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Creation of School Shooting Open-Source Database Fuels Understanding

NCJ Number
304070
Date Published
February 2022
Annotation

To better understand the root causes of school shootings and identify possible intervention points, National Institute of Justice-funded researchers examined two theories of criminology in the context of various types of school shootings, the life-course theory and the situational crime prevention theory.

Abstract

To better understand the root causes of school shootings and identify possible intervention points, National Institute of Justice-funded researchers examined two theories of criminology in the context of various types of school shootings, the life-course theory and the situational crime prevention theory. These two criminological theories have not been examined extensively in the context of school shootings because of the lack of a large, concentrated dataset focused on these incidents. Therefore, the researchers built The American School Shooting Study to fill the gap – a groundbreaking, national open-source database of all known shootings that resulted in at least one injury on K-12 school grounds between 1990 and 2016. The authors suggested that a one-size-fits-all approach may not work to prevent school shootings. Many that happen to occur on school grounds are simply a manifestation of larger problems on the community level, researchers suggest. These might be best addressed by community partnerships to address larger issues such as gang involvement, drugs, or domestic violence.