This paper is part of a symposium focusing on the Safe School Study recently completed by the National Institute of Education. The symposium attempted to delineate the critical methodological problems arising from ethnographic research in the school setting on school violence and delinquency, and to report recent findings from studies using…

It has been assumed that schools play a dramatic role in creating school crime. This paper, by using ethnographic data, demonstrates the inter-relationships among administrative styles, deterrence, commitment, and disruption. It appears that legitimacy of rules even within a school's bureaucracy needs to be developed through negotiating order with…

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter, by utilizing ethnographic data, develops an understanding of the interrelationships among administrative styles, deterrence, commitment, and disruption. The effect of change in administrative styles on the character of order and disruption in a desegregated…