NCJ Number
91684
Date Published
1982
Length
11 pages
Annotation
To reduce the incidence of serious crime in schools, school principals should establish structures for regular communication with juvenile courts and police and should develop and carry out annual public relations plans for their areas.
Abstract
Probation counselors, in their case disposition recommendations to their judges, and judges themselves should consider the use of school services and programs like in-school suspension and Saturday work as dispositional alternatives instead of or as part of probation. The Virginia State Department of Education should develop a uniform, statewide system for keeping records on suspensions, expulsions, vandalism, theft, breaking and entering, and other serious incidents. Security resources, both personnel and hardware, should be distributed to schools on the basis of the location of the school and its history of serious incidence. Agencies which work with youths should develop standard social history forms for reporting procedures. Students should participate in the making of decisions that affect them by taking part on faculty and administrative committees and other decisionmaking bodies. If Virginia's authorities believe that more information is needed on vandalism and violence in Virginia's schools, they should conduct a more thorough study. Interviews with school administrators and criminal justice personnel revealed that the home was cited most often as the source of school problems and that most administrators said that neither students nor teachers feared being the victim of a crime in school.