The Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting and Changes in Mental Health Legislation: A Review of the Evidence

• In Event: The Far Reaching Realm of Criminal Justice Policy

Abstract

In the year following the December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, 37 states across the nation increased spending on mental health, with the Federal government invested an additional $100 million into the system. Five years earlier, however, President George W. Bush signed into legislation the NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007, allocating $1.3 billion in federal funds to improve mental health care and reporting in the wake of the shootings at Virginia Tech. In the five years between the two events, less than $50 million of these funds were appropriated. Given the flurry of mental health legislation following Sandy Hook, consideration must be given as to what legislative changes have been employed, and, perhaps more importantly, what the catalyst was for these developments. This paper explores the revitalization of mental health care reform following Sandy Hook, and examines the differences between legislative responses to this event and Virginia Tech. Implications for these related policies also are examined.

Authors

• Tiffany Cox Hernandez, Texas State University

• Jaclyn Schildkraut, State University of New York at Oswego

• H. Jaymi Elsass, Texas State University