Will They Tell? Weapons Reporting by Middle-School Youth

• Author: Veda E. Brown,Jennifer L. Woolard,Eve M. Brank,Mark Fondacaro,Jennifer L. Luescher,Scott A. Miller,Ramona G. Chinn
• DOI: 10.1177/1541204006296171
• Published date: 01 April 2007
• Date: 01 April 2007
• Subject Matter: Articles

Will They Tell?

Weapons Reporting by Middle-School Youth

Eve M. Brank

University of Florida

Jennifer L. Woolard

Georgetown University

Veda E. Brown

Prairie View A&M University

Mark Fondacaro

City University of New York

Jennifer L. Luescher

Bridegwater State Hospital

Ramona G. Chinn

Hawaii School of Nursing

Scott A. Miller

University of Florida

Adding to the body of research that describes students who will bring weapons to school, the cur-

rent research examined middle-school students’ willingness to report when they know someone

has a weapon at school. The sample included 1,957 sixth, seventh, and eighth graders from 27

schools in five states. Overall, a majority of students indicated that they would be willing to report;

however, there were significant effects for the conditions of reporting (such as anonymity) and

effects for some demographic characteristics. Furthermore, students who perceived adult or

parental involvement in their lives were more willing to report. In contrast,students with delin-

quent involvement (self or peers) were significantly less likely to report the presence of weapons.

Keywords: adults; juveniles; parents; peers; weapons

School violence incidents have led to metal detectors and police officers becoming

a familiar sight in public schools (Bauer, 2003). For at least the past decade, students

and parents all over the United States have been on a heightened sense of alert. In fact, 71%

Youth Violence and

Juvenile Justice

Volume 5 Number 2

April 2007 125-146

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Authors’ Note: This research was supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education: Fund for the

Improvement of Education Program PR/AwardNumber R215U010016. We would like to acknowledge Steven

Boggs, William Cliett, Imicuk Loyuk, Mel Lucas,Anca Mirsu-Paun, and Stephen Smith for their work on this

project. Preliminary findings from the research were presented at the 2005 annual meeting of the American

Psychology and Law Society, La Jolla, CA, and a final grant report on the study was provided to the U.S.

Department of Education, December, 2003. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Eve

M. Brank, Department of Criminology, Law and Society, University of Florida, P.O. Box 115950, Gainesville,

FL 32611-5950; e-mail: ebrank@ufl.edu.

of respondents to a phone survey thought that school shootings could happen in their com-

munity (Sullivan, 2002). Media accounts likely compound this fear with stories such as

Celia McGinty, an Idaho teenager who during an online chat found herself reading threats

of school violence from a student halfway across the country (“Police, Teen Foils,” 2004).

Andrew Osantowski, age 17 years, told McGinty that he was planning a large-scale violent

revenge on his school (Manolatos & Cardenas, 2004). McGinty reported the threats to her

parents, who in turn alerted the police. Law enforcement raids of Osantowski’s house con-

firmed his online discussions by revealing weapons and bomb-making supplies (Manolatos

& Cardenas, 2004).

Clearly, there is much juveniles never tell adults, authorities, or their parents. What was it

that made McGinty report this boy she had never met? Was there something about the way

Osantowski discussed his plans or was there something about McGinty that would have per-

suaded her to tell no matter the situation? We have anecdotal evidence like the McGinty story

that some students will report; however, we have little systematic information about student

response to suspicions about, or concrete evidence regarding, other students’ plans for vio-

lence and/or weapons use at school.

In the wake of school shootings in the 1990s, schools, policy makers, and law enforce-

ment officials searched for effective responses to identify threats. Potential strategies

included creating a profile of the school shooter, embracing the use of technology (e.g.,

metal detectors), and gathering information from collateral sources. Because school shoot-

ings are such a low base-rate phenomenon, efforts to create profiles or predictive models

suffer from high false-positive and false-negative rates. Yet even without sophisticated

profiles, avoiding these incidents may still be possible because postincident evidence sug-

gests that warning signs are commonly given by school shooters. For instance, the two

Columbine shooters who killed 12 students, a teacher, and themselves gave warning signs

through their Internet pages, their school assignments, and the possessions in their bed-

rooms (Crittenden, 1999). Although much of the postincident attention focused on the

shooters’ parents (Glaberson, 1999; Olinger & Lowe, 1999), some questioned how much

their classmates might have known and if they did, why they were unwilling to notify

school officials or other adults about the boys’ plans (Brooke, 1999). The current research

examines fellow students, and their willingness to report weapons, as a potential resource

for preventing weapons in schools.

The Fear and Reality of Weapons in Schools

The problem of weapons in schools is still quite prominent in the public mind (Sullivan,

2002). Approximately 6% of high school students participating in the 2003 Youth Risk

Behavior Survey reported carrying a weapon on school property in the past 30 days, down

from 12% in 1993 (Bauer, 2003; DeVoe et al., 2004). In addition, most accounts indicate

that the overall rate of youthful offending in and out of schools has been declining over the

past 10 years (DeVoe et al., 2004). Nonetheless, recent research suggests that students

believe that many of their fellow classmates are bringing guns to school (Bailey, Flewell-

ing, & Rosenbaum, 1997; Martin, Sadowski, Cotton, & McCarraher, 1996) at a higher rate

than is actually occurring (May, 1999), and there is a considerable fear as a result. A 1998

126 Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice