School Crime and Violence Among Students With and Without Serious Emotional Disability: A Longitudinal Analysis

• In Event: Focus on Behavior: Interventions, Connections, and Outcomes

Abstract

This paper presents a 4-year longitudinal study that compared the crime and violence activity at school of students with serious emotional disability (SED) versus students without disabilities in the entire state of North Carolina (NC). The school crime and violence tendencies of over 4.9 million students without disabilities were compared with over 19,000 students with SED in 2,476 schools across NC. Results showed that proportionally (i.e., per 100 students enrolled in each school), students with SED engaged in a higher rate of school-related crime and violence in comparison to their peers without disabilities each year, and cumulatively across all four years. Implications related to school crime and violence among students with SED, and its prevention, are discussed.

Authors

• Edward J. Sabornie, North Carolina State University

• Cathy L. Crossland, North Carolina State University

• Emily H. Griffith, North Carolina State University

• Mityl Biswas, North Carolina State University