NCJ Number
184650
Journal
Crime Victims Report Volume: 4 Issue: 3 Dated: July/August 2000 Pages: 33-45
Editor(s)
Ellen J. Halbert
Date Published
2000
Length
5 pages
Annotation
Extremely lethal school violence throughout the United States has forced community leaders, educators, and law enforcement officials to develop new ideas and ways of intervening in potentially deadly situations before disaster strikes, and school officials in Massachusetts have recognized the need to have a comprehensive plan in place to respond to warning signs of violence.
Abstract
Massachusetts school officials have at least three compelling reasons to ignore threats of violence: (1) They have a strong economic incentive to be indifferent to threatened violence in light of a 1999 court decision that rewards schools with immunity from liability for doing nothing; (2) Education professionals are not trained to assess threats so they can tell the difference between a serious threat, a non-serious expression of anger, and a joke; and (3) Administrators fear that perpetrators of school-based threats and the Civil Liberties Union will sue schools over due process and first amendment rights of students if school officials take aggressive steps to intervene in potentially dangerous situations before violence erupts. Nonetheless, constitutional rights and school safety should be balanced in meaningful interventions that focus on and assess actual threats of violence. When a student indicates a desire to cause harm through words, drawings, or actions, trained professionals should assess the threat to determine whether the threat is real and where the threat lies on a continuum of likely harm in terms of probability and severity of violence. Regardless of whether a threat assessment is conducted, school and law enforcement officials should be empowered to sanction any student who engages in threatening conduct without fear of a lawsuit claiming the school violated a student's first amendment rights.