School Violence Prevention Requires a Holistic Response

• In Event: Policy-Implications of DLC Research 1: Youth Justice Through a Life-Course Lens

Abstract

School violence is one of the most pressing problems facing contemporary society. Schools are among the most significant institutions for promoting healthy youth development—they are where young people spend the majority of their waking hours, and what happens there can have lasting impacts on life trajectories. Research on school violence has been accumulating for more than six decades, and a solid body of evidence, produced across multiple academic fields, has now taken shape. A longstanding question in this literature is whether school violence requires its own explanations and interventions, or whether existing frameworks for understanding youth violence more broadly are sufficient. The evidence suggests both are needed. School violence is shaped by individual characteristics, by the structure and climate of school environments, and by the broader community conditions in which schools are embedded. Prevention research points consistently toward trauma-informed, multi-systemic, and community-integrated approaches as most promising, and yet schools increasingly find themselves resource-strapped and focused on surveillance, threat detection, and exclusionary discipline at the expense of the early, holistic programming the evidence supports. This presentation draws on this body of work to take stock of what we know about school violence and what policymakers and practitioners should—and should not—be doing now.

Authors

• Jillian Turanovic, University of Colorado Boulder

• Sonja Siennick, Florida State University