School Shootings as Organizational Accidents

• In Event: School Violence in the Wake of Parkland: Predictors, Precautions, and Responses to School Shootings

Abstract

Efforts to prevent school violence have evolved significantly over the last nineteen years since Columbine, particularly in the areas of campus security, emergency response, and threat assessment. Yet the research and investigations following recent tragic school shootings in the U.S. suggest that schools, law enforcement agencies, and communities continue to struggle to follow-up with and manage students of concern in these cases. The U.S. Secret Service and Department of Education’s guidelines for threat assessment provide schools with information on and strategies for identifying, evaluating, and managing students of concern (Fein et al., 2002), but schools, law enforcement agencies, and community organizations remain ill-equipped to share information and monitor these students following a threat assessment. The system needs repair. Drawing on findings from a qualitative case study of a shooting at a Colorado high school in 2013 (which left two students dead), this paper examines the way research on “organizational accidents” could be used to: (1) identify and address the gaps in the safety planning process after a threat assessment, (2) build a culture of safety within schools and across institutions, and (3) support and manage students in crisis in a comprehensive manner. Policy implications are discussed.

Authors

• Sarah Goodrum, University of Northern Colorado

• Jessie Slepicka, University of Northern Colorado

• Andrew J. Thompson, University at Albany, SUNY

• William R. Woodward, University of Colorado Boulder