Community, opportunity, and crime on school property: A quantitative case study

Educational Foundations, Fall 2001 by Bickel, Robert, Dufrene, Roxane

Avoiding Methodological Individualism

We do this, moreover, without invoking the caveat that some students, the least resilient, the least socially adept, the least intelligent, the least responsible, the most neglected, and those with the most debilitating deficits in social and cultural capital are more likely to be affected by variability in levels of community and opportunity than others (cf. Shaw & McKay, 1969; Hirschi & Hindelang, 1977; Coleman, 1988; Herrnstein & Murray, 1994: 241-251; Farkas, 1996; Gottfredson, Gottfredson, & Skroban, 1998; Gottfredson, 2001: 25-61).

In truth, a reasoned caveat of this sort may be fitting. Given the presumptive methodological individualism which characterizes most of what has been written about school violence and school crime more generally, however, this sort of admonition seems unnecessary, even redundant (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton, 1986; Carver & Thompson, 1995; Astor, Duncan, & Pitner, 1996; Baker, 1998; Michaelis, 2000). The uncritically accepted pervasiveness of the vague but socially damning catch-all category "being at-risk" is consistent with this judgment. Simply by invoking the at-risk designation one tacitly makes the claim that the incidence of every sort of illegal, objectionable, self-defeating, or imprudent behavior can be explained in terms of characteristics of individuals and their dysfunctional families (Crosby, 1993). Contextual factors, by contrast, are judged to be of little or no consequence.

In response, we seek to unambiguously shift the emphasis from the individual to social context. We want to determine if variability in community and opportunity is tied to outcomes we would expect for naturally occurring groups of students.

Conventional Responses: Paramilitary and Preemptive

High-tech and other paramilitary responses to the threat of school violence and other crimes on school property have been with us on a growing, now fairly massive scale for at least two decades. These include use of fixed and hand-held metal detectors, surveillance cameras, random searches and routine frisks, police officers and full-time security guards at school entrances, patrolling the halls, and inspecting student lockers and book bags (Brown, Brown, & Ledford, 1996; Devine, 1996; Gaustad, 1999; Johnson, 2000; Zirkel, 1999 & 2000).

Preemptive zero-tolerance policies have also become commonplace (Lozada, 1998; Curwin & Mendler, 1998). State-wide, no-exception implementation of such policies has, in some instances, raised difficult questions as to what constitutes violence, what is a weapon, and whether or not answers to such questions should, in good faith, be context-specific (Bickel, Smith, & Eagle, 2001; Polakow-- Suransky, 1999).

In isolated low-income, rural schools in West Virginia, for example, subsistence hunting, fishing, and trapping are, for some students, a prerequisite to eating (Bickel, Smith, & Eagle, 2001). With zero-tolerance, however, carrying a pocket knife, one of the most taken-for-granted tools of self-sufficient rural life, leads directly to suspension or expulsion. This holds even though rural schools still have substantially lower rates of violence and other crimes than schools in urban and suburban areas (Rintoul, 1998; Schroth & Fishbaugh, 2000).