Overview

This study profiles violence in U.S. public high schools. It is based on analysis of data from a U.S. Department of Education survey of school principals that asked about the number and types of crimes they reported to police for the 1996-97 school year. The analysis shows that violence is clustered within a relatively small percentage of locations, with about 60 percent of the violence occurring in 4 percent of the schools. This is about four times higher than would be expected based on national rates of crime.High schools are grouped by the nature and level of crimes occurring in the school. Four patterns emerge from this grouping: 1) No Crime, 2) Isolated Crime, 3) Moderate Crime and 4) Violent Crime. High schools in each group are described in terms of their student population characteristics, community characteristics, and school violence prevention efforts.The results indicate that the characteristics (size, location, socio-economic make-up) of high-violence schools differ markedly from the other schools. High schools with the highest levels of violence tended to be located in urban areas and have a high percentage of minority students, compared to high schools that reported no crime to the police. They also tended to be located in areas with high social disadvantage and residential mobility. It should be noted, however, that a relatively large minority of the schools in the Violent Crime group were located in rural areas (36%), so that the image of school violence being solely restricted to central cities is not accurate.The types of violence prevention programs differed between crime groups. The schools that experience a high level of serious violence also reported high use of prevention measures and programs that were specifically aimed at controlling violence. Schools in the Violent Crime group appeared to put more emphasis on programs geared toward changing individual behavior, such as behavioral modification or other types of individual attention. This contrasted with high schools in the other three crime groups, which tended to place a higher priority on prevention instruction or counselors within the school.

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9781497551442

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