Target hardening: A look at the response to school shootings
As Professor Harvey Shapiro continues to share his wisdom through a series of blogs, he goes back to his book entitled Handbook on Violence in Education, in which he features a collection of critical research in his chosen field. This blog touches on the immediate response to school shootings and how this relates to the bigger picture of school violence.
The book’s chapter on panic and overresponse, contributed by authors James Alan Fox and Emma E. Fridel, zeroes in on target hardening as a popular response to school shootings.
The immediate days after any school shooting have been characterized by heightened alertness, which comes in the form of enhanced physical security, shares Professor Harvey Shapiro. After a school shooting transpires, most administrators send out directives to ramp up on school security. This means that there are more cops on site, more guns and uniformed personnel are visible in the school premises, and more practices like frisking and bag inspections are done on students and school personnel alike.
On the surface, the school does indeed become a hard target, meaning that perpetrators and wrongdoers will be more discouraged from creating havoc and acting violently. Truly, it does foster a sense of security that allows students and personnel to resume their daily business in school, but it does take a lot away from the very definition of what a school is.
A school is supposed to be a place where students can be themselves because they know that they are in one of the safest places they can ever be in. In the long run, target hardening that includes heightened security measures casts a huge shadow on the supposedly wholesome school environment that runs on positive energy that fosters learning and development.
Professor Harvey Shapiro graduated with an MS in Education from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA. In 1996, he obtained his Ph.D. in Jewish Education from the Jewish Institute of Religion, School of Education at the Hebrew Union College. For more about his work, visit this page.
