Santana High School Shooting
With Vincent Schiraldi
President of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ)
Monday, Mar. 5, 2001; 5:30 p.m. EST

A 15-year-old freshman killed two youths and wounded 13 today at Santana High School in Santee, Cali. The shooting was a haunting reminder and reoccurence of the Columbine tragedy nearly two years ago.

Vincent Schiraldi, the founder and president of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ), is online to talk about school violence. He has authored numerous studies on topics including race and incarceration, and juvenile homicides. The CJCJ has developed model programs in the areas of juvenile justice, alternative sentencing, pretrial release and residential programming which demonstrate the effectiveness of community-based programming for offender populations.

Schiraldi has been a member of California's Blue Ribbon Commission on Inmate Population Management and was the founding president of San Francisco's Juvenile Probation Commission. He has served on the National Criminal Justice Commission, and on the Advisory Board to California's Commission on the Status of African American Men.

The transcript follows.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

Vincent Schiraldi: My name is Vincent Schiraldi, President of the Justice Policy Institute, a research and public policy organization in Washington, DC. Much of the data and opinions I will be discussing comes from the two reports my organization conducted on school shootings which can be found on our web site, www.cjcj.org.

Laurel, Maryland: I am a college student at capitol College in Laurel, Maryland and I encounter stress on almost a daily basis. What makes these teens commit such viscious acts of violence and how is it so easy for them to gain access to these weapons?

Vincent Schiraldi: There have always been troubled teens since well before James Dean was a "Rebel Without a Cause." One of the differences was, Dean did not have instantaneous access to guns. Interestingly, these killings occurred just months after California voters passed one of the nation's toughest juvenile justice codes, automatically trying juveniles as adults for crimes such as this. In all likelihood, the perpetrator of the Santana High School shootings will be mandatorily tried as an adult, and face a life sentence. Harsh punishment, after the fact is no substitute for sensible gun control. What we need now is a ban on handguns, which have very little use for hunters and are involved in a dispoportionate amount of street crime.

Washington, D.C.: Do you think we give these kids, who commit violent acts, too much attention?

Vincent Schiraldi: I am becoming increasingly concerned that the wall of media attention attendant upon school shootings serves to give kids involved in them far too much attention, and also makes grownups more fearful of kids and schools than they ought to be. This year's graduating class will take less drugs, drink less beer, have fewer unwanted pregnancies, be more likely to believe in God and practice their religion, than my graduating high school class in 1977. Despite a 68% decline in youth homicides since 1993, 62% of the public thinks youth crime is on the increase. Kids have to do spectacular feats to get on television, or spectacular crimes. There's something terribly wrong with that equation.

Washington, DC: Don't you think one important answer to the question of solving school violence, as well as other societal ills, is going to the root of the problem and addressing how children are raised? Breaking familial cycles of bad parenting by helping parents raise their children correctly?

Vincent Schiraldi: I think you ask an incredibly important question. We're living in a society more concerned with creating a V-Chip to edit children's television when their parents are not around than to create a flexible work schedule for parents to simply be around their children so children are not raised by television. In that horrible killing by a 6-year-old in a school in Michigan last year, the boy was being raised by his uncle, who was a drug dealer, instead of his mother because his mother was forced off of welfare onto work. That exemplifies a society with deeply misplaced societal priorities.

San Francisco, Calif.: The common theme in many of these shootings is that the assailant feels aggrieved for being mis-treated by his peers. While on one hand aggrieved students need to learn to deal with rejection, on the other hand, I think other students need to think through the consequences of how they treat other people. I think it cuts both ways. I think that most of the analysis surrounding these shootings tends to on the shooter, and there is very little scrutiny on the behavior of other students that seems to more or less provoke the shooter. Your thoughts?

Vincent Schiraldi: I think the American media generally fixates on individual behavior, with little analysis of contributing factors. Not only aren't we discussing the role that teasing and picking on kids has in their acting out, there are a whole host of other factors we don't focus on. I'll pick one -- large schools. Every study on the impact of large schools shows that larger schools have higher rates -- not just numbers -- of violence in schools. So instead of building larger and larger schools and putting up metal detectors and cameras in schools, we should create smaller, more personalized schools in which we can know the individualized problems of kids, including teasing and including whether they are engaging in other abberant and troubling behaviors.

Washington, D.C.: Has there been a rise in school violence over the past 10 years or is the media just covering it more?

Vincent Schiraldi: Actually, there has been a sharp decline in school violence in recent years which mirrors the sharp decline in overall youth violence. For example, there was a 30% decline in overall youth crime during the late 1990s and a 29% decline in school violence. In the 1997-1998 school year there were 43 school associate violent deaths, and in the 1998-1999 school year, there were 26 school associated violent deaths. Despite this fact, respondents to a USA Today poll were 49% more likely to believe that there would be a shooting in their school in 1999 than in 1998.

One of the problems with media overplaying this issue is that it makes it difficult for school administrators and policy makers to make rational choices in this area. Where a school might need a solid, well researched mediation program to help students work their problems out, they may instead get metal detectors and security personnel.

Virginia: What do we need to do to stop this from happening?

Vincent Schiraldi: There are quite a few things that can stop this from happening. One is, there are some excellent programs that help schools create a whole environment of non-violence. The Peacemaker's Program was pioneered in Cleveland and evaluated by the Justice Department. The program not only trains young people in how to resolve conflicts without using violence, but it trains all of the school personnel, from the janitorial staff to the principal, on how to support an atmosphere on non-violence. When they pioneered Peacemakers in a Cleveland school, it resulted in a 41% decline in violent incidents and a 67% decline in suspensions for violence over the previous year.

Greenbelt, Md.: Unfortunately, I remember an incident in my last year of high school where a child (not a student) was shot in front of my high school. That summer, metal detectors were installed. Is that the immediate solution and what we've come to? Will all high schools and elementary schools have metal detectors and guards at the front door?

Vincent Schiraldi: While there's not a lot of research about the increasingly popular use of metal detectors, the research there is is not promising. According to researcher Mayer and Leone, in schools that rely more heavily on metal detectors and locker searches, rather than creating an environment where everyone understands that violence is unacceptable, students reported more incidents of violence and feeling more fearful. Perhaps in those schools, students are turned off to the administration and settle their "scores" in the school yard, rather than seeking adult guidance.

Kensington, MD: Sir,

I understand the access that you mentioned & agree with not needing automatic weapons, etc. for hunting. Not to sound difficult, the question I think Laurel, MD was asking was "why to teens act in this manner? -- why not act in another way?"

Vincent Schiraldi: The point I was trying to make is that, kids have always had problems, they've always been picked on, and there have always been a small number who act out. Their ability of a 9th-grader to act out in a lethal way is greatly enhanced by access to handguns. Now, not all school shootings involve a handgun, in fact, many of the highly publicized school shootings were committed with long-guns and automatic weapons. But that begs the larger question of youth homicides in general in America -- the vast majority of which are committed with handguns, which have almost no use in hunting.

Washington, DC: Don't you think that installing metal detectors in the schools would cut down on this happening so much by at least keep guns out of the school buildings? I know most people don't want this because they don't want to think that their child's school is a violent place, but we are seeing more and more that it is. My child's high school has metal detectors and security guards and that eases my worries of someone shooting in the school building, and there have been no instances there like today's episode in California.

Vincent Schiraldi: I think we have to make differential diagnoses on what is needed. My mother taught at a very troubled public High School in Brooklyn, and when they got a security guard, I was very relieved. But towns that don't even have a red light in them are installing expensive camera set-ups and hiring expensive security personnel when there is an extremely small likelihoood that there will ever be that kind of violence in their schools. This has two down sides. First, people come to believe that all of their problems are solved because of these security devices, whereas the underlying problems have been ignored. Second, excessive focus on security can turn young people off, drive them away from adults and towards anti-social behavior.

Alexandria, Va.: I dispute your assertion that guns weren't previously available. The availability of weapons of any type is not proven to be a causal factor. We may say that we have more school shootings than we used to, but our population is MUCH larger than it was in the 50's & 60s. Naturally, we are aware of such events as school shootings, but don't really analyze them on a per capita basis. Has anyone done this? After all handguns were just as common in the 50's and 60's.

Vincent Schiraldi: It's a very interesting question you raise. Recently, I watched West Side Story with my 10-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son. There was that very exciting part when the Jets and Sharks were getting ready to rumble, and someone in the gang introduces a gun into the fight. Each kid hands it from kid to kid and the music builds to a fever pitch.

Such a build up would be absurd today, because each kid in a youth gang in a troubled neighborhood would have access to much better weaponry than what was being handed from kid to kid in West Side Story. I grew up in Brooklyn and if you wanted a gun in my neighborhood, you had to make one in shop class. Disaffected youth today have much too easy access to a lethal vehicle to express their frustration. Handgun homicides by youth were the only category of youth crime which accelerated during the later 1980s and early 1990s, not other forms of violence, not homicides with long guns, not homicides without guns. The key ingredients there are the guns.

Bainbridge Island, WA: I think your remarks about the negative effect of the "wall of media attention" is absolutely correct. Did you notice in the report from this school one student who was interviewed was quick to tell us that as soon as he heard the shots he grabbed his camera and filmed his friends and fellow students being shot. He didn't try to dial out for help,try to help others, or even help himself. He just coldly filmed his classmates being shot as if this is the correct resonse to violence. Then he was ready for the television cameras and his interview as an informed witness. Pretty cold.

Vincent Schiraldi: I've spoken to people from Littleton, Colorado, Jonesboro, Arkansas, and West Paducah, Kentucky, all locations with highly publicized school shootings, and you couldn't find one of them that had praise for the media's coverage of the events. Even on the first year anniversary of the tragedy at Littleton, we were treated to blood soaked kids running from their schools in fear and agony. That kind of graphic coverage in no way enhances the information the public needs to know about, and serves only to boost ratings and sell soap. It is also increasingly likely that it serves to put ideas into the heads of a very small number of disturbed youths, creating a lethal copycat effect.

Columbus, Ohio: Mr. Schiraldi,
We are two high school students writing about the impact of the current situation at Santana High Schoool and would like your opinion or comments on the shooting and its impact on the nation.

Vincent Schiraldi: I have spoken with many groups of young people over the last two years about school violence, and I have consistently been struck by the intelligent discussions that are taking place among America's young people on this subject. The high school students I've spoke to have talked about their frustration with school crackdowns on them for behavior they didn't even commit, in fact, behavior committed by young people thousands of miles away. While recognizing the need for school security, many complained that school administrators and school boards were getting carried away with zero tolerane policies that got them suspended for butter knives and aspirin.

In 1999, there were 26 school associated violent deaths among 52 million school students - a one in 2 million ratio. I challenge anyone to find an adult-dominated population of 52 million that had as few as 26 homicides. Its no more fair to stereotype America's school students as Dylan Kliebold or Eric Harris from Columbine High School than it would be to taint all adults with the sins of Timothy McVeigh. America's young people are good kids -- there the ones on the other side of the yellow tape, weaping over the death of their classmates, just like all the rest of us did. As we set public policy, from the White House, to the State House, to the school house, that's something we need to remember.

Wilmington, Delaware: I see that the President is calling this a "cowardly action." I do not agree. I think it is another tragic incident committed by a confused kid with access to his father's guns. I wonder when, if ever, we are going to learn and work to lower violence of all kinds in this country. I have grandchildren in High Schools in three states, including this one and I feel afraid for them. What if anything, do you see as response to this?

Vincent Schiraldi: I think by calling this a "cowardly action" the President seeks to focus responsibility exclusively on the youth, and to ignore the societal responses we can take to reduce school violence. Of course this young person bears responsibility for his actions. But if all we do is cluck our toungues and shake our heads, we'll have learned nothing from this tragedy and we'll be doomed to recreate it. On the other hand, we need to remember that schools continue to be some of the safest places for our kids to be. 99.4% of the homicides against young people occur outside of schools.

Vincent Schiraldi: What we need now is a balanced approach to school safety and homicide reduction in general. We need a creative approach to violence reduction in our schools, including proven violence prevention programs and smaller schools. We also need to get handguns out of the hands of kids and create a gun policy that reduces impulsive homicides through easy access to guns while respecting the rights of hunters and other sports gun owners. And we need to treat our young gerneration as a group of people who possess hope, not just despair, for the future, because for better or worse, our definition of them can become a self-fulfilliing prophecy.

washingtonpost.com: Thank you Mr. Schiraldi for coming online with us to talk about this tragic incident. Visit our homepage to see the latest developments regarding the shooting.

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