Daily Archive for May 21st, 2005

SCHOOL VIOLENCE (AND THREATS THEREOF) AND PREVENTION

Our local (Charlottesville) newspaper (Daily Progress; see www.DailyProgress.com) has carried front-page stories recently about issues involving school safety. Yesterday (5/20) the story was about 4th and 5th graders bringing guns to school in a nearby county school system. This morning’s story (5/21) is a continuation of a story about the arrest and trial of two older students (a girl, 15, and a boy, 16):

“One of two Christian school students accused of threatening classmates on an alleged hit list has had a history of bringing knives to school and recently promised “to Columbine” individuals named on a list, according to testimony from an Albemarle County police detective.”

Granted, the students have not been tried and convicted, and opinions about the students are varied. But I wonder what incidents like these say about our society and our willingness to confront the issue of prevention.

According to the newspaper story, the boy had previously brought a knife to school and held it to an other student’s face (for which the paper reports he had gotten “into trouble” (consequences unspecified). He is described by his mother as “a very gregarious and positive kid…. He’s always been a very nice kid. I relize that the way this has been presented it doesn’t seem that way.” He had been homeschooled until this year. A probation officer testified that the boy “is currently on a suspended probation period on two felony burglary charges, three petit larceny charges and one charge of vandalism.” Advocates for the girl requested “that the proceedings be closed to the media because it would involve testimony about the girl’s mental health.” The judge ordered that the hearing remain open; the girl’s attorney declined to present evidence.

Reports like these make me wonder about our attitudes toward punishment and prevention. As a society, we seem to believe that more severe punishment is more effective, but the research data do not support that notion. What is more effective is punishment that is consistent, appropriate for the age of the offender and the seriousness of the offense, and corrective (instructive). The punishment of offenders in our society, including kids who behave inappropriately in school, is often way off the mark. And then there is the matter of early and effective intervention to prevent the kind of incident that makes the news. In most cases, we find a history of troubling behavior (aggressive behavior, aggressive talk, prior offenses) that are ignored, justified by someone, and allowed to escalate to far more serious levels before parents or school personnel or anyone else takes them seriously.

But, of course, early intervention and prevention demands taking risks on the side of false positives. False positives are not desirable, but they’re probably less undesirable than false negatives. It’s the false negatives (no, this kid’s behavior is not a problem, really) that I think should worry us most. Nobody has been able to invent prevention without intervention, and nobody has been able to invent the perfectly accurate method of identification (so that there are no false positives or false negatives).