Youth Violence: A Report of the Surgeon General. Chapter 4-Risk Factors for Youth Violence. 2000. ww.surgeongeneral.gov/library/youthviolence/report.html
This Web site explains that risk factors for violence are not static. Their predictive value changes depending on when they occur in a young person's development, in what social context, and under what circumstances. Risk factors may be found in the individual, the environment, or the individual's ability to respond to the demands or requirements of the environment. Some factors come into play during childhood or even earlier, whereas others do not appear until adolescence. Some involve the family, others the neighborhood, the school, or the peer group. Some become less important as a person matures. Somewhat informative but not sure if I want to use this source.
Alexander Volokh with Lisa Snell. School Violence Prevention: Strategies to Keep Schools Safe. www.rppi.org/ps234.html. This site addresses that school violence is a serious problem, especially in public schools. Improving the quality of American education is difficult without also addressing school violence, since regardless of how good the teachers or curriculum are, violence makes it difficult for students to learn. School violence wears many faces. It includes gang activity, locker thefts, bullying and intimidation, gun use, assault—just about anything that produces a victim. Violence is perpetrated against students, teachers, and staff, and ranges from intentional vendettas to accidental killings of bystanders. Often, discussions of school violence are lumped together with discussions of school discipline generally, as both involve questions of how to maintain order in a school. This is a well informed site.
Monica Davey and Jodi Wilgoren. Signs of Danger were missed in a Troubled Teenager’s Life. 24 Mar. 2005. www.nytimes.com .Some who knew Jeff Weise say they wonder why someone did not see his eruption coming months, or even years, ago. Here was the threat Mr. Wse, 16, once made on his own life, sending him away from his home on the Red Lake Indian Reservation for psychiatric treatment. There were the pictures of bloodied bodies and guns he drew and shared freely with classmates. There was the story he apparently wrote about a shooting spree at a school in a small town. This doesn’t seem to be such an important source for a paper.
Dr. Peter. R. Breggin. Eric Harris Was Taking Luvox ( A Prozac-like drug) at the Time of the Littleton Murders. 30 Apr. 1999. www.breggin.com/luvox.html. In this site Dr. Breggin confirms that Eric Harris, was taking Luvox.
Breggin, Peter M.D. "Eric Harris was taking Luvox (a Prozac-like drug) at the time of the Littleton murders" 30 April 1999. 10 February 2000. http://www.breggin.com/luvox.html
Leahy, Maureen. (2013) American Academy of Orthapaedic Surgeons. Taking Aim at Youth Gun Violence. Retrieved from http://www.aaos.org/news/aaosnow/feb13/cover2.asp
Many signs were looked upon that could have stopped this massacre. Klebold composed an English essay two months before about a killer who wore a black trench coat and slaughtered victims outside of a bar. The teacher contacted his family but they were nonchalant about the issue. The two boys even submitted a project “Hit men for hire” about students being murdered in the hallways. Also, they had another good friend named Brooks Browns. Brown’s parents saw Harris and Klebold’s behavior sinister and in 1998 Harris began threatening Brooks after they had a f...
“The youth identified 35 causes of youth violence, but most students focused on specific subcategories within each of the four factors: individual, peer, family, and social. Although most students mentioned multiple causes, few identified causes within all four factors” (Zimmerman et al., 2004). The factors were broken down as such:
April twentieth, 1999 was just another Tuesday for many people. But for the students attending Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado it was the day that two of their classmates opened fire on them. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, seniors at Columbine High School, murdered twelve students and one teacher and injured twenty-four others. After executing their plan, the two committed suicide. These two teenagers conducted, “the deadliest high school shooting in US history.”
It is necessary for the schools in the United States to take more action in order to keep the students safe during the day. It is obvious that schools are not safe, forcing everyone to take a part in stopping the violent behavior which takes place in schools on a daily basis. There are many warning signs and ways to prevent this violence from taking place, it is just a matter of using money more wisely and creating more programs for preventing violence before it erupts in schools. There is no excuse for students to feel unsafe in an environment which the government forces them to be in. It is necessary that more action take place and that more training take place in order for schools to be safer, and in the event where violence does occur, the staff of the school is equipped to stop it before it gets out of hand. There is no time like now to keep the children and our schools safe from predators and especially from school violence.
Columbine High School experienced one of the greatest traumas in 1999. Two rouge seniors named Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris set out to school with minds focused on something other than English papers. No, they were busy planning on how to blow up the majority of their entire high school students and staff. Their home-made bomb never activated, this being the case several hundred lives were spared. Unfortunately when Harris and Klebold realized that their explosive never detonated they continued inside the school building. They then proceeded to kill twelve classmates and one teacher. Twenty-one were injured (Rosenburg). Could you imagine being present that day at what you thought was going to be just another Monday? How devastating! Even worse, try to fathom being the mother of one of the students shot and killed. No matter how many tears shed and prayers offered, restoring their life is impossible. The comparison of this pain to what average people go through every day makes life seem like a fairy-tale. Harris wrote in his journal about all the things he hated. Teenagers with deep hatred dwell on that thing and never let it go, but because the two boys killed themselves after the incident, no one can be completely sure why these seemingly average teenagers killed so many students. They obviously hated a lot of things in life. Maybe they were victims of bullying, maybe they were exposed to too many violent video games? The possibilities are endless and judging by the journal, whether or not they were mentally stable is one thing to consider. In this paper we are going to zero in on the four most likely cases of what would push someone to this extreme.
Fear of youth violence is a constant concern by millions of people all over the world. Kids seem to take up more and more space of crimes that are usually committed by adults over the age of 18. "Statistics confirm that more horrendous crimes are being committed by increasingly younger children" (Levine 27). These crimes committed by youth's are caused by many different reasons: Poverty, neighborhoods, schools, parents, and TV, are the main concerns. But what is in most people's minds is what we can do to help prevent this violence. Although there are many different methods for reducing youth violence such as administering harsher punishments and steering kids away from gang influences, the most effective is training in conflict resolution because it gives kids another alternative to fighting. There are many different reasons as to why kids administer violence. Families, neighborhoods, peer groups, television, schools, and your personal factors are the main reasons. According to Joy G. Dryfoos, "Children who demonstrate antisocial behavior come from very non-supportive families at two extremes: either the family is repressive and abusive, or it seriously neglects the child from the early years on" (71). Parental neglect is a strong predictor of violence in a child, and parental rejection is the most powerful predictor. "The closer the child's relationship with his parents, the more he is attached to and identified with them, the lower his chances of delinquency" (Hirschi 71). Neighborhoods and peer groups are also a great influence on kids and their crimes. Growing in an underclass neighborhood is closely related with the risk of delinquency. Not all poor people are criminals, but drugs, guns and poverty are identified as causes o...
Pirruzia, T (2011).Review of the Roots of Youth Violence: Literature Reviews. (n.d.). Chapter 1: Biosocial Theory. Retrieved May 1, 2014, from http://www.children.gov.on.ca/htdocs/English/topics/youthandthelaw/roots/volume5/chapter01_biosocial_theory.aspx
Perpetrator was a 15 year-old student at Thurston High School at the time of both events. In the hours leading up to the shootings, he believed that his parents were extremely embarrassed and disappointed in him after he was caught with a gun at school and thus felt as though he had to kill them ("Who is Kinkel: Chronology", 1998; Blanco, 2014). Though he did not display any thought psychosis or disorder, he did suffer from anxiety as a child and was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder in January of 1997, just a year prior to the shooting ("Who is Kinkel: Chronology", 1998). In the years leading up to the shooting, he developed an interest in homemade bombs and guns. In fact, he even gave a talk on “how to make a bomb” in his speech class, which included detailed drawings and descriptions of explosives ("Who is Kinkel: Chronology", 1998). Additionally, beginning in the eight grade, the perpetrator began compiling a secret gun collection ("Who is Kinkel: Chronology", 1998). On the day he killed his parents, he believed that he was going to be sent to military school and appears to have targeted his parents because he believed that they would never be able to live with themselves if he were to have been convicted of the two felonies brought against him (Blanco, 2014). On the following day, in which he targeted his school, he seems to have shot indiscriminately and at random with no specific targets in mind ("Who is Kinkel: Chronology", 1998). Altogether, he shot and killed two students and wounded 25 others ("Who is Kinkel: Chronology", 1998). Eventually he was subdued by seven of his classmates and arrested by police (Blanco, 2014). Definitive warning behaviors consistent with pathways, fixation, identification, novel aggress...
On “April 20, 1999”, Littleton, Colorado was forever changed (Larkin 4). Students of Columbine High School, Eric Harris, eighteen, and Dylan Klebold, seventeen, opened fire in the school at 11:19 a.m. (Larkin 4). Thirteen people were killed and more than twenty others were injured (“Columbine High School Shooting” 1). “The crime was the worst high school shooting in U.S. history” (1). The Columbine Shooting was one of the most violent and tragic shootings that could have possibly been prevented if the previous misdemeanors of Klebold and Harris would have been acknowledged by others around them.
...dolescents to weapons. In many cases children have access to a weapon, particularly a handgun, within their own home. With lack of supervision, children experiment with these dangerous weapons, and may even take them out of their homes. Another contributing factor to violent acts among children is the role of the media and the way that television and movies portray violence. Every where you turn on television and in movies, you see someone killing someone or someone getting killed. Kids see the brutal ways, or the quick and smart schemes of combat tactics. They falsely believe that these types of behaviors are acceptable, because the next week they are back on the show demonstrating another episode of violent acts, with no consequences.
Herrenkohl, T. I., Farrington, D. P., Brewer, D., Catalano, R. F., Harachi, T. W., & Cothern, L. (2000). Predictors of youth violence (pp. 1-10). Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Over the past half century, violence in the United States has increased dramatically. Children who were raised in a tough, low-income neighborhood often fail to escape exposure to violence. They may witness homicides, assaults, and some may even have had a friend who had been killed. According to recent research, these children have higher violence rates than those kids who grew up in a non-violent neighborhood.
Violence in American schools has triggered debates on the root cause of student’s anger and aggressive behavior and proposed proactive solutions.