SCHOOL VIOLENCE LESSONS LEARNED.

• Author: Fairchild, Mary

Existing laws haven't been effective in curbing youth violence. Lawmakers now are taking a different, more comprehensive tack that focuses prevention, not just deterrence.

"In my opinion, you must go to the root of a problem to solve it. The root of violence is ignorance toward each other. To stop it, we can teach kids in the early years of school that it is wrong to be ignorant toward one another. The early years are vital in teaching kids what is right and wrong, and we need to teach the upcoming generation of kids to have compassion, not hate."-Jeremy Myles, sophomore, Columbine High School, Littleton, Colo.

"I think it would be good if we enhanced some of the tactics we are using already, like assigning officers to the schools. It's a good idea, but there is a lot of mistrust among the students and the police, so it would work better if there were a trustful relationship established."-Mario Benavidez, college student, Albuquerque, N.M.

"The teachers at our school don't do much when students fight. They resolve fights and violence in school by handing out in-school suspensions, and that doesn't resolve anything. [Punishments] need to get more creative. Teachers and principals don't know how to react to school violence.-Rachael Robinson, 13, Chippewa Falls Middle School, Chippewa Falls, Wisc.

"It's up to the government and the community [to solve the problem] because some people don't care until someone gets hurt. I would tell legislators not to wait until someone gets hurt to do something about it."-Takeia White, 17, High School of Redemption, New York, N.Y.

It was the story of the decade, and it will dramatically shape public policy as we begin the new century. Twelve innocent students and one teacher dead. Twenty hurt. All victims of two teenage gunmen who committed suicide after their rampage. The aftershocks shook the country and extended beyond Columbine into every state, every town and every school. Overnight, youth violence was everybody's problem.

For more than a decade, state legislatures have passed laws to create safe schools and curb violent young people. They've allowed law enforcement and school officials to share records, created conflict resolution and peer mediation programs, authorized the use of video cameras and metal detectors in schools, and made it a crime for students to possess weapons at school. During the so-called summers of violence in 1993 and 1994, there was a flurry of activity as 10 legislatures held special sessions focused on crime, many of them called to respond to gang-related homicides. But nothing focused national attention on the problem like the shooting this past year at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo. The day after Columbine, legislators across the country were once again asking, "What can we do?"

FOCUS ON CAUSES, NOT PUNISHMENT

Senator Norma Anderson, whose district includes Columbine High School, points out that Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris broke 17 state laws.

Why haven't existing laws been effective?

"Many after-the-fact punitive reactions focus on deterrents rather than causes of the problem," says Del Elliot, director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "Serious violence continues because the underlying problems are never addressed."

Legislators took the punitive approach for most of this decade as gang violence and drive-by shootings escalated in the early 90s. They stiffened penalties for juvenile offenders and, most notably, sent more juveniles into the adult criminal justice system. But post-Columbine, the discussion has increasingly focused on preventing the violence. In other words, how do we identify at-risk kids early and provide help to prevent violent behavior?

To do so requires a much more comprehensive approach than lawmakers have attempted in the past. In a legislative structure that divides policy into committees, it is relatively...