Commentary
Oppose the Notion of "Violence Prevention"

Whether one examines anti-bullying measures, so-called school security initiatives, or violence prevention programs, one finds, over and over again that the main theme is given as the need to "stop the problem before it starts." The numerous laws and measures are based on the notion of prevention, which is defined as something that is "used or devised to stop something from happening, or to stop people from doing a particular thing."

First and foremost, taking as one’s starting point the need to "stop violence in schools" means one necessarily targets the students as the source of the problem and, commonly, police as the solution. Students, the police and psychologists repeat over and over again, are "potentially violent" and must be "managed." By targeting students as the source of the problem, people are blocked from realizing or even discussing that problems such as bullying, depression and social isolation of students are social in nature, and thus require social solutions. They do not exist as individual problems, i.e., they do not originate in individuals, but in the social relations that characterize the society. Thus, this "prevention" approach actually blocks parents, students and teachers from uniting and working out together real solutions to the intensifying problems the youth and society face. Instead, students’ behavior is criminalized, as all are labeled "potential" threats, and everyone is to be afraid of everyone else. Teachers are to become informants and enforcers for the police. This is a recipe for disaster, not a solution!

Equally important is this: the notion of prevention justifies attacking students rights and the basic democratic premises of innocent until proven guilty, due process and habeas corpus. How so? If prevention means "stopping people from committing acts of violence" logic holds that one must be able to identify the person who will in the future commit a violent act. On this basis, the arbitrary notion of "potentially violent," that youth have a "propensity to commit violent acts" is popularized, normalized and justified. Unless one believes in clairvoyance, determining those who will commit violent crimes in the future is impossible, and inherently arbitrary. In U.S. society it will also necessarily be racist.

Just as important, the notion of "potentially violent" serves as a justification for using force against students who have committed no crime, violated no school rule. This of course violates all three of the basic democratic premises listed above. The claims to be able to "identify potentially violent youth" are in fact a justifications for impunity, where school officials can suspend and expel students at will under the guise of solving the problem of violence. Now, similar actions are to be done in the name of "school security," and "preventing terrorism."

Youth are not the source of violence in society, and criminalizing behavior on the basis of so-called intent will only make matters worse and be used to unleash more attacks on the youth. The hypocrisy of the ruling circles is revealed by examples like former President Clinton, after the Columbine tragedy in Colorado, calling on the youth to solve problems with words not violence at the same time that the US military was wantonly bombing Yugoslavia and Iraq.

The U.S. system is in contempt of itself, freely violating its own laws and constitutional guarantees, and can offer no solution to the problems facing society except more violence. In order to turn things around, students, parents and teachers must reject the notion of "violence prevention" and instead put forward the defense of their rights and the rights of all as the basis for solving the problems in society.

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Trends Since Columbine
Secret Service Attacks Youth as "Potentially Violent"

The week of April 19 marked five years since the occurrence of the Columbine tragedy, in Littleton Colorado, where 14 youth and one teacher died and 31 were wounded. One of the most significant changes that is associated with Columbine is the involvement of the U.S. Secret Service in schools and the promotion of its arbitrary model for "identifying potentially violent youth."

Ostensibly in response to the disturbing number of school shootings, beginning in 1999 the Secret Service, in a joint effort with the U.S. Department of Education, carried out what it calls its "Safe Schools Initiative." Over the course of four years, the Secret Service published three reports on "targeted school violence." Summaries of these reports have been widely disseminated in newspapers, on websites for educators, and in professional and scholarly journals. Dissemination has emphasized the notion of identifying and stopping "potentially violent" youth.

The Initiative "examined school shootings in the United States as far back as 1974, through the end of the school year in 2000, analyzing a total of 37 incidents involving 41 student attackers." The Secret Service notes that almost all those convicted in school shootings have said they felt alienated, that nobody cared about them or listened to them. Most experienced severe depression, and were at the time of the shooting experiencing a sense of great loss or personal failure.

A key component of the Initiative is the application of the Secret Service’s "threat assessment model" to schools. Taking as its starting point the already widely opposed practice of "profiling," the Secret Service says this is no longer the preferred method for evaluating "risk."

The Initiative adds, "Until recently, most law enforcement investigations of violent crime have been conducted after the offense has occurred" [emphasis in original].

In contrast, threat assessment "is a set of investigations and operational activities designed to identify, assess, and manage persons who may pose a threat of violence to identifiable targets." The main task of threat assessment is to look at "pathways of ideas and behaviors that may lead to violent action." The Secret Service says that "the question in threat assessment is not ‘What does the subject look like?’ but ‘has the subject engaged in recent behavior that suggests that he/she is moving on a path toward violence directed toward a particular target(s)’?" The Secret Service also says to "watch out" for youth interested or involved in "extremist" groups without offering any examples or guidelines for identifying such groups.

The whole approach challenges existing U.S. law, where only an act can be judged, not intent; utilizing instead the arbitrary notion of "potentially violent." Any one, particular police and school officials can brand a student’s behavior as "on a path toward violence" and thus call for their quarantine.

Far from creating a safe and secure atmosphere, the results of "assessing students as potential threats," where all are to watch out for "suspicious behavior" and school officials and teachers are supposed to "manage" any student who is depressed or upset, is to create an alienating and frightening atmosphere which stifles learning and social development.

News sources now report that it is nearly impossible to find a high school that has not suspended students for being "potentially violent," during the past five years.

Some examples:

An honor-roll high school student in Kansas was suspended for writing a poem entitled "Who Killed My Dog."

A kindergartner in New Jersey was suspended from school for saying "I’m going to shoot you" on the playground while playing cops and robbers with his classmates.

A high-school student in Oklahoma was suspended for a poem she wrote about her teacher that she never showed to anyone. The poem fell out of her backpack and was shown to school authorities by another student.

A sixth-grader in Texas was put in juvenile detention for writing a Halloween, class-project essay about a student who kills fellow students and a teacher.

Also in Texas, school officials disciplined students for wearing black armbands to mourn the victims of Columbine and to protest overly restrictive school policies.

In a local case several years ago, authorities in Eden were so concerned by alleged student threats, they pressed charges, according to the Buffalo News. "Two boys admitted talking several times in chemistry class about staging a massacre at Eden High School. A judge found the two innocent of criminal solicitation." "Still," the News reports, "the case left an indelible mark on the boys, who were cast under widespread suspicion and banned from school for months until the case was resolved."

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For Your Information
New Laws Make Bullying a Crime Based on Intent

Under the guise of preventing school violence, many states across the U.S. have or are considering adopting or modifying laws making bullying in public schools a crime. With these laws, social problems, like bullying and its causes, are made into "law and order" issues. The actual problems and solving them are ignored and youth criminalized, with police and other state agencies used against them. In addition to specifically criminalizing behavior rooted in social problems, so-called anti-bullying laws define the "crime" of bullying on the basis of intent in much the same way that the USA Patriot Act defines terrorism based on intent. At least 18 states now make bullying a crime, according to news sources.

In Georgia earlier this year, the House passed a "tougher law on bullying," according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. The measure would expand the current law to cover elementary schools as well as middle and high schools. As with many recently passed or proposed laws making bullying a crime, it calls on parents and students to make anonymous tips to their local schools and would require that all reports of bullying be investigated. The news sources do not report who is responsible for carrying out the investigations.

Significantly, the new law would change the definition of bullying, which is now defined as a student’s "willful attempt or threat to inflict injury," or an "intentional display of force" to provoke fear. Under the new definition, bullying would be defined as "any pattern of written or verbal expression or any physical act or gesture that is intended [emphasis added] to ridicule, humiliate, intimidate, or cause measurable physical or emotional distress upon one or more students in the school, on school grounds, in school vehicles, at designated school bus stops, or at school activities or sanctioned events."

In Indiana early this year, Superintendent of Public Instruction Suellen Reed actively backed a bill that would "require Indiana’s 293 school districts to adopt rules prohibiting bullying," according to the Indianapolis Star. "The bill," the Star says, "would provide a better legal definition of bullying." Senate Bill 231 defines bullying as "overt, repeated acts designed [emphasis added] to harass, ridicule, intimidate or humiliate another student." Indiana Legislatures are promoting the bill as an "alternative" to increasing funding for education, especially full-day kindergarten.

In Kentucky, two state senators want to require Kentucky school districts to establish official policies to identify, punish, and prevent bullying. Their bill passed out of the Senate Education Committee earlier this year. The legislation would require discipline codes that prohibit "harassment, intimidation or bullying of a student" for any reason, including "a characteristic" listed in Kentucky’s existing statute on hate crimes. Those characteristics include race, gender, religion, ethnicity, disability and sexual orientation, according to the Herald-Leader. The legislation, tied to earlier 1998 efforts to criminalize youth in the name of "safety," would require schools to make bullying a punishable problem that students or others could report anonymously. Districts would have to provide yearly training on bullying to employees, and report instances to the Center for School Safety, the Leader reported.

In New York State, proposed changes would present an exceedingly broad and subjective definition of bullying. Section 2803(D) of the proposed Senate Bill defines bullying as "threatening, stalking or seeking to coerce or compel a person to do something; engaging in verbal or physical conduct" [emphasis added] .

Proposed law in Louisiana defines "harassment", "intimidation", and "bullying" as "any intentional gesture or written, verbal, or physical act that: (a) A reasonable person under the circumstances should know will have the effect of harming a student or damaging his property or placing a student in reasonable fear of harm to his life or person or damage to his property; and (b) Is so severe, persistent, or pervasive that it creates an intimidating, threatening, or abusive educational environment for a student" [emphasis added].

The laws generally require that any "tip" be investigated by state authorities, thus immediately bringing state authorities into the picture even if no problem, let alone a crime, exists. They also make determination of "bullying" a completely subjective matter of whether an administrator or teacher or parent thinks an individual intended to be bullying.

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Education and the "War on Terrorism"
School Security Organization Declares Allegiance to the President

The National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO) is calling on congress to enact an "Education Homeland Security Act," according to a press release on their web site. NASRO is calling for "terrorism training for school officers and educational staff," as well as increased funding "for school law enforcement officers to prevent school terrorist attacks, and create national standards and funding for school security assessments, emergency planning and security-related information sharing with public safety officials."

Such "information sharing" and "national standards" are part and parcel of bringing school security officers under the command of federal police agencies, and ultimately under the command of the President. The National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO) is the nation’s largest professional association for school resource officers, representing over 10,000 school-based police officers from rural, suburban and urban schools in all 50 states. They are commonly armed police officers, in the schools, reporting to local police departments.

The press release not only claims there are "schools at risk of terrorism" but also voices concerns about "current and proposed budget cuts" to school resource officers. These cuts, they say, will leave "schools unprepared for dealing with terrorist threats like suicide bombers or attacks with chemical, biological and other weapons of mass destruction." There are no known threats of this kind.

Emphasizing their loyalty to the President, the press release stated: "We stand united with our President and Congress in protecting our nation from terrorism and we call upon them to provide our front-line school officers and educators with the new tools needed to protect our most valuable national resources: Our children and educators," said Curt Lavarello, Executive Director of the National Association of School Resource Officers. "As we very appropriately fund sky marshals for protecting our airline flights, we must also not leave our school officers and educators handcuffed and poorly equipped in the war against terrorism," Lavarello added.

"Police officers must be ever-vigilant in their preparedness as first responders to terrorist acts. Given the proper resources and support, our school-based officers are one of the nation’s greatest assets for preventing terrorist attacks on our schools," said Sergeant Sean Burke, President of NASRO and a supervisor with the Lawrence (Massachusetts) Police Department.

Lavarello gave Florida as a model, where "schools are active participants on the state’s seven regional domestic security task forces," as an example of how schools can enhance their security-related information sharing and homeland security preparedness.

NASRO does not stipulate exactly what kind of information about students is being shared, nor what repressive measures are being taken for "homeland security preparedness."