Guided by the following questions: (1) What are the experiences of immigrant children attending schools in communities experiencing police brutality and anti-immigrant sentiments? (2) How do middle school children of immigrants visually represent their experiences with legal violence? and (3) What are children's visions of freedom and community…

The implementation of school-based law enforcement officers, commonly referred to as school resource officers (SROs), became an increasingly popular response to school crime in the United States, particularly in the aftermath of high-profile school shootings in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Following the expansion of SRO programs came the…

High-profile school attacks highlight the need for effective school safety solutions. School safety tip lines offer a prevention-based solution. However, little is known about their effectiveness. Using a quasi-experimental multilevel design, we examined the association between school tip-line adoption and violent threats and attacks at school…

Threat assessment has been proposed as a method for schools to respond to student threats of violence that does not rely on exclusionary discipline practices (e.g., suspension, transfer, expulsion, arrest). The present study compared disciplinary consequences for 657 students in 260 schools using the Comprehensive Student Threat Assessment…

National debate over law enforcement in schools has largely overlooked student reporting of violent threats to school resource officer (SROs). This statewide assessment of Virginia high school students (n = 99,358) found that the majority of Black (64%), Hispanic (72%), White (71%), and other racial/ethnic identity (71%) students agreed the SRO…

The Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) program is a gang- and delinquency-prevention program delivered by law enforcement officers within a school setting. Originally designed in 1991 by Phoenix-area law enforcement agencies to address local needs, the program quickly spread across the United States. In this article, we describe…

Strong anti-bullying policies are foundational to effective bullying prevention. The Youth Bullying Prevention Act of 2012 (YBPA; DC Law L19-167) is among the most comprehensive bullying prevention policies across the United States and its territories. The law and its implementing regulations require all schools and youth-serving agencies…

The number of school police officers, School Resource Officers (SROs), is increasing on school campuses to assist in preventing school violence, and in particular bullying. This mixed-methods study was conducted to compare the knowledge and perceptions of SROs (N = 184) hired by independent school districts (ISD SROs) and those contracted from law…

The need for U.S. teachers to better understand School Violence Prevention is growing. Evidence suggests however, that 10 years and 10 billion dollars after the Columbine High School massacre, our public schools are not safer (www.community-matters.org). There has been an "after the fact" approach to the problem of school violence. After…

In the wake of the beating death of a Chicago high school student in September, law-enforcement officials and educators have called for renewed efforts to stem youth violence. But they also acknowledged that money and programs alone won't solve the problem. U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan traveled to…

Significant numbers of students are being pushed out of school as a result of "zero tolerance" school discipline policies. While nobody questions the need to keep schools safe, teachers, students, and parents are questioning the methods being used in pursuit of that goal. Zero tolerance policies were initially aimed at making schools safe. The…

This article explores the perceptions and reactions of school and law enforcement personnel in the successful resolution of armed hostage and barricade events in schools. A total of 12 individuals from three schools were interviewed to determine (1) their salient roles related to the situations, (2) facilitative systemic conditions, (3) to what…

The New DARE middle school program, Take Charge of Your Life, has reinvented DARE as part of a major national research study that promises to help teachers and administrators address the issues of drugs and school violence. Gone is the old-style approach to prevention in which an officer stands behind a podium and lectures students in straight…