The Legal Context of School Violence: The Effectiveness of Federal, State, and Local Law Enforcement Efforts to Reduce Gun Violence in Schools

In the wake of recent school shootings, communities and legislatures are searching for law enforcement solutions to the perceived epidemic of school violence. A variety of legal measures have been debated and proposed. These include: the enactment of tougher gun control laws and more vigorous federal and local enforcement of existing gun control laws; the enactment of laws imposing civil or criminal liability on parents for their children's violent behavior; the establishment of specialized courts and prosecution strategies for handling juveniles who are charged with weapons offenses; stricter enforcement of school disciplinary codes; reform of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to make it easier to expel students for weapons violations; and greater use of alternative schools as placements for students who are charged with weapons violations.
  This article provides a legal and empirical analysis of proposed legislation in these areas as informed by social science research on the patterns of school violence, gun acquisition by juveniles, and the effectiveness of various laws and law enforcement measures. It proposes and discusses recommendations for legal reform. While efforts to reduce school violence will be most effective at the state and local levels, the United States federal government has an important role to play, particularly in federal‐state partnerships aimed at disrupting illegal gun markets, and through the formulation of national standards and guidelines. These standards and guidelines are for the enforcement of existing laws; inter‐agency law enforcement cooperation and information‐sharing (particularly using computer‐based analysis); effective school discipline and alternative educational settings for disruptive youth; and psycho‐educational interventions designed to detect and prevent school violence in the first place.     

School shootings, the media, and public fear: Ingredientsfor a moral panic

Recent shootings at schools around the country have resulted in widespread fear and panic among both students and parents, prompting a myriad of responses to make schools safer. Yet, empirical data suggest that despite the recent shootings, schools remain extremely safe places for children, and school violence is lower today than it was several years ago. The present research focuses on the construction of school shootings as a moral panic, with examinations of the roles played by the media, the public, and politicians in using isolated incidents (albeit heinous offenses) to support their interests. The interactions between these groups and the resultant punitive actions directed toward juveniles are discussed. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Rewarding Dysfunction: Interest Groups and Intended Legislative Failure

Why do majority parties choose to add extreme dead on arrival bills to their legislative agendas rather than enactable legislation? Majorities in Congress choose this strategy in order to accrue political support from their allied interest groups who reliably reward this legislative behavior. By examining all bills that receive floor consideration from 2003 through 2012, as well as interest group scorecards and campaign commercials, I find support for my theory. Dead‐on‐arrival bills generate electoral benefits for majority‐party lawmakers, are more politically valuable than other bills, and are more often used to credit rather than punish legislators.     

“It’s Better to Overreact”: School Officials’ Fear and Perceived Risk of Rampage Attacks and the Criminalization of American Public Schools

In recent decades, highly-publicized school rampage attacks with multiple victims have caused widespread fear throughout the United States. Pulling from in-depth interviews with school officials (administrators, counselors, security and police officers, and teachers), this article discusses officials’ perceptions of fear and risk regarding rampage shootings and how this relates to their justification for and acquiescence to the expansion of punitive discipline and increased security. Data collected in this study provide additional understanding of the causes of enhanced discipline and security from the perspective of those tasked with administering school safety in the wake of Columbine. Utilizing insight from moral panic theory, the findings suggest that, when the genuinely high potential cost of school massacres fused with an exaggerated perception of their likelihood and randomness, school rampage attacks came to be viewed as a risk that could not be tolerated and must be avoided at nearly any cost.     

CONGRESS AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: An Exercise in Symbolic Politics

Even when federal authorities were legally empowered to impose a death sentence, the sanction was rarely carried out. Between 1930 and 1976, there were only 33 such executions. During the past decade, bills, both imposing and abolishing capital punishment, have been introduced repeatedly in the U.S. Congress. Furthermore, certain members of Congress have demonstrated intense interest in such efforts. The continued debate and interest is better explained by the symbolic rather than tangible components of such legislation. This article examines four aspects of the symbolic component of federal death penalty legislation: reassurance function, moral-educative function, model for the states, and the deterrence debate.     

Studying School Shootings: Challenges and Considerations for Research

Studying school shootings can be both a fruitful and challenging endeavor. The random nature of these events provides a number of challenges for studying this phenomenon. This paper explores these concerns as they relate to developing and implementing studies, as well as interpreting related findings by drawing on previous research that examined the effects of the 1999 Columbine High School, the 2007 Virginia Tech, and the 2008 Northern Illinois University shootings. Ways in which these issues may be overcome and, more generally, the research can be moved forward also are discussed.     

The impacts of the Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University shootings on fear of crime on campus

There has been a substantial increase in the number of mass shooting incidents on college campuses in the United States in recent years. Although empirical research examined the impacts of secondary school shootings on student fear, there have been no comparable studies of the impacts of campus shootings. This study began to fill this void by examining responses to surveys administered to convenience samples of students enrolled at the University of South Carolina prior to and following the mass shooting incidents on the campuses of Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University. Findings indicated that both shootings were associated with modest increases in various measures of fear. Other findings were that the impacts of the shootings depended on both the type of fear measured (e.g., general fear versus fear of being a victim of specific crimes) and student characteristics such as age, sex, and race.     

Missing gender in cases of infamous school violence: Investigating research and media explanations

The shootings at Columbine and Jonesboro, along with multiple shootings at five other schools, captured the nation's attention and received widespread media coverage. Utilizing a feminist perspective that addresses masculinity, we explore research and major newspaper coverage of infamous school violence to determine how extensively gender is considered as a contributing factor. Results indicate that data sources on violent deaths at school miss the gendered nature of the violence. Similarly, media coverage of the seven cases under study discount the role of masculinities, bullying, and male violence against girls and women, and few of the policy recommendations address these concerns. The relative absence of attention to the gendered nature of school violence encourages incomplete explanations and ineffective policies.     

Bicameralism and Minority-Party Influence on Legislative Development: Evidence from House Standing Committee Votes

The ability of the minority party to influence legislation in Congress is debated. Most bills are passed with large bipartisan majorities, yet the House, where most legislation is developed, is seen as a majority-party-dominated institution. I develop a theory of House minority-party influence at the committee markup stage as a result of the Senate’s institutional rules. An original data set of congressional committee votes shows that minority-party support in House committees predicts House and Senate passage. During unified party control of the chambers, an increase in Senate majority-party seats results in lower minority-party support for the legislation in the House committee, while during divided party control of Congress, the House majority passes more extreme bills as the chambers polarize. Even in the majority-party-dominated House, the minority’s preferences are incorporated into legislation, and the Senate’s institutional rules moderate bills to a significant degree.     

Timing and Outcome of Legislation: Brazilian Pension Reform in a Bicameral Perspective

In 1995 and 2003, Brazilian Presidents Cardoso and Lula da Silva submitted almost identical pension reform bills to Congress. However, these bills had very different fates in terms of the outcomes of congressional deliberation and the timing of enactment. What explains timing and outcomes of legislation? Using Brazilian pension reform as a case, this article explains legislative timing and outcomes from bicameral and bargaining perspectives. It examines two hypotheses: (1) bicameral incongruence of policy preferences increases the likelihood of legislative gridlock; and (2) impatience accelerates the timing of legislation. Evidence from archival research and interviews with Brazilian legislators strongly support these hypotheses.     

School Shootings and Security Lock-downs: Myths,Positive School Climates,and Safer Campuses

School shooting tragedies and the juvenile justice system’s movement toward a retributive and punitive framework gravely impacted how primary and secondary school students, disproportionately urban districts, used security measures to lock down campuses and build “fortress-like” schools. This iteration of control on school campuses emerged in tandem with the most recent generation’s zero tolerance approach to student violence and problems; a policy widely regarded as ineffective in urban, suburban, and rural districts. As school shootings continue to impact state legislative action and public reactions to school management, this paper takes a critical approach to school security policies and reviews the evidence on the risk for school violence and how to move away from student control approaches that do not improve school safety. Instead, the incorporation of prosocial education and school engagement efforts finds that school and student safety is improved. These, and related approaches to student body management, decreases campus violence and may also minimize the risk of some school shootings - as rare as these tragic incidents are across the nation’s schools. The interplay of schools, students, and the juvenile and family courts is ongoing. Knowing how school districts can best approach their campus environments, safety, and learning is important for school social workers and court personnel because of how often these systems work, or do not work, together.     

Bills from the Floor: Why Governing Party Groups Initiate their Own Legislation

In parliamentary systems, why do party groups of the government camp initiate their own bills instead of going through the cabinet? This article suggests that such governing party group bills occur for three reasons: (a) cabinets hand out bills to the parties on the floor; (b) party groups or MPs want to signal to constituencies; or (c) parties on the floor are dissatisfied with cabinet policy making. Arguing that the absolute and relative importance of these explanations varies with institutional context, country-specific hypotheses with regard to the number of governing party group bills in Germany are tested. As expected, mechanisms (a) and (c) are especially important in explaining the occurrence of governing party group legislation in Germany.     

Circumventing Legislative Committees: The US Senate

Committees have been established to improve legislation and make expert recommendations. However, many bills do not appear in committees, and how they reach the Senate floor varies in style and strategy. We develop and test expectations for when, as well as how, bills bypass Senate committee proceedings. The procedures legislators use to circumvent committees and what makes committee bypassing more probable are explored. The findings clearly demonstrate that bills introduced by ideologically extreme minority-party members are more likely to bypass committees. We also show a clear shift in the procedural choices senators make as the Senate becomes increasingly polarized. This article highlights the procedural choices members make, how these choices produce differing outcomes, and suggests evidence of positive agenda power for individual minority-party senators.     

科技政策、行政规则与司法审查

现代国家中,立法机关对于科技政策法案往往无法作详细的规定,而委诸行政机关以行政立法或行政规则作进一步的规范,而且这类规范会随着科技的发展或研究的最新发现,作相应的调整。在此情况之下,此类科技性规范性文件的制定程序、参与主体、司法审查可能性及其审查密度等问题,均值得研究。本文以司法审查为研究重点,介绍美国的经验,期望对中国能有所借鉴。     

Are Active Shootings Temporally Contagious? An Empirical Assessment

“Active Shootings,” which include shootings in public, confined areas such as schools, often traumatize communities and attract intense media coverage. Proposed policy responses to the phenomenon, such as concealing information as to casualty counts and even the identities of shooters, often suppose that active shootings are “contagious,” in that previous occurrences can enhance the likelihood of subsequent occurrences. This study marks the first attempt at assessment of the contagiousness of the active shooting phenomenon, and deploys a statistical model—the series hazard model—that is well-suited to the substantive issue of contagion as well as the fine-grained nature of the active shooting data. Results indicate that the hazard of observed active shootings was a function of the number of active shootings that preceded them in the previous two weeks.     

Averted targeted school killings from 1900-2016

Mass shootings, particularly those that occur on school grounds, often generate intense political debate. Following the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglass High School, questions arose on how to prevent these tragedies. Typically, the response generated from these questions revolves around mental illness, bullying prevention, and gun control. Unfortunately, the views on these topics, especially gun control, are often rooted in a strong belief system which is unwavering. Resultantly, the debate on how to avert these incidents often stops at the debate phase. This study sought to better understand how these events can be prevented by examining targeted school killings from 1900–2016 in which the suspect was stopped before the attack. The analysis revealed that the majority of attacks were prevented by other students reporting the threat of an impending attack to school and law enforcement authorities.     

The cost of educating children: The accounts of a nineteenth century girls' boarding school in Orléans,France

Using a collection of 73 bills of a boarding school in Orléans (France), the article examines the cost of educating a child at the end of the nineteenth century. These bills concern the four daughters of a family from the Brittany nobility who each spent about 12 years at boarding school. Items on the bills reveal details of the daily life of the young girls through general boarding expenses, education costs, private lessons, clothing, medicine, and trips home for the holidays. Aspects of the family life of the girls and the boarding school (meals, religious instruction, health, and welfare) are described.     

The cost of educating children: The accounts of a nineteenth century girls' boarding school in Orléans,France

Using a collection of 73 bills of a boarding school in Orléans (France), the article examines the cost of educating a child at the end of the nineteenth century. These bills concern the four daughters of a family from the Brittany nobility who each spent about 12 years at boarding school. Items on the bills reveal details of the daily life of the young girls through general boarding expenses, education costs, private lessons, clothing, medicine, and trips home for the holidays. Aspects of the family life of the girls and the boarding school (meals, religious instruction, health, and welfare) are described.     

Legislating Crime Policy from the White House: Presidential Success with Congress in the Passage of Federal Crime Control Policy

Previous research has found that presidents, in general, have the power to influence congress in the passage of federal crime control policy. What has not been fully explored is whether presidential supported bills are more likely to influence congress to pass federal crime control bills. Therefore, this study draws upon the theory that presidents influence congress to test the hypothesis that president supported legislation on crime will achieve greater success in congress than non-supported bills. Analysis of legislative, presidential and congressional data from 1946 through 1996 suggests support for the theory that presidential supported bills are 2.8 times more likely (or 185% more likely) to become law.