School safety policies in the post-Columbine age

Despite their rarity, school shootings elicit strong emotional responses from the public. Following several high-profile shooting incidents, including the predominate Columbine High School massacre, a moral panic led to U.S. and Canadian school administrators, policymakers, and politicians taking severe steps to limit school violence and prevent similar incidents in the future. The steps taken ranged from “hard responses” based on zero tolerance policies that led to metal detectors and increased police/security presence in schools to school-wide anti-bullying programs and, more recently, to threat assessment protocols for at-risk students. Using social control theory, this analysis argues that, with the exception of threat assessment, previous policy attempts were unsuccessful due to their failure to establish and sustain the bonds students needed from their schools. Consequently, the author argues that threat assessment training should be increased across Canada and that teachers in training learn more about violence prevention at the undergraduate level.