Learning from a failure in threat assessment: 11 questions and not enough answers.

Threat assessment theory and practice have evolved significantly since Columbine. The US Secret Service's guidelines for threat assessment include 11 questions that school officials should ask to identify, investigate, and manage students of concern. Yet, no research examines how school officials implement these questions. This qualitative case study examines the way that school officials used the 11 questions with a student of concern, who underwent a threat assessment and 3 months later shot and killed a classmate and himself on school grounds. The data include deposition testimony from 12 school and district officials and more than 8,000 pages of records in the case. For each of the 11 questions, the findings reveal what the threat assessment team knew and might have learned; the findings also demonstrate the importance of multiple sources of information, a multidisciplinary team, and an investigative mindset. The questions may prove difficult to answer in "loosely coupled" systems, like schools, where information is unintentionally lost due to the organization's structural hierarchy, specialization of tasks, and heavy workloads. The findings provide critical lessons learned for threat assessment, information gathering, and violence prevention in schools.

Building Schools' Readiness to Implement a Comprehensive Approach to School Safety.

Research consistently finds that a comprehensive approach to school safety, which integrates the best scientific evidence and solid implementation strategies, offers the greatest potential for preventing youth violence and promoting mental and behavioral health. However, schools and communities encounter enormous challenges in articulating, synthesizing, and implementing all the complex aspects of a comprehensive approach to school safety. This paper aims to bridge the gap between scientific evidence and the application of that evidence in schools and communities by defining the key components of a comprehensive approach to school safety and describing how schools can assess their readiness to implement a comprehensive approach. We use readiness and implementation data from the Safe Communities Safe Schools project to illustrate these challenges and solutions. Our findings suggest that (1) readiness assessment can be combined with feasibility meetings to inform school selection for implementation of a comprehensive approach to school safety and (2) intentionally addressing readiness barriers as part of a comprehensive approach may lead to improvements in readiness (motivation and capacity) to effectively implement a comprehensive approach to school safety.

Urban and rural differences in the relationship between substance use and violence.

This article examines the relationship between substance use and violence across rural-urban and Appalachian places of residence. The data come from a larger study on the health service use of 637 men who have a history of chronic substance abuse and who were incarcerated in four Kentucky prisons. The findings generally support previous research on substance use and violence but do not support Fischer's (1995) subculture theory of urbanism. Contrary to expectations, the population size of the prisoners' residence was not significantly associated with the prisoners' levels of violent victimization, violence toward others, violence toward intimate partners, or overall violence in the year prior to incarceration. Appalachian residency was also not associated with violence. Recognizing that the effect of substance use on violence perpetrated against others does not vary significantly by urban or rural residence may be helpful for designing violence prevention programs and planning law enforcement efforts.