Indicators of Violence in Students

Understanding the reasons that students turn to violence is not an easy question to answer. There are as many different reasons as there are unique situations. However, common reasons usually involve students who turn to violence for these reasons:

• To provide an outlet for anger.
• To get attention.
• To retaliate against people who have hurt them.
• To control others.

Violent students often come from similar backgrounds or have similar problems. These include:

• Being the victims of abuse.
• Being exposed to violence in their homes.
• Having a history of aggressive behavior.
• Using alcohol or drugs.
• Coming from a stressful home environment.
• Having feelings of low self-esteem.

But just because people have these traits doesn't mean they will become violent. Typically a person exhibits some warning signs before committing a crime. In more than 50 percent of cases surveyed since 1992, students exhibited warning signs before acting out. Common signs are:

• Making threats to others.
• Constantly getting into fights.
• Carrying weapons.
• Frequently losing one's temper.
• Feeling rejected or alone.
• Voicing their distress to someone.
  

Students and faculty need to be aware of these things in the people they come in contact with. If people have several of the problems listed above and also show some of the warning signs, they should be talking to a professional about them. It is up to their friends and teachers to recognize that and take the first step in helping them.

Targeted Violence

Targeted violence is different from more typical violent acts because it is thought out ahead of time. Students know what they want to do and have a plan to carry it out. Many of the tragic school shootings that come to mind when people think of school violence are acts of targeted violence, including the Columbine High School case in 1999.

The way administrators and police deal with typical acts of violence among students doesn't work with students who think about their crimes ahead of time. Many times these students will avoid doing things that would get noticed by authorities, like threatening people or getting into fights.

Instead, schools should use a threat assessment approach that looks for threats outside of the typical psychological profiling mentioned above. In order to look for students who are thinking about targeted violence, schools need to look for students who have some of these characteristics:

• Have communicated ideas that would lead to violence.
• Have a motive to act out violently.
• Are sophisticated enough to plan an attack.
• Are in a mental state that would lead to an attack.

Audio







Marian Borg, a professor of sociology at the University of Florida, talks about why young people turn to violence as a way to resolve conflicts.