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Abstract
This article examines why, and under what circumstances, young people illegally set fire to schools. Utilizing court and police records from cases of illegal firesetting in Swedish schools where offenders were aged 21 or younger, a number of crime scene and offender characteristics are compiled and analysed using correspondence analysis. First, four main clusters of such characteristics are identified. Next, offenders’ accounts of their motives are examined and factored in, with a total of six different types of school fires identified as a result: obstructing school activities, destroying evidence of school burglary, play vandalism, vindictive vandalism, psychiatric problems and school fire as a side effect. The types of school fires obtained are then classified into two main groups: school fires related to education and school fires unrelated to education. The findings show illegal firesetting in schools to be a much more complex phenomenon than previously recognized, and that accounts of motives can help us better understand this complexity and to develop apropriate preventive measures.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding
This work was supported by the Swedish Fire Research Board through a grant awarded to professor Sven-Åke Lindgren, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Supplemental data
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.
Notes
1. For instance, all 6427 reported school fires in the UK in 2000–2010 were non-fatal (Fire Statistics Great Britain Citation2011).