Student Attempts of Violence Following a School Threat Assessment

ABSTRACT

Behavioral threat assessment is a widely used violence prevention strategy in schools, but there is little research on how frequently a student attempts to carry out a threat of violence after a threat assessment and whether schools accurately recognize and classify these cases. This study investigated: 1) how often students attempted violence and 2) whether threats judged to be more serious were more likely to be attempted. As part of a statewide assessment, 21 Florida public school districts submitted deidentified records of 621 threat cases from the 2020–2021 academic year. Of these, 107 (17%) threats were attempted and 3 (0.5%) resulted in a serious injury. Threats classified by school teams as serious substantive (OR = 27) or very serious substantive (OR = 50) were significantly more likely to be attempted than non-threats. Overall, these findings support a strong association between threat classification and likelihood a threat is attempted.

KEYWORDS:

• Threat assessment
• school safety
• violence prevention

Disclosure statement

Dr. Dewey Cornell discloses that he has a financial interest as the primary developer of the Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the National Institute of Justice [#NIJ 2020-RF-CX-0002].

Notes on contributors

Jordan Kerere

Jordan Kerere is a clinical psychology doctoral student working with Dewey Cornell and the Virginia Youth Violence Project. Her interests include forensic psychology, behavioral threat assessment, violence in schools, and bullying victimization.

Dewey Cornell

Dr. Dewey Cornell is a forensic-clinical psychologist and professsor of education at the University of Virginia His research interests include behavioral threat assessment, school safety, and violence prevention.

Jennifer Maeng

Dr. Jennifer Maeng is a research associate profressor at the University of Virginia’s School of Education and Human Development. A former high school teacher, her current scholarship addresses the role contextual factors of the educational setting, such as school climate and safety, play in supporting effective teaching and learning with a particular focus on teacher experiences. Her work has been funded through the U.S. Department of Education, National Institute of Justice, and National Science Foundation.