness.
• Community members are trained in skilled interventions such as Emotional CPR  and Mental Health First Aid — consumer-based initiatives that use neighbor-to-neighbor approaches that direct people in need of care to appropriate mental health treatment.
• School resource officers are trained to show a proactive presence in schools.

Each group may provide a solution to a piece of the problem, but there is nothing connecting the broad range of activities to the type of collaborative system needed to implement a comprehensive, community-based strategy to prevent gun violence. From a policy and practice perspective, no one skill set or one agency can provide the complete answer when it comes to developing a prevention methodology. However, some models developed through the community policing reform movement may be relevant because they are generally acknowledged to have been useful in reducing violence against women and domestic violence and in responding to children exposed to violence. These community policing models involve collaborative problem solving as a way to safeguard the community as opposed to relying only on arrest procedures. Moreover, they engage the community in organized joint efforts to produce public safety (Peak, 2013).

Another initiative, Project Safe Neighborhoods ( PSN ), is also relevant. PSN, a nationwide program that began in 2001 and was designed specifically to reduce gun violence, has some similarity to the community policing model. PSN involved the 94 U.S. attorneys in cities across the country in a prominent leadership role, ensured flexibility across jurisdictions, and required cross-agency buy-in, though there seems to have been less formalized involvement with mental health services. Nevertheless, it used a problem-solving approach that was aimed at getting guns off the streets, and the results of varied outcome assessments demonstrate that it was successful in reducing gun violence, particularly when the initiatives were tailored to the gun violence needs of specific communities (McGarrell et al., 2009).

A common approach used by PSN involved engaging the community to establish appropriate stakeholder partnerships, formulating strategic planning on the basis of identification and measurement of the community problem, training those involved in PSN, providing outreach through nationwide public service announcements, and ensuring accountability through various reporting mechanisms. The PSN problem-solving steps, with some adaptations, could provide a useful strategy for initiating collaborative problem solving with relevant community stakeholders in the interest of reducing gun violence and victimization through prevention.

The models discussed here illustrate how community engagement and collaboration helped break new ground in response to identified criminal justice problems, but they could be strengthened considerably by incorporating the involvement of professional psychology. The need for collaboration was again highlighted at a Critical Issues in Policing meeting (Police Executive Research Forum, 2012) as part of a discussion on connecting agency silos by building bridges across systems. Because police and mental health workers often respond to the same people, there is a need for collaboration on the best way to do this without compromising their roles. This emphasis takes the discussion beyond the student/school focus and expands it to include the use of crisis intervention teams (CIT) and community advocacy groups as additional resources for achieving the goal of preventing violence in the community.

The CIT model was another result of community policing reform that brought police and mental health services together to provide a more effective response to the needs of special populations, particularly mental health-related cases. Developed in Memphis in 1988 but now deployed in many communities across the country, the CIT model trains CIT officers to deescalate situations involving people in crises and to use jail diversion options, if available, rather than arrests. Although research on the effectiveness of CITs is generally limited to outcome studies in select cities, the model continues to gain prominence. In fact, the National Alliance on Mental Illness ( NAMI ) has established a NAMI CIT Center and is promoting the expansion of CIT nationwide. Studies by Borum (2000), Steadman, Deane, Borum, and Morrissey (2000), and Teller, Munetz, Gil, and Ritter (2006) have illustrated that high-risk encounters between individuals with mental illness and police can be substantially improved through CIT training, particularly when there are options such as drop-off centers, use of diversion techniques, and collaborations between law enforcement, mental health, and family members. Each plays a significant role in ensuring that city or county jails do not become de facto institutions for those in mental health crises.

Crisis intervention teams were also a major focus of a 2010 policy summit (International Association of Chiefs of Police [IACP], 2012). The summit, hosted by SAMHSA, the Bureau of Justice Assistance, and IACP, produced a 23-item action agenda. Although the summit focused on decriminalizing the response to persons with mental illness and was not directed specifically at dealing with people who perpetrate gun violence, some of their recommendations did apply. The central theme of the agenda encouraged law enforcement and mental health service systems to engage in mutually respectful working relationships, collaborate across partner agencies, and establish local multidisciplinary advisory groups. These partnerships would develop policy, protocols, and guidelines for informing law enforcement encounters with persons with mental illness who are in crisis, including a protocol that would enable agencies to share essential information about those individuals and whether the nature of the crisis could provoke violent behavior. They further recommended that these types of protocols be established and maintained by the multidisciplinary advisory group and that training be provided in the community to sensitize community members to signs of potential danger and how to intervene in a systematic way.

A Police Foundation (2013) roundtable on gun violence and mental health reported that some police departments have reached out to communities and offered safe storage of firearms when community members have concern about a family member’s access to firearms in the home. As a service to the community, the police would offer to keep guns secured in accessible community locations until the threat has subsided and the community member requests the return. The police would also confer with mental health practitioners regarding a designated family or community member on an as-needed basis. This strategy is consistent with a community threat assessment approach in which law enforcement authorities engage proactively with the community to reduce the risk of violence when an individual poses a risk.

Gun Violence in Schools

Gun violence in schools has been a national concern for more than two decades. Although school shootings are highly traumatic events and have brought school safety to the forefront of public attention, schools are very safe environments compared with other community settings (Borum et al., 2010). Less than 2 percent of homicides of school-aged children occur in schools. Over a 20-year period, there have been approximately 16 shooting deaths in U.S. schools each year (Fox & Burstein, 2010), compared with approximately 32,000 shooting deaths annually in the nation as a whole (Hoyert & Xu, 2012).

The Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994 made federal education funding contingent upon states requiring schools to expel for at least one year any student found with a firearm at school. This mandate strengthened the emerging philosophy of zero tolerance as a school disciplinary policy. According to the APA Zero Tolerance Task Force (2008), this policy was predicated on faulty assumptions that removing disobedient students would motivate them to improve their behavior, deter misbehavior by other students, and generate safer school conditions. The task force found no scientific evidence to support these assumptions and, on the contrary, concluded that the practice of school suspension had negative effects on students and a disproportionately negative impact on students of color and students with disabilities.

After the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School, both the FBI (O’Toole, 2000) and the U.S. Secret Service (Vossekuil et al., 2002) conducted studies of school shootings and concluded that schools should not rely on student profiling or checklists of warning signs to identify potentially violent students. They cautioned that school shootings were statistically too rare to predict with accuracy and that the characteristics associated with student shooters lacked specificity, which means that numerous nonviolent students would be misidentified as dangerous. Both law enforcement agencies recommended that schools adopt a behavioral threat assessment approach, which, as noted earlier, involves assessment of students who threaten violence or engage in threatening behavior and then individualized interventions to resolve any problem or conflict that underlies the threat. One of the promising features of threat assessment is that it provides schools with a policy alternative to zero tolerance. Many schools across the nation have adopted threat assessment practices. Controlled studies of the "Virginia Student Threat Assessment Guidelines" have shown that school-based threat assessment teams are able to resolve student threats safely and efficiently and to reduce school suspension rates (Cornell et al., 2012; Cornell, Gregory, & Fan, 2011; Cornell, Sheras, Gregory, & Fan, 2009).

The Role of Health and Mental Health Providers in Gun Violence Prevention

The health care system is an important point of contact for families regarding the issue of gun safety. Physicians’ counseling of individuals and families about firearm safety has in some cases proven to be an effective prevention measure and is consistent with other health counseling about safety. According to the 2012 policy statement of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP):

The AAP supports the education of physicians and other professionals interested in understanding the effects of firearms and how to reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with their use. HHS should establish a program to support gun safety training and counseling programs among physicians and other medical professionals. The program should also provide medical and community resources for families exposed to violence.

The AAP’s Bright Futures practice guide urges pediatricians to counsel parents who possess guns that storing guns safely and preventing access to guns reduce injury by as much as 70 percent and that the presence of a gun in the home increases the risk for suicide among adolescents. A randomized controlled trial indicates that health care provider counseling, when linked with the distribution of cable locks, has been demonstrated to increase safer home storage of firearms (Barkin et al., 2008). The removal of guns or the restriction of access should be reinforced for children and adolescents with mood disorders, substance abuse (including alcohol), or a history of suicide attempts (Grossman et al., 2005). Research is needed to identify the best ways to avoid unintended consequences while achieving intended outcomes.

In recent years, legal and legislative challenges have emerged that test the ability of physicians and other medical professionals to provide guidance on firearms. For example, in 2011 the state of Florida enacted the Firearm Owners’ Privacy Act, which prevented physicians from providing such counsel under threat of financial penalty and potential loss of licensure. The law has been permanently blocked from implementation by a U.S. district court. Similar policies have been introduced in six other states: Alabama, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia. The fundamental right of all health and mental health care providers to provide counseling to individuals and families must be protected to mitigate risk of injury to people where they live, work, and play.

It is apparent that long before the events at Sandy Hook Elementary School, many public health and public safety practitioners were seeking strategies to improve responses to violence in their communities and have experienced some success through problem-solving projects such as PSN and CIT. Yet there is still a need to rigorously evaluate and improve these efforts. In the meantime, basic safety precautions must be emphasized to parents by professionals in health, education, and mental health.

Public health messaging campaigns around safe storage of firearms are needed. The practice of keeping firearms stored and locked must be encouraged, and the habit of keeping loaded, unlocked weapons available should be recognized as dangerous and rendered socially unacceptable. To keep children and families safe, good safety habits have to become the only socially acceptable norm.

Susan B. Sorenson, PhD, and Daniel W. Webster, ScD, MPH

The use of a gun greatly increases the odds that violence will result in a fatality. In 2010, the most recent year for which data are available, an estimated 17.1 percent of the interpersonal assaults with a gunshot wound resulted in a homicide, and 80.7 percent of the suicide attempts in which a gun was used resulted in death (CDC, 2013a). By contrast, the most common methods of assault (hands, fists, and feet) and suicide attempt (ingesting pills) in 2010 resulted in death in only 0.009 percent and 2.5 percent of the incidents, respectively (CDC, 2013a). 3

As shown in Figure 1, in the past 30 years, the percentage of deaths caused by gunfire has stabilized to about 68 percent for homicides and, as drug overdoses have increased, dropped to 50 percent for suicide. There are more gun suicides than gun homicides in the United States. In 2010, 61.2 percent (19,392) of the 31,672 gun deaths in the United States were suicides (CDC, 2013a).

Figure 1. Deaths Attributed to Firearms, 1981–2010

Note: Data are from the Web-Based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS™), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, 2013. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/fatal.html.

Much of the public concern about guns and gun violence focuses on interpersonal violence, and public policy mirrors this emphasis. Although there is no standard way to enumerate each discrete gun law, most U.S. gun laws focus on the user of the gun. Relatively few focus on the design, manufacture, distribution, advertising, or sale of firearms (Teret & Wintemute, 1993). Fewer yet address ammunition.

The focus herein is on the lifespan of guns — from design and manufacture to use — and the policies that could address the misuse of guns. It is critical to understand how policies create conditions that affect access to and use of guns. Because they constitute the largest portion of guns used in homicides (FBI, 2012a), handguns are the focus of most laws. Despite the substantial human and economic costs of gun violence in the United States and the ongoing debate about the effectiveness of gun regulations, scientifically rigorous evaluations are not available for many of these policies (Wellford et al., 2004). The dearth of such research on gun policies is due, in part, to the lack of government funding on this topic because of the political influences of the gun lobby (e.g., Kellermann & Rivara, 2013).

Design and Manufacture

The type of handguns manufactured in the United States has changed. Pistols overtook revolvers in manufacturing in the mid-1980s. In addition, the most widely sold pistol went from a .22 caliber in 1985 to a 9 mm or larger (e.g., .45 caliber pistols) by 1994 (Wintemute, 1996), with smaller, more concealable pistols favored by permit holders as well as criminals. This shift has been described as increasing the lethality of handguns, although, according to our review, no research has examined whether the change in weapon design has led to an increased risk of death. Such research may not be feasible given that the aforementioned weapons — that is, small, concealable pistols — still likely constitute a small portion of the estimated 283 million guns in civilian hands in the United States (Hepburn, Miller, Azrael, & Hemenway, 2007). The disproportionate appearance of such pistols among guns that were traced by law enforcement following their use in a crime has been attributed to the ease with which smaller guns can be concealed and their low price point (Koper, 2007; Wright, Wintemute, & Webster, 2010).

Ammunition, by contrast, is directly related to lethality. Hollow-point bullets are used by hunters because, in part, they are considered a more humane way to kill. The physics of hollow-point bullets are such that, upon impact, they will tumble inside the animal and take it down. Some bullets have been designed to be frangible, that is, to break apart upon impact and thus cause substantial internal damage. By contrast, the physics of full metal jacket bullets are such that, unless they hit a bone, they are likely to continue on a straight trajectory and pass through the animal, leaving it wounded and wandering. Hollow-point bullets are used by law enforcement to reduce over-penetration (i.e., when a bullet passes through its intended target and, thus, risks striking others).

Some design features would substantially reduce gun violence. One of the most promising ideas is that of “smart guns” that can be fired only by an authorized user. For example, young people, who are prohibited due to their age from legally purchasing a firearm, typically use a gun from their own home to commit suicide (Johnson, Barber, Azrael, Clark, & Hemenway, 2010; Wright, Wintemute, & Claire, 2008) and to carry out a school shooting (CDC, 2003). If personalized to an authorized adult in the home, the gun could not be operated by the adolescent or others in the home, thus rendering it of little use to the potential suicide victim or school shooter. During the Clinton administration, the federal government made a modest investment in the research and development of personalized firearms. There also was considerable private investment in technologies that would prevent unauthorized users from being able to fire weapons. Efforts to create these “smart guns” have resulted in multiple patent applications. Armatix GmbH, a German company, has designed and produced a personalized pistol that is being sold in several Western European nations and has been approved for importation to the United States. Although the cost of this new personalized gun is very high, it is believed that personalized guns can be produced at a cost that would be affordable by many (Teret & Merritt, 2013).

The assault weapons ban (the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act), enacted for a 10-year period beginning in 1994, provided a good opportunity to assess the effectiveness of restricting the manufacturing, sale, and possession of a certain class of weapons. “Assault weapons,” however, are difficult to conceal and are used rarely in most street crime or domestic violence. Assault weapons are commonly used in mass shootings in which ammunition capacity can determine the number of victims killed or wounded. Because multiple bullets are not an issue in suicide, one would not expect changes in such deaths either. Perhaps not surprisingly, an effect of the ban could not be detected on total gun-related homicides (Koper, 2013; Koper & Roth, 2001).

Unfortunately, prior research on the effects of the federal assault weapons ban did not focus on the law’s effects on mass shootings or the number of persons shot in such shootings. Assault weapons or guns with large-capacity ammunition feeding devices account for half of the weapons used in mass shootings such as at Sandy Hook Elementary School (see Follman & Aronson , 2013). Mass shootings with these types of weapons result in about 1.5 times as many fatalities as those committed with other types of firearms (Roth & Koper, 1997).

Distribution

The distribution of guns is largely the responsibility of a network of middlemen between gun manufacturers and gun dealers. When a gun is recovered following its use (or suspected use) in a crime, law enforcement routinely requests that the gun be traced — that is, the serial number is reported to the manufacturer, who then contacts the distributor and/or dealer who, in turn, reviews records to determine the original purchaser of a specific weapon. The number of gun traces is such that the manufacturers get many calls about their guns each day. One researcher estimated that Smith and Wesson, with about 10 percent of market share, received a call every seven to eight minutes about one of their guns (Kairys, 2008). Thus, one could reasonably expect that manufacturers would have some knowledge of which distributors sell guns that are disproportionately used in crime, and distributors would, in turn, know which retailers disproportionately sell guns used in crime.

Following in the footsteps of cities and states that had successfully sued the tobacco industry under state consumer protection and antitrust laws for costs the public incurred in caring for smokers, beginning in the late 1990s cities and states began to file claims against firearm manufacturers in an attempt to recover the costs of gun violence they incurred. In response, in 2005, Congress enacted and President George W. Bush signed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which prohibits civil liability lawsuits against “manufacturers, distributors, dealers, or importers of firearms or ammunition for damages, injunctive or other relief resulting from the misuse of their products by others” ( 15 U.S.C. §§ 7901-7903 ). Thus, the option of using litigation, a long-standing and sometimes controversial tool by which to address entrenched public health problems (e.g., Lytton, 2004), was severely restricted.

Advertising

Advertisements for guns have largely disappeared from classified ads in newspapers. By contrast, advertising in magazines, specifically gun magazines, is strong (Saylor, Vittes, & Sorenson, 2004). Such advertising is subject to the same Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations as other consumer products. In 1996, several organizations filed a complaint with the FTC after documenting multiple cases of what they asserted to be false and misleading claims about home protection (for specific examples, see Vernick, Teret, & Webster, 1997). As of November 1, 2013, the FTC had not ruled on the complaint. However, the firearm industry changed its practices such that by 2002, self-protection was an infrequent theme in advertisements for guns (Saylor et al., 2004). To our knowledge, current advertising has not been studied. New issues relevant to the advertising of guns include online advertisements by private sellers who are not obligated to verify that purchasers have passed a background check, online ads from prohibited purchasers seeking to buy firearms, the marketing of military-style weapons to civilians, and the marketing of firearms to underage youth (for examples and more information, see Kessler & Trumble, 2013; Mayors Against Illegal Guns, 2013; McIntire, 2013; Violence Policy Center, 2011).

Sales and Purchases

Gun sales have been increasing in the United States. The FBI reported a substantial jump in background checks (a proxy for gun sales) in the days following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. In fact, of the 10 days with the most requests for background checks since the FBI started monitoring such information, 7 of them were within 8 days of Sandy Hook (FBI, 2013). Guns can be purchased from federally licensed firearm dealers or private, unlicensed sellers in a variety of settings, including gun shows, flea markets, and the Internet.

Responsible sales practices (for examples, see Mayors Against Illegal Guns, n.d.) rely heavily on the integrity of the seller. And usually that responsibility is well placed: Over half (57 percent) of the guns traced (i.e., submitted by law enforcement, usually in association with a crime, to determine the original purchaser of the weapon) were originally sold by only 1.2 percent of federally licensed firearm dealers (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms [ATF], 2000). However, there are problems. Sometimes a person who is prohibited from purchasing a gun engages someone else, who is not so prohibited, to purchase a gun for him or her. The person doing the buying is called a “straw purchaser.” Straw purchase attempts are not uncommon; in a random sample of 1,601 licensed dealers and pawnbrokers in 43 states, two thirds reported experiencing straw purchase attempts (Wintemute, 2013b).

Two studies tested the integrity of licensed firearm dealers by calling the dealers and asking whether they could purchase a handgun on behalf of someone else (in the studies, a boyfriend or girlfriend), a straw purchase transaction that is illegal. In the study of a sample of gun dealers listed in telephone directories of the 20 largest U.S. cities, the majority of gun dealers indicated a willingness to sell a handgun under the illegal straw purchase scenario (Sorenson & Vittes, 2003). In a similar study of licensed gun dealers in California, a state with relatively strong regulation and oversight of licensed gun dealers, one in five dealers expressed a willingness to make the illegal sale (Wintemute, 2010). Programs such as the ATF and National Sports Shooting Council’s “Don’t Lie for the Other Guy,” which provides posters and educational materials to display in gun stores as well as tips for gun dealers on how to identify and respond to straw purchase attempts, have not been evaluated.

It is important to be able to identify high-risk dealers because, in 2012, the ATF had insufficient resources to monitor federally licensed gun dealers (Horwitz, 2012); there were 134,997 unlicensed gun dealers in April 2013 (ATF, 2013). Some states have recognized the limited capacity of the ATF and the weaknesses of federal laws regulating gun dealers and enacted their own laws requiring the licensing, regulation, and oversight of gun dealers (Vernick, Webster, & Bulzacchelli, 2006) and, when enforced, these laws appear to reduce the diversion of guns to criminals shortly after a retail sale (Webster, Vernick, & Bulzacchelli, 2009). Undercover stings and lawsuits against gun dealers who facilitate illegal straw sales have also been shown to reduce the diversion of guns to criminals (Webster, Bulzacchelli, Zeoli, & Vernick, 2006; Webster & Vernick, 2013b).

To help ensure that guns are not sold to those who are prohibited from purchasing them, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System ([NICS], part of the Brady Law) was developed so that the status of a potential purchaser could be checked immediately by a federally licensed firearm dealer. Prohibited purchasers include, but are not limited to, convicted felons, persons dishonorably discharged from the military, those under a domestic violence restraining order, and, in the language of the federal law, persons who have been adjudicated as mentally defective or have been committed to any mental institution (see 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) (1)-(9) and (n)). About 0.6% of sales have been denied on the basis of these criteria since NICS was established in 1998 (FBI, 2012b).

A substantial portion of firearm sales and transfers, however, is not required to go through a federally licensed dealer or a background check requirement; this includes, in most U.S. states, private party sales including those that are advertised on the Internet and those that take place at gun shows where licensed gun dealers who could process background checks are steps away. Some evidence suggests that state policies regulating private handgun sales reduce the diversion of guns to criminals (Vittes, Vernick, & Webster, 2013; Webster et al., 2009; Webster, Vernick, McGinty, & Alcorn, 2013).

The ability to check the background of a potential purchaser nearly instantly means that in many states, someone who is not a prohibited purchaser can purchase a gun within a matter of minutes. Ten states and the District of Columbia have a waiting period (sometimes referred to as a “cooling-off” period) for handguns ranging from 3 (Florida and Iowa) to 14 (Hawaii) days (Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 2012). The efficacy of waiting periods has received little direct research attention.

With the exception of misdemeanor domestic violence assault, federal law and laws in most states prohibit firearm possession of those convicted of a crime only if the convictions are for felony offenses in adult courts. Research has shown that misdemeanants who were legally able to purchase handguns committed crimes involving violence following those purchases at a rate 2–10 times higher than that of handgun purchasers with no prior convictions (Wintemute, Drake, Beaumont, & Wright, 1998). Wintemute and colleagues (Wintemute, Wright, Drake, & Beaumont, 2001) examined the impact of a California law that expanded firearm prohibitions to include persons convicted of misdemeanor crimes of violence. In their study of legal handgun purchasers with criminal histories of misdemeanor violence before and after the law, denial of handgun purchases due to a prior misdemeanor conviction was associated with a significantly lower rate of subsequent violent offending.

Persons who are legally determined to be a danger to others or to themselves as a result of mental illness are prohibited by federal law from purchasing and possessing firearms. A significant impediment to successful implementation of this law is that the firearm disqualifications due to mental illness often are not reported to the FBI’s background check system. As mentioned earlier, in 2007 Connecticut began reporting these disqualifications to the background check system. In a ground-breaking study, Swanson and colleagues (2013) studied the effects of this policy change on individuals who would most likely be affected — that is, those who were legally prohibited from possessing firearms due solely to the danger posed by their mental illnesses. They found that the rate of violent crime offending was about half as high among those whose mental illness disqualification was reported to the background system compared with those whose mental illness disqualification was not reported.

Federal law allows an individual to buy several guns, even hundreds, at once; the only requirement is that a multiple-purchase form be completed (18 U.S.C. § 923(g)(3)(A)(2009)). Large bulk purchases have been linked to gun trafficking (Koper, 2005). Policies such as one-handgun-a-month have rarely been enacted. Evaluations of these laws document mixed findings (Webster et al., 2009, 2013;Weil & Knox, 1996).

The United States was one of the signers of the Geneva Convention, which prohibits the use of hollow-point bullets in war (the goal being to wound but not kill wartime enemies), but hollow-point bullets are available to civilians in the United States. A hunting license is not a prerequisite for the purchase of hollow-point bullets in the United States. California passed a law requiring a thumbprint for ammunition purchases; the law was ruled “unconstitutionally vague” by a Superior Court judge in 2011, but some municipalities (e.g., Los Angeles, Sacramento) have similar local ordinances in effect.

In 2004, a national survey found that 20 percent of the U.S. adult population reported they own one or more long-guns (shotguns or rifles), and 16 percent reported they own a handgun (Hepburn et al., 2007). Self-protection was the primary reason for owning a gun. Most people who have a gun have multiple guns, and half of gun owners reported owning four or more guns. In fact, 4 percent of the population is estimated to own 65 percent of the guns in the nation.

Nationally representative studies suggest that the mental health of gun owners is similar to that of individuals who do not own guns (Miller, Barber, Azrael, Hemenway, & Molnar, 2009; Sorenson & Vittes, 2008). However, gun owners are more likely to binge drink and drink and drive (Wintemute, 2011).

In perhaps the methodologically strongest study to date to examine handgun ownership and mortality, Wintemute and colleagues found a strong association between the purchase of a handgun and suicide: “In the first year after the purchase of a handgun, suicide was the leading cause of death among handgun purchasers, accounting for 24.5 percent of all deaths” (Wintemute, Parham, Beaumont, Wright, & Drake, 1999). The risk of suicide remained elevated (nearly twofold and sevenfold, respectively, for male and female handgun purchasers) at the end of the 6-year study period. Men’s handgun purchase was associated with a reduced risk of becoming a homicide victim (0.69); women’s handgun purchase, by contrast, was associated with a 55 percent increase in risk of becoming a homicide victim. A waiting period may reduce immediate risk but appears not to eliminate short- or long-term risk for suicide.

Risk can extend to others in the home. Efforts to educate children about guns (largely to stay away from them), when tested with field experiments, indicate they are generally ineffective (e.g., Hardy, 2002). Child Access Prevention (CAP) laws focus on the responsibilities of adults; adults are held criminally liable for unsafe storage of firearms around children. CAP laws have been associated with modest decreases in unintentional shootings of children and the suicides of adolescents (Webster & Starnes, 2000; Webster, Vernick, Zeoli, & Manganello, 2004).

Most gun-related laws focus on the user of the gun (e.g., increased penalties for using a gun in the commission of a crime). Some research suggests that having been threatened with a gun, as well as the perpetrator’s having access to a gun and using a gun during the fatal incident, is associated with increased risk of women becoming victims of intimate partner homicide (Campbell et al., 2003). Regarding sales, note that persons with a domestic violence misdemeanor or under a domestic violence restraining order are prohibited by federal law from purchasing and possessing a firearm and ammunition. Research to date indicates that firearm restrictions for persons subject to such laws have reduced intimate partner homicides by 6 percent to 19 percent (Vigdor & Mercy, 2006; Zeoli & Webster, 2010).

As with initial discussions about motor vehicle safety, which focused on what was then referred to as the “nut behind the wheel,” current discussions about gun users sometimes involve terms such as “good guys” and “bad guys.” Although intuitively appealing, such categories seem to assume a static label and do not take into account the fact that “good guys” can become “bad guys” and “bad guys” can become “good guys.” One way an armed “good guy” can become a “bad guy” is to use a gun in a moment of temporary despondence or rage (Bandeira, 2013; Wintemute, 2013a).

Research on near-miss suicide attempts among young adults indicates that impulsivity is of concern. About one fourth of those whose suicide attempt was so severe they most likely would have died reported first thinking about suicide five minutes before attempting it (Simon et al., 2001). Although an estimated 90 percent of those who attempt suicide go on to die of something else (i.e., they do not subsequently kill themselves; for a review, see Bostwick & Pankratz, 2000), for those who use a gun, as noted in opening paragraph of this chapter, there generally is not a second chance.

Given the complexity of the issue, a multifaceted approach will be needed to reduce firearm-related violence (see, for example, Chapman & Alpers, 2013). Not all ideas that on the surface seem to be useful actually are. For example, gun buyback programs may raise awareness of guns and gun violence in a community but have not been shown to reduce mortality (Makarios & Pratt, 2012). Such data can inform policy. President Obama’s January 2013 executive orders about gun violence include directing the CDC to research the causes and prevention of gun violence. The federal government has since announced several funding opportunities for research related to gun violence. And the recent Institute of Medicine and National Research Council (2013) report called for lifting access restrictions on gun-related administrative data (e.g., data related to dealers’ compliance with firearm sales laws, gun trace data) that could be used to identify potential intervention and prevention points and strategies. So perhaps more data will be available to inform and evaluate policies designed to reduce gun violence.

The focus of this section has largely been on mortality. The scope of the problem is far greater, however. For every person who dies of a gunshot wound, there are an estimated 2.25 people who are hospitalized or receive emergency medical treatment for a nonfatal gunshot wound (Gotsch, Annest, Mercy, & Ryan, 2001). And guns are used in the street and in the home to intimidate and coerce (e.g., Sorenson & Wiebe, 2004; Truman, 2011).

Single policies implemented by themselves have been shown to reduce certain forms of gun violence in the United States. Adequate implementation and enforcement as well as addressing multiple intervention points simultaneously may improve the efficacy of these laws even more. After motor vehicle safety efforts expanded to include the vehicle, roadways, and other intervention points (vs. a focus on individual behavior), motor vehicle deaths dropped precipitously and continue to decline (CDC, 1999, 2013a). A multifaceted approach to reducing gun violence will serve the nation well.

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APA Panel of Experts

Dewey Cornell, PhD Clinical Psychologist and Professor of Education Curry School of Education University of Virginia

Arthur C. Evans Jr., PhD Commissioner Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services Philadelphia, Pa.   Nancy G. Guerra, EdD (Coordinating Editor) Professor of Psychology Associate Provost for International Programs Director, Institute for Global Studies University of Delaware   Robert Kinscherff, PhD, JD Associate Vice President for Community Engagement Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology Senior Associate National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice   Eric Mankowski, PhD Professor of Psychology Department of Psychology Portland State University

Marisa R. Randazzo, PhD Managing Partner SIGMA Threat Management Associates Alexandria, Va.   Ellen Scrivner, PhD, ABPP Executive Fellow Police Foundation Washington, D.C.   Susan B. Sorenson, PhD Professor of Social Policy / Health & Societies Senior Fellow in Public Health University of Pennsylvania

W. Douglas Tynan, PhD, ABPP Professor of Pediatrics Jefferson Medical College Thomas Jefferson University   Daniel W. Webster, ScD, MPH Professor and Director Center for Gun Policy and Research Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

We are grateful to the following individuals for their thoughtful reviews and comments on drafts of this report:   Louise A. Douce, PhD Special Assistant, Office of Student Life Adjunct Faculty, Department of Psychology The Ohio State University   Joel A. Dvoskin, PhD, ABPP Department of Psychiatry University of Arizona   Ellen G. Garrison, PhD Senior Policy Advisor American Psychological Association   Melissa Strompolis, MA Doctoral Candidate University of North Carolina at Charlotte   Mathilde Pelaprat, PsyD , provided writing and research assistance on Chapter 2.

Rhea Farberman, APR Executive Director Public and Member Communications American Psychological Association

Editorial and Design Services Deborah C. Farrell, Editor │ Elizabeth F. Woodcock, Designer

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School interventions offer best shot at reducing youth violence

Associate Professor of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University

Disclosure statement

Laura Voith receives funding from the National Institutes of Health; Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; the U.S. Department for Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families; and Victims of Crime Acts (VOCA), Office for Victims of Crime.

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Black youth show up in emergency rooms with gunshot wounds or other violent injuries at an alarming and disproportionate rate in the United States. Some hospitals have violence interventions that can be effective in keeping these kids safer after they are treated, but in most cases victims are sent back into the world to continue their struggles.

What if there were a way to prevent these kids from ending up in that hospital room in the first place? What if, years earlier, we could identify factors that predict which children are most likely to head down paths to violence?

I’m a social scientist focused on this question, and my research has led me to an answer that I believe is at once obvious and profound: Find these children early in public schools and help them then and there.

The study I led provides evidence that kids who grow up in poverty – or who are referred to child protective services – are significantly more likely to become victims of violence when they become teenagers.

A unique study with unusual access to information

To do our study, my team looked at records for 429 Black youths who had been sent to the ER for gunshot wounds or injuries from severe assaults over a one-year period. They included hospital, child protective service and juvenile court records, among others.

This was made possible because the Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development at Case Western Reserve University keeps troves of identifiable records on each of the 700,000 children who live in Cleveland. The records include information from more than 30 administrative agencies.

This rare resource allowed us to follow the life path of these young people from birth all the way to their arrival at emergency rooms with their injuries. The children ranged in age from 5 to 16 but averaged about 12.

We compared this study group with a control group of 5,000 youths who were not victims of gunfire or assault in that year but who grew up in the same neighborhoods and were similar in race, age and gender as the injured group.

As a result, we built a sophisticated picture of the childhood experiences that lead to violent injuries for low-income Black youths. Our objective was to find points of potential intervention.

Juvenile delinquency is not the most important predictor

Two factors that figure prominently in the backgrounds of violently injured youth are kids who have had interactions with both the juvenile court and child protection systems. Studies have shown they are at the highest risk of eventually suffering a violent injury, so a large portion of public resources go to addressing these children. In our study, victims of violence were four times more likely to be involved with juvenile court than noninjured youth in the control group.

Yet kids who endured both factors are also a minority of the youths in our study who were violently injured. In fact, 75% of violently injured youths fell into two other groups. One was those who attend public school and had received public assistance in early life. The other was those who attended public school and had been involved in the child welfare system before they were 5.

Kids and teens in our study who ended up in the emergency room by age 13 as victims of violence were nearly three times more likely have been in foster care by age 4 compared to noninjured kids in our control group. Likewise, injured kids were twice as likely to have lived in a homeless shelter by age 7. And violently injured kids were chronically absent from school at rates 1.5 times higher than non-injured kids.

That is an important revelation. It shows that poverty and domestic problems loom larger than interactions with juvenile courts in foretelling eventual violent injury.

Public schools are the common denominator

School is where we can identify these children in their high-risk groups. To be clear, going to public school is not itself a risk factor; it’s just an opportune situation to help them. It’s an ideal place because it is both a compulsory and, ideally, a nonthreatening environment.

Still, there are important barriers to doing this effectively. In the best-case scenario, public schools could provide special attention to students whose families have been on public assistance or investigated by child protective services as early as age 5. But to do so, they – or whichever agency is in a position to help – would need information from individual records that are often private and unavailable.

In Cleveland, much of this information is being integrated by Case Western and available to us as researchers on grounds we do not divulge details that could identify a specific child or family. Child protection services records in particular are almost always confidential and unavailable to anyone not directly involved in a particular case without a court order.

What can be done

Those privacy safeguards are important but not insurmountable. At least one community, Allegheny County in Pennsylvania, has found a way to identify families in need that has proven effective.

Communities that don’t have access to integrated data like Allegheny’s model can instead use school screening questionnaires that strike a balance between getting information and permitting families a level of privacy about what they share.

These youths are reachable long before they show up in the ER. Our research tells us where to find them.

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School without Violence. The Russian Guide on School-Related Violence Prevention

The third International Congress “Personality Education: Standards and Values” held in Moscow on September 24-25, 2015 provided a good opportunity to launch School without Violence guide. The Guide has been developed for Russian educators based on UNESCO’s regional guide on school violence prevention. It informs education managers, school administrators and teachers about the causes of violence and suggests practical solutions.

The Guide School without Violence explores many manifestations of violence in school (with a strong focus on gender-based violence), examines its causes and risk factors, looks at personal characteristics, gender and age difference of victims and perpetrators and considers multiple consequences of violence.

The Guide discusses several strategies for preventing and addressing violence at both school and individual levels, including school climate assessment, development of school policy on violence and mechanisms for preventing, detecting, registering, reporting cases of violence and providing counseling and support to victims, perpetrators and witnesses. The Guide outlines specific roles and responsibilities for teachers, school administrators, other staff as well as learners and parents in violence prevention and response. It provides recommendations for community engagement and cooperation with other service providers to implement violence prevention measures and offer training, support and referrals to learners, teachers and parents.

The Guide School without Violence has been developed by the Commonwealth of Education Organizers, a Russian non-governmental organization, with technical support provided by UNESCO regional HIV and health education programme (based at UNESCO IITE). It was widely disseminated across the Russian Federation among regional education authorities, teacher-training universities and colleges, educational portals.

Publication year: 2015

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Bullying in the Russian Secondary School: Predictive Analysis of Victimization

Garen avanesian.

1 Academy of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia

Liudmila Dikaya

Alexander bermous, sergey kochkin.

2 Department of Higher Mathematics, Northern (Arctic) Federal University, Arkhangelsk, Russia

Vladimir Kirik

Valeria egorova, irina abkadyrova.

3 International Institute of Interdisciplinary Education and Ibero-American Studies, Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia

Associated Data

Publicly available datasets were analyzed in this study. This data can be found at: https://www.oecd.org/pisa/data/ .

Background: Bullying has been recognized as an important risk factor for personal development in adolescence. Although numerous studies report high prevalence of bullying in Russian schools, limited research was based on the large-scale, nationally representative analysis, which highlights the lack of findings applicable to the national context.

Objective: This study aims to address the following research questions: (1) What is the bullying victimization prevalence in Russian secondary schools? (2) What is the socio-demographic profile of the bullying victims? (3) To what extent do learning outcomes in core subject domains predict bullying? (4) How does psychological climate at school affect the occurrence of bullying? (5) Which emotional states do bullying victims typically display? (6) Which psychosocial traits are the most common for bullying victims?

Data and Methods: The study adopts the statistical analysis of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data in Russia. The final sample consists of 6,249 children aged 15 years who answered the bullying questions. K-means clustering approach was adopted to identify schoolchildren who should be classified as bullying victims amongst those who have reported bullying. Logistic regression was used to estimate the probability change of bullying under different psychosocial factors and examine the effect of bullying on the emotional states of the victims.

Results: The results of the study reveal that 16% of children are victims of bullying in the Russian secondary school. Bullying is strongly associated with learning outcomes in reading, thus outlining that low performers are at risk of severe victimization. Bullying is also contingent on the psychological climate and tends to develop more frequently in a competitive environment. The findings outline that bullying increases negative feelings such as misery, sadness, and life dissatisfaction amongst its victims, making a substantial footprint on their lives. Logically, bullying victims are less likely to feel happy and joyful. Finally, it was revealed that bullying victims do not tend to share negative attitudes to the per se , which identifies directions for future research in this domain.

Implications: Instead of dealing with the consequences of bullying, prevention strategies should aim at facilitating a positive environment at school, thus addressing the problem.

Introduction

In 2015, while approving Sustainable Development Goals (SDG, the United Nations General Assembly prioritized inclusive, equitable, and quality education for all. Later in the same year, Incheon declaration committed to “addressing all forms of exclusion and marginalization, disparities and inequalities in access, and participation and learning outcomes,” which goes in line with SDG target 4.a, to build education environments that are “child, disability, and gender sensitive and provide safe, non-violent, inclusive, and effective learning environments for all” (UN, 2015 ). Therefore, inclusiveness in education refers to the fundamental human rights of every schoolchild, and the efforts of education stakeholders should strive to satisfy the needs for a safe and psychologically comfortable learning environment. On the other hand, the psychological needs for inclusive and safe education are often not met in many contexts where children still become victims of bullying, abuse, or even violence.

Bullying is common amongst teenagers, as this group frequently demonstrates contradictive aspirations to be independent on the one hand and gain social acknowledgment and prestige on the other (Adler and Adler, 1995 ; LaFontana and Cillessen, 2002 ; Lease et al., 2002 ; Dijkstra et al., 2008 ). Furthermore, research confirms that often times, bullying takes place amongst classmates (Salmivalli and Voeten, 2004 ; Pečjak and Pirc, 2017 ; Nesterova and Grishina, 2018 ). It occurs as a result of asymmetric power balance between the perpetrators and victims. Bullying is characterized by conscious and rational humiliation, aggression, or even violence toward others, which inevitably leads to a decreased self-esteem and victimization of those at whom it is directed (Krivtsova et al., 2016 ; Grishina, 2017 ). Accounting for a variety of definitions, we look at bullying as a “longstanding violence, physical or psychological, conducted by an individual or a group, and directed against an individual who is not able to defend himself in the actual situation” (Roland, 1993 , p. 16).

The research focuses on bullying victims with the aim to draw their psychosocial portrait and predict the factors behind bullying. Although the phenomenon of bullying is widely covered in the international body of work, scarce scientific evidence on the issue was produced in the Russian academic literature. Existing studies suggest that the prevalence of bullying in Russian schools is high, and on an average every one out of four schoolchildren faces risks of becoming a bullying victim (Gorlova and Kuznetsova, 2019 ; Rean and Novikova, 2019 ; Shalaginova et al., 2019 ). However, there is a lack of research on bullying in Russian schools that employ representative data analysis, which highlights a sizeable gap in the national body of work and emphasizes the need for data-driven research in this domain.

To analyze victimization caused by bullying, we use the data collected from the latest 2018 round of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which measures the learning outcomes of the students in the last year of lower secondary school. This school-based survey program supplies researchers with a vast number of dimensions to test their hypotheses, including questions to monitor bullying frequency in schools amongst adolescents.

Unique Contributions

The current study explores cognitive, emotional, and psychosocial factors associated with bullying amongst students in the Russian secondary school. Adopting nationally representative data from PISA-2018 in Russia, the findings of the present research contribute to the growing body of knowledge regarding bullying in the Russian secondary school. Being also first-of-its-kind in terms of geographical coverage, the analysis of bullying victimization carried out in this study generates data-driven proposals for efficient bullying prevention programs.

Literature Review

The relevance of research on bullying is high because this destructive behavior is widely spread amongst children and adolescents all over the world (Zych et al., 2017 ). Negative consequences of bullying are self-explanatory, causing psychological traumas and stigma amongst the victims; evidence suggests that it can even affect the academic achievements of a child (Schwartz et al., 2005 ; Nakamoto and Schwartz, 2010 ). Bullying is well-studied in the international body of work (Fedunina and Sugizaki, 2012 ; Swearer and Hymel, 2015a ; Bethel, 2016 ; Espelage et al., 2016 ; Grishina, 2017 ; Naumova and Efimova, 2018 ; Peng et al., 2020 ; Vorontsov, 2020 ). This subject has caused a growing interest amongst Russian scholars in the recent decade (Nesterova and Grishina, 2018 ; Shalaginova et al., 2019 ; Vorontsov, 2020 ). Moreover, existing evidence suggests that bullying in Russian schools tends to occur more frequently than in economically developed democratic countries (Rean and Novikova, 2019 ).

As it has been mentioned earlier, there are many different approaches to define and study bullying. However, they can be integrated into three major groups: dispositional, which aims to examine individual characteristics of actors involved in bullying; temporal, which focuses on risks related to the time when people act as a bully and a victim; and contextual, which emphasizes the role of environment in triggering bullying (Bochaver and Khlomov, 2013 ). When it comes to bullying typology, it is suggested to differentiate bullying between direct, which can take verbal or physical aggression, and indirect, that refers to psychological or relational expression (Espelage and Swearer, 2003 ; Doll and Swearer, 2006 ). Considerable growth of internet penetration in contemporary societies contributed to the spread of cyberbullying, which highlights aggressive and offensive behavior on the internet (Schott and Søndergaard, 2014 ; Ekimova and Zalaldinova, 2015 ). Bullying always involves at least three types of social actors: a bully, a victim, and a bystander. A bully is defined as a person who perpetrates psychological pressure or physical power over the victim (Rose et al., 2011 ). A person incapable of self-defense appears to be a victim. Finally, bystanders are defined as individuals who either reinforce a bully or defend a victim (Marini et al., 2001 ; Salmivalli et al., 2011 ; Butenko and Sidorenko, 2015 ; Nesterova and Grishina, 2018 ).

The factors behind bullying refer to various aspects of the social and psychological environment. In this context, the appearance of a person can exert a profound influence on bullying. Frequently, children suffering from overweight or those physically less developed, children unhappy with the way they look tend to be bullying victims (Janssen et al., 2004 ; Griffiths et al., 2006 ; Faris and Felmlee, 2014 ). Gender leaves a specific footprint on bullying, too. The analysis of the existing body of academic literature highlights the gender differences favoring boys in direct physical aggression and trivial gender differences in the relational aggression (Card et al., 2008 ; Stubbs-Richardson et al., 2018 ). Several studies suggest that bullying is inversely associated with socioeconomic status, meaning that children from low-status groups have a higher exposure to becoming a bully or a victim of bullying (Tippett and Wolke, 2015 ; Nesterova and Grishina, 2018 ; Ryumina, 2018 ).

However, socio-demographic or economic factors cannot solely explain the occurrence of bullying. Psychosocial features at the individual or group level refer to another critical group of factors behind bullying. When it comes to the school environment, bullying is highly likely to be triggered by low empathy and tolerance levels observed in some children, as well as by high levels of aggression. Some students in the conflict tend to adopt competitive strategies, thus prioritizing the satisfaction of personal needs at the expense of others (Huseynova and Enikolopov, 2014 ; Shalaginova et al., 2019 ). Studies indicate that disciplinary climate and the feeling of belonging amongst children are of particular importance because bullying is less frequent in schools where disciplinary aspects (attendance, attention, and involvement) are positive, and children feel connected with others (Nesterova and Grishina, 2018 ; Novikova and Rean, 2019 ). Sometimes bullying can be exacerbated by ignorance on the part of school management, which reacts to physical violence only, thus underestimating the importance of such secondary indicators as rumors or verbal feud (Olweus, 1997 ; Lane, 2001 ; Petrosyants, 2011 ).

Family environment also affects the propensity of a child to become a victim of bullying at school. In this regard, the aggression of parents can prompt the role of a bully in a child, and aggression from siblings within the family could further victimize a child at school (Volikova and Kalinkina, 2015 ; Nesterova and Grishina, 2018 ). Sometimes, in contrast, a child being a victim of bullying at school expresses personal aggression toward younger siblings and thus becomes a bully in other settings, which was defined in the academic literature as a bully–victim (Salmivalli, 2013 ; Swearer and Hymel, 2015b ).

Furthermore, mounting evidence suggests that bullying can severely impact the psychological well-being and emotional states of the victims. Several studies prove that victims of bullying tend to have a lower self-esteem and decreased life satisfaction. Socially, they tend to be very unconfident, exhibiting a higher fear of failure and leaving their social ambitions and claims unpronounced (Haynie et al., 2001 ; Lane, 2001 ; Salmivalli and Nieminen, 2002 ; Striegel-Moore et al., 2002 ; Glazman, 2009 ; Kochel et al., 2012 ; Rodkin et al., 2015 ). They also report higher anxiety, solitude, suicidal thoughts, the feeling of being socially excluded, and other harmful psychosocial conditions (UNESCO, 2018 ).

Given the harmful effect of bullying on the lives of schoolchildren, relevant stakeholders need to elaborate prevention strategies to provide an inclusive, safe, and psychologically comfortable environment for learners. However, in the Russian context, most measures have been directed at eliminating negative consequences of bullying, reducing the level of aggression, or providing support to victims. On the contrary, a framework based on positive psychology suggests that measures directed at creating a positive psychosocial environment at schools can be more efficient in eliminating bullying as they tackle the cause of the problem instead of dealing with its consequences (Rean and Stavtsev, 2020 ). If prevention strategies aim to increase self-esteem and motivation of schoolchildren, as well as harmonize social interaction between children and teachers, these strategies have the potential to create a solid basis for positive outcomes that go beyond eliminating bullying.

This study takes a closer look at bullying in the Russian secondary school. Accounting for that, the objective of this work is to identify complex factors that influence the propensity of a schoolchild to become a bullying victim. In addition to that, we aim to take a closer look at the bullying victims to better understand their psychosocial profile.

Research Gap and Research Questions

Research gap.

Review of the academic literature contributes to formulating the directions for current analysis and identifying a research gap in the existing body of academic work on bullying. The analysis carried out in this study attempts a novel approach to understand bullying in Russian schools through a scope of complex factors that can condition bullying as well as give an insight into the psychosocial and emotional states of its victims. Most of the research in the Russian context was based on insufficient sampling, which precluded from generalizing results with a national scope. To overcome this limitation, we used the data rendered in the last wave of PISA, which gave a nationally representative sample of more than 6,000 students all over the country.

Furthermore, many studies indicate that bullying affects the academic performance of the victims. However, this question has not yet been conversely addressed. At this point, not much is known about how academic achievement, learning outcomes, or cognitive skills affect the propensity of a child to become a victim of bullying.

Research Questions

Accounting for the research gap highlighted and in alignment with the study objectives, this analysis attempts to answer the following questions:

• - What is the bullying victimization prevalence in Russian secondary schools?
• - What is the socio-demographic profile of the bullying victims?
• - To what extent do learning outcomes in core subject domains predict bullying?
• - How does the psychological climate at school affect the occurrence of bullying?
• - Which emotional states do bullying victims typically display?
• - Which psychosocial traits are the most common for bullying victims?

Data and Methods

Bullying scale.

The bullying scale was introduced to PISA in 2015. The index of exposure to bullying is measured based on the six main items. Data collection is based on the self-assessment of a schoolchild, when respondents need to indicate the frequency with which they experience bullying. Possible answers include “never or almost never,” “a few times a year,” “a few times a month,” and “once a week or more.” The options outlined have corresponding numeric values ranging from 1 to 4, where the highest value indicates the highest frequency. Taken together, the items result in the standardized index with 0 as mean value and 1 as standard deviation across the member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Proceeding from this, “positive values on the index indicate students who reported to be more frequently bullied than the average student in OECD countries, while negative values indicate students who reported less frequent exposure to bullying than the average student in OECD countries” (OECD, 2017 , p. 135). The OECD reports that the proposed scale was tested in all countries where monitoring is conducted, which resulted in a Cronbach α of 0.88 for OECD countries, 0.83 for all countries, and 0.81 for Russia (OECD, 2017 ). However, since the analysis does not aim to make comparative inferences about bullying in a crosscultural perspective, it explicitly focuses on the Russian context, creating requirements to reconsider both scale items and the scoring algorithm. To do that, we need to start by exploring how reliable and valid the scale is in relation to the Russian context and then find better ways of aggregating the final index. Moreover, the OECD average cannot be used as a reference for the Russian context, since everyday life, living standards, and school environment of developed high-income countries vary from those of Russia.

With this regard, the second relevant issue refers to the aggregation of the index. As outlined by the PISA 2015 report (OECD, 2017 , p. 135), such answer options as “a few times a month” and “once a week or more” were grouped for better “international invariance of the scale.” However, as the international comparison does not form the current research agenda, we decided to avoid merging these options and thus left the scale in the range of 1–4.

Analogous to the index of exposure to bullying suggested by the OECD, we employed standardization procedures to compute the index, where 0 indicates the average exposure of a schoolchild in Russia to bullying, and the range of values potentially varies within plus/minus three standard deviations.

Statistical Modeling of Data

Statistical analysis was carried out in three main stages. First, we wanted to understand the prevalence of bullying in Russian secondary schools. In other words, the purpose was to estimate the probability of a child becoming a victim of bullying at school. We did not want to produce arbitrary decisions upon selecting a random threshold to distinguish victims of bullying from other students that might experience it occasionally. With this in mind, we conducted cluster analysis that helped identify victims of bullying in the overall number of Russian schoolchildren. This resulted in a binary variable “Victim,” which assigned 1 to students who are victims of bullying and 0 to those who are not.

Inferential analysis went in two main directions. The first one used bullying as a dependent variable and aimed to model factors that could predict it. On the other hand, it was also necessary to understand the scope of reactions that bullying causes in its victims. Therefore, in the second stage of the analysis, bullying served as a predictor, whereas different emotional states or psychosocial traits were considered response variables. This step allowed for a better understanding of the profile and typical characteristics of bullying victims. We chose logistic regression to statistically model these relationships, which allowed for fixing the effects of the predictors on the probabilistic scale. The calculated model has the equation below:

where l o g P ( Y ) 1 - P ( Y ) is a logarithm of odds ratio that a child is bullied, α is a model constant, X n is a predictor, β n is a coefficient of change associated with it, and ε is an error-term of the model.

The first model aimed to estimate how the learning outcomes of students shape bullying. The second model assessed the effects of the psychological environment in schools. Then we used bullying as a predictor to assess its impact on the emotional states of victims. PISA collects data on the eight emotional states, namely: happiness, joy, cheerfulness, liveliness, pride, misery, sadness, and fearfulness of schoolchildren. Schoolchildren were asked how frequently they experience a specific emotional state with four answer options, such as never, rarely, sometimes, and often. Those who answered “often” while reporting a specific emotional state were coded as 1 in opposition to other schoolchildren coded as 0. The same approach was used to estimate the propensity to different psychosocial traits. However, the responses there were fixed on the 1–4 scale, and depending on the variable, top 20% or bottom 20% were taken as the groups for calculating the effects of bullying on them. These parts of the analysis present a series of models that consisted of only two variables, bullying as a predictor and emotional state or psychosocial trait as an outcome variable.

For all logistic regression models, both dependent and independent variables were transformed into categorical ones, and the results were presented not as regression coefficients but as marginal effects. As logits or odds ratio scales are not informative in summarizing how changes in response variables are associated with changes in predictors, presenting results as differences in probabilities was more meaningful for interpretation. Marginal effects are non-linear and present the magnitude of change on the probability scale. Therefore, depending on the value of predictors, the effect is always bound between 0 and 1. Marginal effects are easy to calculate using the equation below:

Data analysis was carried out in R , lingua franca of statistical computing.

This project was registered in Open Science Framework (see link here: https://osf.io/vhjr3/ ).

Prevalence and Profile of Victims

In the 2018 PISA wave, 6,249 schoolchildren aged 15 years old in Russia responded to questions related to bullying in a student questionnaire. OECD conceptualized bullying within three core subdimensions: relational, physical, and verbal represented by the scale items (OECD, 2017 , p. 135). The analysis suggests that verbal bullying has the highest prevalence in Russian secondary schools. As such, 16% of schoolchildren confessed that other students made fun of them either a few times a month or once a week or more. It is followed by relational bullying expressed in spreading nasty rumors, which was frequently reported by 14% of schoolchildren. Physical bullying expressed by threatening, destroying personal belongings, or pushing and hitting occurs relatively rare, being reported by 3.5% of schoolchildren on average. Disaggregated by sex, the data suggest that across all types of bullying, boys tend to report the occurrence of bullying “once a week or more” more often than girls. The data on bullying prevalence by type, also broken down by sex, are summarized in Table 1 .

Prevalence (%) of bullying types, broken down by sex.

Source: Calculations of the authors based on PISA-2018 in Russia .

Reliability analysis of the bullying scale based on the Russian data has revealed that the standardized Cronbach αof the six-item scale accounts for 0.88. Although the scale demonstrates high overall reliability, it is seen from Table 2 that dropping the first item, “Other students left me out of things on purpose,” would improve reliability by increasing the value of the standardized Cronbach α from 0.88 to 0.91.

Reliability and validity analysis of the scale of the exposure to bullying on the Russian PISA data.

In order to understand the validity of the scale, we performed principal component analysis (PCA). The PCA results confirm that the first component explains 64% of the total variance, which means that there is no need to divide the composite index into subdimensions following the bullying types. In other words, the items load well on the unidimensional concept with the eigenvalue equal to 3.8. However, while items two to six obtained Pearson correlation coefficients with the principal component above 0.6, the first item scored just below 0.3. Consequently, the reliability and validity of the bullying scale in the Russian language provide sufficient statistical reason to exclude the first item from the analysis. Taking the arithmetic mean of five items in this case would result in the higher weight of items related to the physical bullying in the final score. Nonetheless, as the remaining items establish a high correlation with the first principal component, as shown on Table 2 , it gives a solid statistical ground to aggregate a final score in a one-dimensional concept instead of aggregating by conceptual subdimensions (that correspond to different bullying types) and then taking their mean value. These statistical results might also have a cultural reasoning behind: in the Russian context, physical bullying indeed has a higher relevance in comparison to other types, which explains the low reliability and validity scores for the first item, which represents relational bullying. As such, some studies emphasize a particular importance of physical bullying in the Russian context, articulating that in opposition to more subjective by their nature relational and verbal forms of bullying that indeed occur more frequently, physical aggression is more explicit (Khanolainen et al., 2020 ). Therefore, the suggested way of aggregating the scale could help to estimate the prevalence of severe victimization. In this context, the precise estimation indeed should go beyond reporting the prevalence of different bullying types measured by the scale items. For understanding overall prevalence, one needs to approach the topic from the perspective of the aggregated score. As bullying is a relative scale that fixes personal attitudes, perceptions, and reflections, it makes sense to standardize the indicator to position students relative to each other. The mean value thus was transformed to 0, whereas 1 indicated a standard deviation across the Russian sample. With regard to this, index values above 0 indicated that all school children who are bullied more than a schoolchild in Russia are bullied on average.

On the other hand, negative values allowed for identifying schoolchildren who experience bullying more rarely than a schoolchild on average. The association of the index calculated for the Russian sample with the original bullying index of OECD showed a statistically significant correlation at the level of 0.81. However, this high value should not be misinterpreted as it primarily means that 34% of the variance remains unexplained in this bivariate association (as squared Pearson R gives us a coefficient of determination). This confirms that our choice of producing a separate index for the Russian data was justified.

However, one question remained open: how to identify schoolchildren that are actual victims of bullying. The resulting index varied from −0.67 to 3.56, outlining a high heterogeneity in distributing the scores. As Figure 1 shows, the distribution is positively skewed, with a median value equal to −0.39, which means that at least 50% of all schoolchildren in Russia are bullied less than average. In turn, bullying that reaches the average maximum value of the country can occur with the probability that accounts for ~70%. Therefore, the division of schoolchildren into those for whom bullying is something that happens occasionally and those who are victims of it should inevitably be defined by statistical distribution logic. Figure 1 presents the probability density plot of index of exposure to bullying derived from the five items of the bullying scale. The distribution is both positively skewed and multimodal. Therefore, we suggest that the demarcation between the two groups should somehow account for the peaks. The first peak representing the index values that are approximately equal to 0.6 is of particular interest. However, to avoid arbitrary decisions based on a random assignment of the threshold value, we decided to adopt k-means clustering.

Probability density plot of the index of exposure to bullying. Note: dashed line indicated mean value, whereas the dotted one, median Source: Calculations of the authors based on PISA-2018 in Russia.

In many ways, the clustering results confirmed our assumptions: the multimodality of distribution explicitly demarcates the borders between two groups. The algorithm classified those who obtained an index score higher than 0.67 as bullying victims. It is worth mentioning that this cohort accounts for 16% of all schoolchildren, which means that every one out of six schoolchildren in Russia is a victim of bullying.

Profiling of the bullied victims forms another critical pillar of the analysis. It is essential to understand the composition of the group that experiences a high risk of exclusion. Though bullied students have a very heterogeneous background, we can still identify a few distinct patterns while looking at cohorts that comprise bullying victims. First, bullying in school occurs more frequently with boys than with girls, every two out of three bullying victims being male schoolchildren. It is also clear that victims of bullying carry psychological stigmatization associated with their status in society. More than 43% of the schoolchildren bullied belong to low-status groups by the PISA index of economic, social, and cultural capital. Finally, in ~70% of all cases, bullying victims reside in villages or towns with a population below 100,000 inhabitants. However, these numbers should not be interpreted in the causal perspective. Profiling helps us draw a portrait of a particular group by key socio-demographic dimensions; however, it presents descriptive statistics that in many ways could be affected by population distribution.

Bullying and the Associated Phenomena

This study explores the relation of bullying with the number of characteristics that can be grouped into four categories. The first one refers to learning outcomes and is comprised of skills in readings, mathematics, and science. Disciplinary climate at school, perceived cooperativeness and competitiveness of the school environment, and school belonging form the second group of the variables and denote the psychological environment at school. The third pillar of the analysis explores the impact of bullying on the propensity of frequently experiencing emotional states such as happiness, joy, cheerfulness, liveliness, pride, misery, sadness, and fearfulness. Finally, the fourth category is represented by the impact of bullying on diverse psychosocial characteristics and traits, which are life satisfaction, eudaemonia, fear of failure, task mastery, personal competitiveness, goal orientation, and attitude to bullying. Table 3 provides the detailed description of the items of PISA questionnaire that intend to measure the outlined phenomena, as well as reports summary statistics on the Russian sample. For measuring the association of the variables outlined above with bullying, all in all 17 logistic regression models were calculated. The first model explored the effect of learning outcomes on bullying, whereas the second one assessed the impact of the psychological environment in school on the occurrence of bullying. Finally, 15 additional models explored how bullying predicts the probability of experiencing a certain emotional state or psychosocial trait. Correlations matrix in Figure 2 shows the associations between all 25 variables used in the study.

Summary statistics of the variables.

Correlation matrix (Spearman's rank correlation coefficient) of variables associated with bullying. Note: crossed cells refer to correlations that are not statistically significant. Source: Calculations of the authors based on PISA-2018 in Russia.

Learning Outcomes and Their Relation to Bullying

To estimate the effect of learning outcomes on the probability of becoming a victim of bullying, we built a logistic regression model with an equation presented below.

The results of the model are presented in Table 4 . To make the interpretation more meaningful and intuitive, we converted the predictors from the interval to ordinal scale with three levels: low performers, medium performers, and high performers in three core subject domains monitored by PISA: reading, mathematics, and science. PISA defines low performers as schoolchildren that “score below Level 2 on the PISA mathematics, reading, and/or science scales,” as this level is considered the baseline “of proficiency that is required to participate fully in society” (OECD, 2016 , p. 37). Schoolchildren who score at Level 1 “can answer questions involving clear directions and requiring a single source of information and simple connections; but they cannot engage in more complex reasoning to solve the kinds of problems that are routinely faced by adults of today in modern societies” (OECD, 2016 ). The low performers cannot interpret or recognize situations in contexts that require somewhat more than direct inference, being thus unable to “extract relevant information from a single source and make use of a single representational mode” (OECD, 2016 , p. 40). Oppositely, high performers showed outstanding results reaching either Level 5 or 6, whereas medium performers are those within levels 2, 3, and 4.

Regression models.

The logits calculated for all three groups across the three domains and presented in Table 4 were converted into probabilities and plotted as marginal effects in Figure 3 . High performers were taken as a reference group, and therefore, all marginal effects are presented in relation to the schoolchildren on Levels 5 and 6 in each cognitive test. The results suggest that statistically significant effects of reading performance predict the probability of becoming a victim of bullying. Medium achievers in the reading performance are 5% less likely to become bullying victims than low achievers. The probability is even higher for the group of high achievers, accounting for 27%.

Marginal effects of learning outcomes and the psychological environment of the school on the occurrence of bullying victimization. Source: Calculations of the authors based on PISA-2018 in Russia.

Psychological Climate at School and Bullying

PISA provides some variables that could serve as useful proxies for the psychological environment in schools. These variables include disciplinary climate, cooperativeness, and competitiveness of the school environment, and the feeling of children of belonging to school. Using these predictors, we built the following logistic regression model:

Summary results of the model are presented at Table 4 , whereas Figure 3 shows the values of marginal effects predicted by the model. All the effects turned out to be highly statistically significant ( p < 0.01). A competitive school environment demonstrates the highest magnitude of the effect, increasing the probability of bullying by 11%. On the other hand, the likelihood of bullying in schools with a cooperative school environment is 6% lower. It is also clear that a positive disciplinary climate in schools decreases the probability of bullying by 9%. Finally, students who do not demonstrate a high degree of belonging are also 6% more likely to become bullying victims.

Emotional States and Psychosocial Traits of the Bullying Victims

This part of the analysis looks at victims of bullying, thus aiming to reveal emotional states and psychosocial traits that are most typical for them. With this regard, bullying instead of being a response, became an independent variable of the logistic regression, and the model aimed to estimate the probability of a specific emotional state or psychosocial trait to be typical for bullying victims. We thus ended up running 15 models where bullying predicted the likelihood of a specific emotional states or psychosocial traits. The model thus obtained the following equation:

where P ( Y ) referred to a probability of a schoolchild to have a certain psychosocial trait or experience very frequently one of eight emotions reported in PISA, accounting for an effect of bullying. The results of these regressions are presented in Figure 4 .

Marginal effects of bullying on the emotional states and psychosocial traits of the victims. Source: Calculations of the authors based on PISA-2018 in Russia.

As was mentioned earlier, PISA asks students to assess how frequently they feel joyful, happy, cheerful, miserable, afraid, sad, lively, and proud. Logistic regression modeling identified statistically significant effects ( p < 0.001) of bullying on the occurrence of almost all of the outlined, except cheerfulness and liveliness. The most potent positive effect of bullying is observed in connection with fearfulness, misery, and sadness. Victims of bullying have a higher probability of experiencing these emotions than other students (with marginal effects equal to 7, 8, and 9%, respectively). Bullying is also negatively associated with joy and happiness, which means that bullying victims are 11% less likely to report joy and 9% less likely to report happiness.

Not surprisingly, bullying also shapes both attitudes and behavioral patterns of its victims. As such, the marginal effect of having low life satisfaction levels equals 10% amongst bullying victims. Conversely, bullying victims are less likely to have high eudaemonia levels, a condition defined by PISA as a sense of meaning in life. Also, victims of bullying are 11% more likely to experience a high fear of failure. They are 5% more likely to be found among least competitive schoolchildren, which shows their low ambitions in reaching goals and objectives; The marginal effect of high task mastery equals −10%, which means that bullied schoolchildren are less likely to reach the objectives set.

Finally, the most surprising conclusion refers to the attitude of bullying victims toward bullying itself. As such, victims of bullying are 10% less likely to be among those schoolchildren who have an explicitly negative attitude to bullying.

Limitations of the Study

The study has some limitations imposed by the data. It appears essential to understand how bullying changes over time and how it transitions from primary to secondary school. However, since PISA collects data from schoolchildren in the last grade of lower secondary school, it does not provide an age variation that would be enough to make this kind of inference. Furthermore, we cannot discount that schoolchildren often become victims of bullying due to their appearance, which involves excess weight, functional difficulties, or even disabilities (Sweeting and West, 2001 ; Hill, 2017 ; Pinquart, 2017 ; Su, 2021 ). Unfortunately, PISA does not collect anthropometric data from children. Finally, due to the lack of data, it appears impossible to examine the influence of family environment as well as relationships amongst family members on bullying.

The results of our analysis suggest that one out of six 15-year-old children in Russian secondary schools is a victim of bullying. This result is substantially higher than one received in a measurement carried out within “Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC)” study in 2014, which was supported by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2014 ). The measurement results suggest that up to 13% of schoolchildren aged 15 years are bullying victims in Russia (WHO, 2014 ). However, the difference in numbers is explained by the fact that the WHO-supported survey looked at a wider age group, and the prevalence of bullying in a younger age is lower than in adolescence.

In many ways, our findings go in line with the data from the last PISA report (OECD, 2019a ). As such, the pattern that boys and low-achieving students of both sexes tend to report bullying more often than girls and high-achieving students of both sexes, holds for OECD countries, too. “On an average across OECD countries, students who reported being bullied at least a few times a month scored 21 points lower in reading than students who did not report so, after accounting for socio-economic status” (OECD, 2019a , p. 46). Furthermore, calculations on Russian data also go in line with the OECD countries as bullied students tend to report feeling sad, scared and less satisfied with life, and demonstrate a weaker sense of school belonging than their peers who are less bullied.

The earlier studies also confirmed the prevalence of verbal bullying over other type (Glazyrina et al., 2017 ). Proceedings from the study carried out in 2011, state that verbal bullying is typically expressed as offensive words, rumors, unreasonable blame, threats, or personal insults, which emphasizes the fact that almost one-third of all cases of verbal bullying ever reported comes from teachers. According to our results, verbal bullying is followed by the relational type, whereas the measurement made by Glazyrina et al. ( 2017 ) suggests that the prevalence of physical bullying is second after verbal. It leads to the conclusion that since 2011 there has been a marked shift to psychological, indirect forms of bullying.

In this perspective, our findings go in line with the results of another study with a comprehensive geographical coverage in Russia. This research reveals that social aggression expressed in inappropriate gestures and offensive comments dominates physical aggression (Rean and Novikova, 2019 ). Since it appears challenging to monitor and sanction psychological violence in opposition to the physical type, which is also very easy to prove, the former becomes more attractive for perpetrators. The lack of any legal framework to regulate psychological violence and its subjective, personal character contribute to the spread of verbal bullying and its prevalence over physical aggression.

One of the bullying aspects that are uniquely specific for the Russian context refers to the reporting of bullying, highlighting significant differences in the perception of bullying by students and teachers. Existing evidence suggests that students agree that bullying should not be reported (Khanolainen et al., 2020 ). This in turn means that the problem of bullying tends to be severely underestimated by teachers and parents. It results in a significant difference in the perception of bullying by students and teachers, whereas “the majority of teachers indicated either seeing no bullying or only seeing bullying rarely as a justifiable reaction to provocation,” students reported bullying regularly (Khanolainen et al., 2020 , p. 1).

Analysis of the socio-demographic profile of victims enabled us to understand the composition of this group by several key dimensions. From the gender perspective, we revealed that boys are more likely to become bullying victims. It makes sense in this context to appeal to the study of Butovskaya and Rusakova ( 2016 ), which adds to our results by stating that victimization of girls peaks when they are about 13 years old and then gradually reduces, whereas victimization of boys remains on the same level approximately till they turn 16. Psychophysiological factors explain these differences well. Girls enter into puberty earlier, with the period being accompanied by the secretion of sexual hormones such as testosterone (Copeland et al., 2019 ; Fassler et al., 2019 ). Being unsynchronized in their physiological development, girls pass this phase earlier. Strong dependence of aggression levels amongst adolescents on sexual hormones (Finkelstein et al., 1997 ; Ramirez, 2003 ) explains the higher prevalence of boys amongst bullying victims. However, the prevalence of boys over girls is not exceptionally high; therefore, it is not gender per se but a combination of different psychosocial factors that predict the propensity to bullying (Bochaver and Khlomov, 2013 ; Shalaginova et al., 2019 ).

Schoolchildren from low-status groups also bear a certain risk of becoming bullying victims. As has been mentioned, more than 40% of bullying victims belong to 20% of families with the lowest index of economic, social, and cultural status, which also goes in line with other studies (WHO, 2014 ; Tippett and Wolke, 2015 ; Butovskaya and Rusakova, 2016 ; Rean and Novikova, 2019 ). The stigma associated with belonging to families with a lowest standing is exacerbated at school, and other classmates use it to highlight their dominance (Rean and Novikova, 2019 ; Vorontsov, 2020 ). However, it does not mean that bullying is a function of low-status dispositions. Even children from families with high economic, social, and cultural standing can become bullying victims. However, prevention strategies should refer to the so-called rural poor, i.e., children from the most impoverished families in rural areas. Our findings underline that in about 70% of cases victims of bullying reside in rural areas or small towns with a population under 100,000 inhabitants.

The relation of learning outcomes to bullying points out that low achieving students bear the highest risk of being bullied. When it comes to reading skills, in comparison to the high performers, the probability of a low performing schoolchild becoming a bullying victim is almost by 30% higher. The regression could not identify statistically significant effects of subject-specific performance in mathematics and science, which has a clear explanation. Reading test requires a schoolchild to actualize the psychological processes of meta-cognition critical for any analytical activity and thus goes far beyond classroom needs, assessing “literacy skills needed for individual growth, educational success, economic participation and citizenship” and emphasizing the “ability to locate, access, understand and reflect on all kinds of information” which is essential “to participate fully in our knowledge-based society” (OECD, 2019b , p. 22). In this context, a reading test serves as a good proxy for general intelligence and analytical thinking ability, including such literacy skills as “finding, selecting, interpreting, integrating and evaluating information from the full range of texts associated with situations that extend beyond the classroom” (OECD, 2019b ). High achievement in this area presumes skills crucial for cognitive activity and social adaptation. It thus allows high-achieving students in reading to avoid situations when bullying is directed at them.

On the other hand, low performers in reading when not reaching even the baseline level of skills necessary to participate in society fully, also lack skills of social communication and adaptation. With this in mind, insignificant effects of science and mathematics are not surprising: children who cannot go beyond direct inferences cannot be achievers in mathematics or science. The results of PISA in 2015 suggest that low performance is rarely limited to one subject, and there is a high overlap between low achievers in all three cognitive domains (OECD, 2016 , p. 40).

The regression analysis of variables of the school psychological environment—disciplinary climate, cooperativeness and competitiveness of the school environment, and schoolchildren' feeling of school belonging reveals that they impact the risk of becoming a bullying victim. Whereas, many scholars have mentioned the importance of the psychosocial factors in bullying prevention, our findings indicate its four specific aspects that should draw the focus of specialists while organizing prevention measures and remedial work.

The study also shows that bullying victims have a higher probability of experiencing such negative emotions as fearfulness, misery, and sadness; on the opposite, they have a lower probability of experiencing such positive emotions as joy and happiness. The bullying victims report fewer positive emotions while compared to people on average.

The study also indicates that adolescent bullying vulnerability affects their traits, for example, reduces the level of eudaimonia. Such adolescents experience fear and failures; they are less competitive and often fail to achieve their objectives. The set of the indicated above features characterizes Russian bullied adolescence as persons with an insufficiently mature personality.

Finally, the research has found that bullying victims tend to abstain from expressing a negative attitude toward bullying and do not feel sorry for the victims, proving the possibility of a victim–bully roles switching or combination. This goes in line with the results of other studies that examined whether prior bullying victimization leads to bullying perpetration in the longitudinal perspective (Camodeca et al., 2002 ; Jose et al., 2012 ). It is suggested that the switch from one role to another is particularly specific for students with high self-esteem. Another longitudinal study revealed that “students with higher self-esteem were the most likely to engage in future bullying perpetration in response to bullying victimization, while the students with lower self-esteem were the least likely to engage in future bullying perpetration”; as such, for the bully victims with high self-esteem it serves as a possible way to recover threatened egotism (Choi and Park, 2018 ).

Consequently, we can state that there are two high-risk groups of adolescents in bullying situations, namely : (1) prone to victim behavior and (2) prone to aggressor behavior. That conclusion is consistent with the view of Vorontsov ( 2020 ) that not only outsiders but also schoolchildren with social life and friends, i.e., those who seek to raise or preserve their social status among same-age peers at the expense of psychological or physical domination over others, are involved in bullying situations.

The carried out statistical analysis has thus provided a means of identifying the “primary risk group” of bullying victims in the secondary schools of Russia. It should be stressed that the research presents statistically proven pioneer work as the reading test results of PISA assessment have been first applied to estimate the probability of becoming a bullying victim. Similar research-based data have not been found in a large body of published literature.

Practical Implications

Our research findings provide valuable information for bullying prevention programs. Programs oriented to creating a comfortable psychological climate at school present clear advantages over those oriented to reducing undesirable social behavior patterns. If antibullying programs aim to ensure the psychological well-being of adolescents, they can be more efficient in dealing with the problems that even go beyond bullying. Instead of focusing on specific negative aspects of school life, they provide ground for an inclusive and psychologically comfortable learning environment that rejects bullying. These areas of work should constitute primary preventive measures.

In the secondary prevention phase, the work should focus on those students who are specifically prone to risks of becoming victims. In other words, it should look at the profile of that 16% of schoolchildren who were identified as bullying victims. With these regards, increasing the learning outcomes by improving the literacy skills of low achieving students should be one of the core areas of work. Low performance in reading that outlines a lack of literacy skills needed to succeed in contemporary society shapes life even beyond schools, and bullying is one of the dimensions where the harmful effects of low achievement become so explicit. Another set of measures should be directed at improving the acceptance of students from low-status groups in the classroom to eliminate the influence of status-related issues on bullying.

Working with the behavior of male students is crucial to develop an appropriate and safe expression of anger, aggression, and other negative emotions as these students are especially prone to physical bullying. It is necessary to teach them to understand the psychological essence of aggression, its characteristics, optimize the interaction of the group, develop cooperation, increase school belonging, self-reflection, increase empathy, and create a healthy emotional space. Antibullying programs should facilitate communication skills crucial for better conflict resolution to mitigate verbal or relational bullying.

Generally, prevention strategies and antibullying programs should emphasize the ways and methods of self-control among adolescents. Creating situations of success, setting an encouraging environment that provides ground for positive emotions, developing awareness, and accepting their feelings are core areas of work. Antibullying programs should also teach socially acceptable ways of expressing aggression, aiming to reduce the verbal, indirect aggression through aggressiveness recognition and its think-aloud protocol, and develop empathy and skills of constructive problem solving and fostering personal maturity.

Conclusions

Our study suggests that, on an average, one out of six children attending secondary school in Russia becomes a bullying victim. This measure is different from simple descriptive statistics based on the prevalence of different bullying types. To identify amongst schoolchildren who reported bullying those who are victims, we looked at the bullying distribution scores and used k-means clustering to crossvalidate our assumptions. These procedures allowed for concluding that for 16% of all schoolchildren at the Russian secondary school, experienced bullying, with some frequency leading to victimization. The findings of our research also indicate the prevalence of verbal bullying over relational and physical ones.

Decomposition analysis of bullying victims outlines that male schoolchildren experience bullying more often. Although not all bullying victims come from marginalized groups, there are clear status-related considerations. More than 40% of bullying victims belong to families with the lowest economic, social, and cultural standing. Furthermore, most of the bullying victims (70%) reside in villages or sparsely populated towns.

Analysis of factors predicting bullying also presents reasons for concern. We identified the relationship between learning outcomes in reading and bullying victimization, which presents high risks for low achieving schoolchildren. Considering the PISA framework, those who do not possess the necessary literacy skills to succeed in life are also likelier to be socially excluded and victimized.

The psychological environment at school forms another group of factors behind bullying. Victimization is more likely to occur in a competitive school environment and, logically, less likely to occur in the cooperative one. Therefore, schoolchildren without a strong feeling of school belonging are also likelier to be bullied. However, our findings highlight that a positive disciplinary climate mitigates victimization. These conclusions provide ground for prevention efforts, and school psychologists and social pedagogues obtain a specific role in monitoring the psychological environment of the classroom.

Our study suggests that bullying substantially affects the psychological well-being of a schoolchild. Bullying provokes negative emotions like fearfulness, misery, and sadness amongst victims. Furthermore, it causes rarer experiences of positive emotions compared to other schoolchildren. These peculiarities are crucial in elaborating bullying prevention programs that should compensate for the deficit of positive emotions amongst the victims and eliminate the harmful effects of the negative ones. The adverse effects of bullying, however, go beyond the emotional states. The bullying victims tend to have lower eudaemonia levels, outlining that they avoid reflecting the sense of meaning in life. They also are more likely to have a low level of life satisfaction in comparison to other schoolchildren.

Finally, one of the critical findings of this study suggests that bullying victims could become perpetrators in other contexts. The analysis pointed out that bullying victims are less likely to share negative attitudes toward bullying and empathize with other bullying victims. It allows for hypothesizing that one person could potentially switch or combine victim–bully roles, and future research on bullying in Russian schools should focus on this aspect more.

Considering this, primary prevention measures should address issues related to the school environment creating a friendly and pleasant atmosphere. The measures aimed to create a positive learning environment would be more efficient by eliminating the conditions in which bullying occurs instead of dealing with its negative consequences and undesirable behaviors. The secondary phase of antibullying programs should take into account emotional states and psychosocial factors of bullying victims to help them overcome frustration and stigmatization caused by bullying, thus ensuring that they can fully participate in the social life of the school and beyond, without risks of being victimized again.

Data Availability Statement

Author contributions.

GA and LD are the major authors who developed the initial manuscript. AB reviewed the literature and together with VK drafted the practical implications and prevention strategies. SK and VE contributed to the data processing and analysis. IA revised the final manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Funding. The research was financially supported by Southern Federal University, 2021, 07/2020-02-AP.

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Protecting children from violence in school, every child has the right to go to school and learn, free from fear..

• Violence against children
• Violence in school

Every child has the right to go to school free from fear. When schools provide quality, inclusive and safe education, children can learn, build friendships and gain the critical skills they need to navigate social situations. In the best circumstances, school puts children on the path to a promising future.

But for too many girls and boys worldwide, school is where they experience violence. Bullying, harassment, verbal abuse, sexual abuse and exploitation, corporal punishment and other forms of humiliation can come at the hands of a peer, a teacher or even a school authority. Many children also experience school violence associated with gang culture, weapons and fighting.

Far from a haven for learning and community, school can be a place of bullying, sexual harassment, corporal punishment, verbal abuse and other forms of violence.

Violence in schools can have serious effects on children’s psychological and physical health.

Children who are subjected to violence may experience physical injury, sexually transmitted infections, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and suicidal thoughts. They may also begin to exhibit risky, aggressive and anti-social behaviour. Children who grow up around violence have a greater chance of replicating it for a new generation of victims.

At its most extreme, violence in and around schools can be deadly. For the tens of millions of children and adolescents living in conflict-affected areas, school too often becomes the front line.

What’s more, violence in school can reduce school attendance, lower academic performance and increase drop-out rates. This has devastating consequences for the success and prosperity of children, their families and entire communities.

• Globally, half of students aged 13–15 – some 150 million – report experiencing peer-to-peer violence in and around school.
• Slightly more than 1 in 3 students between the ages of 13 and 15 experience bullying, and about the same proportion are involved in physical fights.
• Around 720 million school-aged children live in countries where they are not fully protected by law from corporal punishment at school.
• Between 2005 and 2020, the United Nations verified more than 13,900 incidents of attacks, including direct attacks or attacks where there has not been adequate distinction between civilian and military objectives, on educational and medical facilities and protected persons, including pupils and hospitalised children, and health and school personnel. 

UNICEF’s response

UNICEF works with governments, schools, teachers, families, children and young people to prevent and respond to violence in schools. We help governments and partners:

• Adopt laws prohibiting corporal punishment and other forms of violence.
• Develop codes of conduct and other safeguarding measures in schools.
• Set up confidential and safe reporting mechanisms in schools.
• Establish a referral mechanism for response services, and monitor and collect data on violence in schools.
• Train teachers and school staff on positive discipline, classroom management and peaceful conflict resolution.
• Develop and implement life skills and social and emotional learning programmes to build the resilience and protective capacity of children and youth.
• Research, monitor and collect data on violence in schools.

As part of Safe to Learn – an inter-agency and multi-country initiative dedicated to ending violence in and around schools – UNICEF also works to increase the protection of children, improve learning outcomes, better leverage investments in education, and raise awareness of violence in schools.

More from UNICEF

Violence drives Haiti’s children into armed groups; up to half of all members are now children – UNICEF

DR Congo: Children killed, injured, abducted, and face sexual violence in conflict at record levels for third consecutive year – UNICEF

On World Poetry Day, hundreds of children affected by conflict and war share Poems for Peace

UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Angélique Kidjo celebrates resilience of girls and young people during visit to Benin

UNICEF Humanitarian Practice: COVID-19 Technical Guidance

Action to end violence against children in schools: review of programme interventions illustrating actions to address violence against children in and around schools, social and behaviour change to address violence against children: technical guidance, social and behaviour change strategies for addressing violence against children in and around schools: case studies and lessons learned, safe to learn: global programmatic framework & benchmarking tool: from call to action to programme responses, safe to learn: safe to learn diagnostic exercises in nepal, pakistan, south sudan and uganda synthesis report  , safe to learn: diagnostic tool, safe to learn:  safe to learn  in action how nepal, pakistan, south sudan and uganda are meeting the challenge of ending violence in schools, school-based violence prevention: a practical handbook, child-friendly schools manual, an everyday lesson: #endviolence in schools, behind the numbers: ending school violence and bullying, global guidance on addressing school-related gender-based violence, tackling violence in schools: bridging the gap between standards and practice, ending the torment: tackling bullying from the schoolyard to cyberspace, a rigorous review of global research evidence on policy and practice on school-related gender-based violence, preventing bullying: the role of public health and safety professionals, the campaign to stop violence in schools: third progress report, protecting children from bullying: report of the secretary-general, violence against children in education settings in south asia, violence against children: united nations secretary-general’s study, save the children global report 2017: ending violence in childhood.

Last updated 27 August 2021

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History Resources

J. Edgar Hoover on campus unrest, 1970

A spotlight on a primary source by j. edgar hoover.

In September 1970, J. Edgar Hoover composed an open letter to American students detailing his view on civil unrest at the nation’s colleges and universities and warning against the elements he believed responsible. Hoover opened with the empathetic assertion that “[t]here’s nothing wrong with student dissent or student demands for changes in society or the display of student unhappiness over aspects of our national policy.” Hoover drew a line, however, between “legitimate” student dissent and “extremism.” Extremists “ridicule the flag, poke fun at American institutions, seek to destroy our society,” he wrote, and their actions “led to violence, lawlessness, and disrespect for the rights of others on many college campuses during the past year.”

Hoover’s remarks were a reaction to the increase in violence across the nation’s campuses, most notably the shootings at Kent State just four months prior to this letter. At Kent State, during a protest against American escalation of the Vietnam War, four students were killed and nine others injured when the Ohio National Guard opened fire on protesters. Hoover’s letter placed the blame for the violence squarely on the protesters who “have no rational, intelligent plan of the future either for the university or the Nation.”

Hoover’s tone was contemptuous of extremists and condescending toward the students “lured in” by their message. Accompanying Hoover’s letter is a memo from President Richard Nixon communicating his request that “the message it contains will reach as many students as possible.”

A full copy of the letter is available.

There’s nothing wrong with student dissent or student demands for changes in society or the display of student unhappiness over aspects of our national policy. Student opinion is a legitimate aspect of public opinion in our society. . . .

But there is real ground for concern about the extremism which led to violence, lawlessness, and disrespect for the rights of others on many college campuses during the past year. The extremists are a small minority of students and faculty members who have lost faith in America. They ridicule the flag, poke fun at American institutions, seek to destroy our society. They are not interested in genuine reform. They take advantage of the tensions, strife, and often legitimate frustrations of students to promote campus chaos. They have no rational, intelligent plan of the future either for the university or the Nation. . . .

Based on our experience in the FBI, here are some of the ways in which extremists will try to lure you into their activities:

• They’ll encourage you to lose respect for your parents and the older generation. . . .
• They’ll try to convert you to the idea that your college is “irrelevant” and a “tool of the Establishment. . . .”
• They’ll ask you to abandon your basic common sense. . . .
• They’ll try to envelop you in a mood of negativism, pessimism, and alienation toward yourself, your school, your Nation. . . .
• They’ll encourage you to disrespect the law and hate the law enforcement officer. . . .
• They’ll tell you that any action is honorable and right if it’s “sincere” or “idealistic” in motivation. . . .
• They’ll ask you to believe that you, as a student and citizen, are powerless by democratic means to effect change in our society. . . .
• They’ll encourage you to hurl bricks and stones instead of logical argument at those who disagree with your views. . . .

An Open Letter to College Students from J. Edgar Hoover, September 21, 1970, with cover letter from President Richard Nixon. (Nixon Library and Museum, Folder Campus Unrest [3 of 8]; Box 20; Subject File 1; WHCF: SMOF: Daniel Patrick Moynihan, online at https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/virtuallibrary/documents/jul10/58.pdf )

Questions for Discussion

• Explain why FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover specifically addressed his letter to college students.
• How did J. Edgar Hoover define “legitimate” protest? Was it a matter of the issue, the form, or the scale of protest?
• Why did President Nixon support Hoover’s message?

A printer-friendly version is available here .

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Interrupting Gun Violence

104 Boston University Law Review 769 (2024)

Univ. of Wisconsin Legal Studies Research Paper No. 1805

63 Pages Posted: 4 Jun 2024

Christopher Lau

University of Wisconsin Law School; Yeshiva University - Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law

Date Written: May 22, 2024

Against the backdrop of declining crime rates, gun violence and gun-related homicides have only risen over the last three years. Just as it historically has, the brunt of that violence has been borne by poor Black and brown communities. These communities are especially impacted: they are not only far more likely to be the victims of gun violence, but are also the primary targets of police surveillance and harassment. People of color are disproportionately prosecuted for gun crimes, which, in part, prompted the Black Public Defenders Amicus Brief in support of expanding gun rights in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen. Recognizing that the carceral approach of policing and prosecution has failed to prevent gun violence and has harmed Black and brown communities, this Article sets forth community violence interruption groups as a promising decarceral alternative. Violence interruption groups address violence by working with the people who are most impacted by cyclical gun violence and intervene by mediating conflicts, defusing imminent violence, and encouraging people to give up their firearms. Building on the work of abolitionist scholars and organizers, this Article centers the role of Violence Interrupters as an important alternative to policing and punitive prosecution. It explores legal changes that might minimize the legal barriers to violence interruption, including statutory reform, mens rea reform, expansion of the Second Amendment, and recognition of an innocent possession defense.

Keywords: policing, criminal law, violence interruption, gun violence

JEL Classification: K14

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Christopher Lau (Contact Author)

University of wisconsin law school ( email ).

975 Bascom Mall Madison, WI 53706 United States

Yeshiva University - Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law ( email )

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Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Literary Terms and Techniques › Russian Formalism

Russian Formalism

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on October 19, 2020 • ( 1 )

Russian Formalism, a movement of literary criticism and interpretation, emerged in Russia during the second decade of the twentieth century and remained active until about 1930. Members of what can be loosely referred to as the Formalist school emphasized first and foremost the autonomous nature of literature and consequently the proper study of literature as neither a reflection of the life of its author nor as byproduct of the historical or cultural milieu in which it was created. In this respect, proponents of a formalist approach to literature attempted not only to isolate and define the “formal” properties of poetic language (in both poetry and prose) but also to study the way in which certain aesthetically motivated devices (e.g., defamiliarization [ ostranenie ]) determined the literariness or artfulness of an object.

From its inception, the Russian Formalist movement consisted of two distinct scholarly groups, both outside the academy: the Moscow Linguistic Circle, which was founded by the linguist Roman Jakobson in 1915 and included Grigorii Vinokur and Petr Bogatyrev, and the Petersburg OPOJAZ ( O bščestvo izučenija PO ètičeskogo JAZ yka , “Society for the Study of Poetic Language”), which came into existence a year later and was known for scholars such as Viktor Shklovsky, Iurii Tynianov, Boris Eikhenbaum, Boris Tomashevskii, and Victor Vinogradov. (It should be noted that the term “formalist” was initially applied pejoratively to the Moscow Linguistic Circle and OPOJAZ.) Although the leading figures in the Russian Formalist movement tended to disagree with one another on what constituted formalism, they were united in their attempt to move beyond the psychologism and biographism that pervaded nineteenth-century Russian literary scholarship. Although the Symbolists had partially succeeded in redressing the imbalance of content over form, they “could not rid themselves of the notorious theory of the ‘harmony of form and content’ even though it clearly contradicted their bent for formal experimentation and discredited it by making it seem mere ‘aestheticism'” (Eikhenbaum, “Theory” 112).

Viktor Shklovsky/The Daily Star

In many ways, however, the Formalists remained indebted to two leading nineteenth-century literary and linguistic theoreticians, Aleksandr Veselovskii (1838- 1906) and Aleksander Potebnia (1835-81). Veselovskii’s work in comparative studies of literature and folklore as well as in the theory of literary evolution attracted the attention of the Formalists (particularly Shklovsky, Eikhenbaum, and Vladimir Propp), who found much of interest in his positivist notions of literary history and the evolution of poetic forms. More specifically, as Peter Steiner argues, “mechanistic Formalism was in some respects a mirror image of Veselovskii’s poetics” insofar as both stressed the “genetic” aspect in their theories of literary evolution.

Like the Formalists, Potebnia made a careful distinction between practical and poetic language. But his wellknown maxim that “art is thinking in images” (an idea, it should be noted, that was promoted earlier by midnineteenth- century literary critics Vissarion Belinskii and Nikolai Chemyshevskii) made him an object of derision in Formalist writings. Shklovsky categorically objected to Potebnia’s notion of the image, arguing that since the same image could be found in various writers’ works, the image itself was less important than the techniques used by poets to arrange images. Shklovsky further noted that images were common in both prosaic (common, everyday language) and poetic language; hence, the image could not be considered uniquely essential to verbal art. Potebnia’s theories led to “far-fetched interpretations” and, what is more important, knowledge about the object itself rather than the poetic de vice(s) that enabled one to perceive the object (Shklovsky, “Art” 6). Above all, it was “literariness,” rather than either image or referent, that the Formalists pursued in their studies of poetry and prose. With slight variations, literariness in Formalism denoted a particular essential function present in the relationship or system of poetic works called literature.

The personal and intellectual cooperation of the Moscow Linguistic Circle and OPOJAZ yielded several volumes of essays (Sborniki po teorii poeticheskogo iazyka [Studies in the theory of poetic language], 6 vols., 1916- 23). Given that many of the Formalists had been students of the Polish linguist Jan Baudoin de Courtenay and were well apprised of the latest developments made in linguistics by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure , it is not surprising that most of the essays in these volumes reflect a predominant interest in linguistics (see Jakubinskii, “O zvukakh stikhotvomago iazyka” [On the sounds of poetic language], 1916; and Brik, “Zvukovye povtory” [Sound repetitions], 1917). But while members of the Moscow Linguistic Circle considered the study of poetics to fall under the broader category of linguistics, OPOJAZ Formalists (such as Eikhenbaum or Viktor Zhirmunskii in “Zadachi pofetiki” [The tasks of poetics], Nachala, 1921) insisted that the two be kept distinct. Shklovsky, for instance, remained predominantly concerned with literary theory (the laws of expenditure and economy in poetic language, general laws of plots and general laws of perception) rather than with linguistics, while Eikhenbaum and Tynianov are best known for their work as literary historians. Other Formalists, such as Tomashevskii (who was also interested in prose) and Jakobson, approached meter and rhythm in verse with a statistical approach and attempted to isolate the metrical laws in operation.

More specifically, the Formalists understood poetic language as operating both synchronically and, as Tzvetan Todorov notes, in an autonomous or “autotelic” fashion. The Formalists consistently stressed the internal mechanics of the poetic work over the semantics of extraliterary systems , that is, politics, ideology, economics, psychology, and so on. Thus, Roman Jakobson’s 1921 analysis of futurist poet Velemir Khlebnikov, and especially his notion of the samovitoe slovo (“self-made word”) and zaum (“transrational language”), serves essentially to illustrate the proposition that poetry is an utterance directed toward “expression” ( Noveishaia russkaia potziia [Recent Russian poetry]). Indeed, the futurist exploration of the exotic realm of zaum parallels the Formalist preoccupation with sound in poetic language at the phonemic level. In a similar way, essays such as Eikhenbaum’s “How Gogol’s ‘Overcoat’ Is Made” (1919, trans., 1978), which examined narrative devices and acoustic wordplay in the text without drawing any extraliterary, sociocultural conclusions, emphasized the autonomous, selfreferential nature of verbal art. One of the most important of the devices Eikhenbaum described in that essay was skaz. Skaz , which in Russian is the root of the verb skazat’, “to tell,” may be compared to “free indirect discourse” (in German, erlebte Rede ), which is marked by the grammar of third-person narration and the style, tone, and syntax of direct speech on the part of the character.

Certain Formalists were not quite so eager to dismiss issues of content, however: Zhirmunskii maintained an interest in the thematic level of the poetic work; Tynianov considered an understanding of byt , the content of everyday, common language and experience as opposed to consciously poetic language, essential to any analysis of a poetic work. Rather than resolving the issue of form versus content, the Formalists tended instead to downplay it or to reframe it in new terms. For example, Eikhenbaum asserted the need to “destroy these traditional correlatives [form and content] and so to enrich the idea of form with new significance” (Eikhenbaum, “Theory” 115). “Technique,” continued Eikhenbaum in the same essay, is “much more significant in the long-range evolution of formalism than is the notion of ‘form'” (115). In his defense of the primacy of form, Shklovsky explained that “a new form appears not in order to express a new content, but in order to replace an old form, which has already lost its artistic value” (“Connection” 53).

Rejecting the subjectivism of nineteenth-century literary scholarship, the Formalists insisted that the study of literature be approached by means of a scientific and objective methodology. Their emphasis upon the scientific study of poetic language may be viewed in four ways. First, it may be traced to the more general nineteenth- century West European turn toward classification, genealogy, and evolution in the human sciences. In his best-known work, Morphology of the Folktale (1928, trans., 1958), Propp, a somewhat more peripheral yet not unimportant figure in the Formalist movement, employed the rhetoric and methodology of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Georges Cuvier in his attempt to isolate certain regularly recurring features of the folktale. Second, the Russian Formalists viewed their work as a direct challenge to what they perceived as the subjectivism and mysticism inherent in the Symbolist movement (i.e., the literature and criticism of Aleksander Blok, Bely, and Viacheslav Ivanov, among others). Tomashevskii went so far as to denounce the futurists as well as the Symbolists, claiming that it was futurism, especially, that “intensified to a hyperbolic clarity those features which had previously appeared only in hidden, mystically masked forms of Symbolism” (“Literature” 54). Third, Formalism sought to create a professional discipline independent of nineteenth-century configurations of university scholarship. And fourth, the Formalist shift toward science may also be considered as a response to the broader (and more radical) social, economic, and political transformations that the influx of industry and new technology helped to precipitate throughout early twentieth-century Russia. Not surprisingly, the poetic fetishization of the machine found in futurist poetics and avant-garde aesthetics quickly made its way into Formalist thought. Shklovsky’s analyses of poetic works are distinguished by his reliance upon the metaphor of the machine (Steiner 44-67) and the rhetoric of technology to account for such poetic devices and formal laws as automatization and defamiliarization. Ironically, objectives of scientificity in Formalist literary study were held up as an ideal, but only insofar as the Formalists believed scientificity would shield their theory from external influences, since everything outside the poetic system could only corrupt and obfuscate data extrapolated from the text. By 1930 it was clear that this was not to be the case.

For Shklovsky, “literariness” is a function of the process of defamiliarization, which involves “estranging,” “slowing down,” or “prolonging” perception and thereby impeding the reader’s habitual, automatic relation to objects, situations, and poetic form itself (see “Art” 12). According to Shklovsky, the difficulty involved in the process is an aesthetic end in itself, because it provides a heightened sensation of life. Indeed, the process of “laying bare” the poetic device, such as the narrative selfreflexiveness of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and its emphasis on the distinction between story and plot (see Theory of Prose ), remained for Shklovsky one of the primary signs of artistic self-consciousness.

The notion that new literary production always involves a series of deliberate, self-conscious deviations from the poetic norms of the preceding genre and/or literary movement remained fundamental to Shklovsky’s and other Formalists’ theories of literary evolution. Tynianov’s and Jakobson’s notion of the “dominant” approximates Shklovsky’s emphasis on defamiliarization, albeit as a feature of the diachronic system, inasmuch as it demands that other devices in the poetic text be “transformed” or pushed to the background to allow for the “foregrounding” of the dominant device. The function of the dominant in the service of literary evolution included the replacement of canonical forms and genres by new forms, which in turn would become canonized and, likewise, replaced by still newer forms.

Toward the end of the Formalist period, the emphasis on the synchronic nature of poetic devices was gradually mediated by a growing realization that literature and language should be considered within their diachronic contexts as well. Some critics— Krystyna Pomorska, Fredric Jameson , Jurij Striedter— regard this later shift in Formalist theory (as described particularly in the works of Tynianov) toward establishing a set of systemic relations between the internal and external organization of the poetic work as protostructuralist. However, newly emerging literary groups such as the Bakhtin Linguistic Circle ( M.M. Bakhtin , Pavel Medvedev, Valentin Voloshinov) and Prague School of Structuralism (Jan Mukarovsky) found the Formalists’ attempts to incorporate a diachronic view of the literary work insufficient. Critics (e.g., Medvedev) attacked the Formalists for refusing to address social and ideological concerns in poetic language. The same criticism, of course, was leveled at the Formalists by the Soviet state (especially by Anatolii Lunacharskii and Lev Trotskii), and with much more serious consequences. Various individuals and groups advocating or at least incorporating a Marxist perspective on literature, including members of the “sociological school” as well as the Bakhtin school in the 1920s, attacked the Formalists for neglecting the social and ideological discourses impinging upon the structure and function of the poetic work. In The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship (1928), Medvedev dismisses the Formalists primarily for failing to provide an adequate sociological and philosophical justification for their theories. While many critics (e.g., Victor Erlich) approach Bakhtin’s work as distinct from that of the Formalist school, others (e.g., Gary Saul Morson and Striedter) view Bakhtin’s work as historically connected to the broader aims and implications of the Russian Formalist movement. Despite Tynianov and Jakobson’s attempt to connect the aims of Formalism to the broader issues of culture (as an entire complex of systems), Russian Formalism remained committed to the idea that “literariness” alone, rather than the referent and its various contingencies, historical and otherwise, was the proper focus of literary scholarship.

Perhaps the ongoing, seemingly irresoluble debate over what constitutes Formalism (both then and now) arises in part from what Jurij Striedter describes as the “dialogic” nature of Formalism itself. The Formalists, especially Tynianov, based their theories of literary evolution (and their own role therein) largely upon Hegel ‘s dialectical method. In his summary of the contributions of the Formalist movement, Eikhenbaum ironically concluded that “when we have a theory that explains everything, a ready-made theory explaining all past and future events and therefore needing neither evolution nor anything like it—then we must recognize that the formal method has come to an end” (“Theory” 139). Eikhenbaum’s vision of a type of Formalist dialectics suggests the dynamic character of the movement as a whole, though external political pressure was surely also a factor by the time Eikhenbaum wrote his essay in 1926.

Shklovsky’s 1930 denunciation of Formalism signaled not just that political pressures had worsened but that the de facto end of the Formalist movement had arrived. Even before Shklovsky was forced to abandon Formalism to political exigencies, the Moscow Linguistic Circle and OPOJAZ had already dissolved in the early 1920s, the former in 1920 with the departure of its founder, Roman Jakobson, for Czechoslovakia, the latter in 1923. With the banning of all artistic organizations (including the various associations of proletarian writers) and the introduction of “socialist realism” as the new, official socialist literature of the Soviet Union in 1932, the Russian Formalist movement came to an official close.

The Formalist approach continued to make itself felt, however, in European and, later, American literary scholarship (though, it should be noted, the formalism of new criticism possessed no direct relation to Russian Formalism). The immediate heirs to the Formalist legacy were the Prague Linguistic Circle (founded in 1926 by Jakobson and a group of Czech linguists) and the Bakhtin Linguistic Circle. The contributions of the Prague Linguistic Circle (especially of Mukarovsky) eventually made their way into the literary discourses of French structuralism. The work of French structural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss echoes and acknowledges the work of Propp and, to a lesser extent, Tynianov’s interest in cultural and literary systems. The Bakhtin Linguistic Circle’s work (which first attracted the attention of Western scholars in the 1970s) extends several Formalist concerns, not the least of which deal with narrative theory and discourse in the novel. The development of structural-semiotic research and the emergence of the Tartu–Moscow Semiotic School in the 1960s (see the writings of such scholars as Viacheslav Ivanov, Iurii Lotman, Vladimir Toporov, Boris Gasparov, and Boris Uspenskii, to name just a few) may also be viewed as an extension of the aims and interests of both formalism and structuralism. Specifically, semiotic research continues to renew in various ways the Formalist emphasis upon language and the devices therein that function to generate meaning as sign systems.

In the United States, the Formalist approach found a sympathetic cousin in New Criticism, which emphasized, though in organic forms actually reminiscent of Russian Symbolism, the literary text as a discrete entity whose meaning and interpretation need not be contaminated by authorial intention, historical conditions, or ideological demands. Poststructuralism (and  Deconstruction ) in the 1970s and 1980s, though a partial critique of the organic notions of form in much American New Criticism, nevertheless extended certain Formalist assumptions. Figures as diverse as Roland Barthes , Paul de Man , Juia Kristeva , and Fredric Jameson are all heavily indebted to the aims and strategies of Russian Formalism.

Further Reading Stephen Bann and John E. Bowlt, eds., Russian Formalism: A Collection of Articles and Texts in Translation (i973); Osip Brik, “Zvukovye povtory” [Sound repetitions], Sbomiki po teorii poeticheskago iazyka 2 (1917); Boris Eikhenbaum, “Kak sdelana ‘Shinel” Gogolia” (1919, “How Gogol’s ‘Overcoat’ Is Made,” Gogol from the Twentieth Century: Eleven Essays, ed. and trans. Robert A. Maguire, 1974), “Teoriia ‘formalnogometoda'” (1927, “TheTheory of the ‘Formal Method,”‘ Lemon and Reis [appeared first in Ukrainian in 1926]); Roman Jakobson, “The Dominant” (Matejka and Pomorska), Noveishaia russkaia potziia [Recent Russian poetry] (1921, Selected Writings, vol. 5,1979); Lev Jakubinskii, “O zvukakh stikhotvornago iazyka” [On the sounds of poetic language], Sbomiki po teorii poeticheskago iazyka 1 (1916); Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis, eds. and trans., Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays (1965); Ladislav Matejka and Krystyna Pomorska, eds., Readings in Russian Poetics: Formalist and Structuralist Views (1978); P. N. Medvedev, Formal’nyi metod v literaturovedenii (Kriticheskoe wedenie v sotsiologicheskuiu poetiku) (1928, The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics, trans. Albert J. Wehrle, 1978 [sometimes attributed also to M. M. Bakhtin]); Christopher Pike, ed. and trans., The Futurists, the Formalists, and the Marxist Critique (1979); Vladimir Propp, Morfologiia skazki (1928, Morphology of the Folktale, trans. Laurence Scott, 1958, 2d ed., ed. Louis A. Wagner, 1968); Victor Shklovsky, “Iskusstvo kak priem” (1917,”Art as Technique,” Lemon and Reis), “On the Connection between Devices of Siuzhet Construction and General Stylistic Devices” (1919, Bann and Bowlt), 0 teorii prozy (1927, Theory of Prose, trans. Benjamin Sher, 1990), “Tristram Shendi: Sterna i teoriia romana” [Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and the theory of the novel] (1921, “Sterne’s Tristram Shandy: Stylistic Commentary,” Lemon and Reis); B. V. Tomashevskii, “Literatura i biografiia” (1923, “Literature and Biography,” Matejka and Pomorska), Teoriia Literatury [Theory of literature] (1928); Iurii Tynianov, “O literaturnoi evoliucii” (1929, “On Literary Evolution,” Matejka and Pomorska), The Problem of Verse Language (1924, ed. and trans. Michael Sosa and Brent Harvey, 1981); Iurii Tynianov and Roman Jakobson, “Problemy izucheniia literatury i iazyka” (1928, “Problems in the Study of Literature and Language,” Matejka and Pomorska). Victor Erlich, Russian Formalism: History-Doctrine (1955, 3d ed., 1981); Aage A. Hansen-Löve, Der russische Formalismus (1978); Robert Louis Jackson and Stephen Rudy, eds., Russian Formalism: A Retrospective Glance (1985); Fredric Jameson, The Prison-House of Language: A Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism (1972); Daniel P. Lucid, ed., Soviet Semiotics: An Anthology (1977); L. Μ. O’Toole and Ann Shukman, eds., Formalism: History, Comparison, Genre (1978), Formalist Theory (1977); Krystyna Pomorska, Russian Formalist Theory and Its Poetic Ambience (1968); Peter Steiner, Russian Formalism: A Metapoetics (1984); Jurij Striedter, Literary Structure, Evolution, and Value (1989); Ewa Μ. Thompson, Russian Formalism and Anglo-American New Criticism (1971); Tzvetan Todorov, Critique de la critique (1984, Literature and Its Theorists: A Personal View of Twentieth-Century Criticism, trans. Catherine Porter, 1987); Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution (trans. Rose Strunsky, 1975). Source: Groden, Michael, and Martin Kreiswirth. The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

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Categories: Literary Terms and Techniques , Russian Formalism

Tags: Defamiliarization , Grigorii Vinokur , Linguistics , Literary Criticism , Literary Theory , Moscow Linguistic Circle , OPOJAZ , ostranenie , Petr Bogatyrev , Roman Jakobson , Society for the Study of Poetic LanguageSociety for the Study of Poetic Language

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