For other information on violence prevention and school safety see the Resource Pages on
- Bullying and Bullying Prevention
- School Safety/Security and Law Enforcement
- Preparing for and Responding to Crises in Schools
- Juvenile Justice
Center Briefs
Key Strategies for Substance Abuse and Violence Prevention II: Working With the Classroom and School Environment
This publication explores how schools can implement violence prevention programs in the classroom as well as create a positive school climate by building a school’s capacity to create and enforce policies; communicate norms inconsistent with violence and disruptive behavior; and enhance the climate in the classroom.
Websites
Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence (CSPV) (http://www.colorado.edu/cspv/index.html) at the University of Colorado offers a wide range of violence prevention resources and services. These include
- publications
- databases on violence prevention, intervention, and treatment programs; violence prevention curricula and videos; data collection tools; and violence prevention research and literature
- fact sheets and other information on evidence-based violence prevention programs, many of which are also SAMSHA model programs). This information can be found under Blueprints for Violence Prevention section
- information on CSPV’s Safe Schools-Safe Communities model of violence prevention
National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center (http://www.safeyouth.org) was established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other Federal agencies to provide resources on preventing youth violence, bullying, and suicide. Technical assistance on violence prevention is available online and through a tollfree hotline at 1-866-SAFEYOUTH (723-3968). Resources on violence prevention that can be found on this website include
- weekly news briefs on youth violence and prevention (and an archive of older briefs)
- databases of conferences, materials, organizations, and funding opportunities
- materials and publications organized by audience, including professionals (such as educators and social workers, parents, teens, and the press
- materials and publications organized by topic
- Spanish-language violence prevention materials
School Safety Centers
A number of state departments of education have funded state school safety centers that provide technical assistance and resources on school safety and security, violence prevention, bullying, emergency preparedness and response, and how schools and law enforcement agencies can work together. While technical assistance is usually only available to schools and districts located in the same state as the safety center, many of the other resources and publications are available to anyone. A interactive map and linked list of school safety centers can be found at the SafetyZone (http://www.safetyzone.org/state_centers.html).
Publications from the Center for Collaboration and Practice
These two publications (available at http://cecp.air.org/school_violence.asp) were funded by the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice in response to the school shootings that occurred in the mid-1990s.
- Early Warning, Timely Response: A Guide To Safe Schools by D. Osher, and C. Warger. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 1998. This publication offers research-based practices designed to assist schools to develop violence prevention, intervention, and crisis response plans. It includes information on the characteristics of safe schools, early warning signs of violence, getting help for troubled children, developing a violence prevention and response plan, and responding to a crisis.
- Safeguarding Our Children: An Action Guide. This publication was designed to help schools develop and implement a comprehensive violence prevention plan grounded in the principles of Early Warning, Timely Response. It is also available in Spanish.
Publications Available Online from ERIC
The Educational Resources Information Clearinghouse (http://eric.ed.gov) features a large number of documents on violence and violence prevention. The documents described below can be found by using the ERIC search engine and the ERIC Number, which is included in parentheses after the author’s name. ERIC also includes a large number of older resources on violence prevention, as well as abstracts of articles published in the professional literature.
ERIC Digests are short publications summarizing research on specific issues. Many are available in both English and Spanish versions. ERIC Digests that may be of particular interest to school-based violence prevention efforts include:
- Focus on After-School Time for Violence Prevention (ED455975)
- Preventing Bullying (ED463563)
- Profiling Students for Violence (ED446344)
- Violence in Audio-Visual Media: How Educators Can Respond (ED450069)
- Violence in U.S. Public Schools: A Summary of Findings (ED482921)
- Youth Aggression and Violence: Risk, Resilience, and Prevention (ED449632)
- Zero Tolerance Policies (ED451579)
Other publications available on ERIC include
- Crime and Safety in America’s Public Schools: Selected Findings from the School Survey on Crime and Safety (ED485368). U.S. Department of Education
- Zero Tolerance: The Assumptions and the Facts by Russell Skiba (ED488918). Center for Evaluation and Education Policy
Publications Available Online from the National Center for Injury and Violence Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Best Practices of Youth Violence Prevention: A Sourcebook for Community Action. (http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/dvp/bestpractices.htm) Atlanta: National Center for Injury and Violence Prevention, 2002 (revised). This publication reviews the general principals of intervention planning, implementation, and evaluation and discusses four key youth violence prevention strategies: a parent and family-based strategy, a home visiting strategy, a social-cognitive strategy, and a mentoring strategy. The publication is also available in Spanish.
Measuring Violence-Related Attitudes, Behaviors, and Influences Among Youths: A Compendium of Assessment Tools-Second Edition (http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/pub-res/measure.htm) Atlanta: National Center for Injury and Violence Prevention, 2005 (Second Edition). This compendium provides tools to assess violence-related beliefs, behaviors, and influences, as well as to evaluate violence prevention programs.
Most of the 170 measures included in the compendium are intended for use with youth 11-24 years of age and to assess factors such as serious violent and delinquent behavior, conflict resolution strategies, social and emotional competencies, peer influences, parental monitoring and supervision, family relationships, exposure to violence, collective efficacy, and neighborhood characteristics. The compendium also contains a number of scales and assessments for use with children 5-10 years of age.
