• The National Crime Victimization Survey and Its School Crime Supplement
• Reporting on the 1999 SCS
• Compiling Data From Numerous Sources
• Contributions of the Featured Reports and Future Federal Research
• References

One of the first major federal government initiatives in juvenile delinquency assessment and prevention was the establishment of the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, which produced a series of reports, including the Task Force Report: Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Crime (1967). The report contributed to our understanding of delinquency, informed legislators and government officials of the nature and sources of juvenile crime, and urged policymakers to allocate funding and resources for delinquency prevention programs. The Office of Education of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) contributed to the report with a number of recommendations for how schools could help reduce delinquency (Office of Education 1967). About a decade later, HEW's National Institute of Education released the Safe School Study Report (1978), concluding that schools could do more to reduce school violence and disruption through policies such as (1) increasing efforts in student governance and rule enforcement; (2) treating students fairly and equally; (3) improving the relevance of subject matter to suit students' interests and needs; and (4) having smaller classes, with teachers instructing a smaller number of students. These early reports set a precedent for the increasingly important role of the federal government in assessing school crime and violence and in developing recommendations, resources, funding, and technical assistance for local schools and justice agencies to use as they respond to growing concerns about juvenile crime in communities and schools.

The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), sponsored by the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), is an important source of information on student crime and safety. This survey, which collects data on the criminal victimization of a nationally representative sample of households (43,000 households in the 1999 sample), provides more information about students' experiences of victimization and individual crime incidents than do either police reports or self-report surveys of juvenile offenders (Lynch 2002).

Even more information on student victimization and safety is provided by the School Crime Supplement (SCS) to the NCVS, jointly designed by BJS and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). In households sampled for the NCVS, the SCS is administered to each household member between 12 and 18 years old. This survey provides a measure of the prevalence of criminal victimization at school and students' perceptions of their school environment. The SCS has collected data on school crime and related topics regarding the school safety of 12- through 18-year-old students in 1989, 1995, and 1999.

One of the two reports featured in this issue of the Quarterly is Are America's Schools Safe? Students Speak Out: 1999 School Crime Supplement (Addington et al. 2002), the first report to focus on data from the 1999 SCS. This NCES report also includes an excellent review of previous studies, noting how the 1999 results are supported by previous research findings and providing readers a more comprehensive and in-depth understanding of school crime.

The 1999 SCS is the first national survey to assess the prevalence of hate-related words and the presence of hate-related graffiti at school. About one out of eight students overall (about one out of six Black students) reported being called hate-related words, and about one-third of students reported seeing hate-related graffiti at school. Questions about bullying at school were also introduced for the first time in the 1999 SCS, and we can now ascertain the extent to which bullying behavior is associated with students' fear of attack or harm at school and with avoiding school. Data collection for the SCS was in progress when the Columbine High School shooting incident occurred in April 1999. This allowed for additional analyses to examine the effects of such an incident on student reports of fear and weapons at school.

Along with Are America's Schools Safe?, this issue of the Quarterly features another report, Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2002 (DeVoe et al. 2002), which is the fifth in a series of annual reports produced jointly by BJS and NCES. The report compiles data from various sources, including some data from 2001, and is intended to inform the nation about the current status of crime in schools. In addition to the NCVS and SCS, the numerous sources of data for this report include the national school-based Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), the School-Associated Violent Death Study (SAVD), and the NCES Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) and Fast Response Survey System(FRSS) .

The report presents 19 indicators of school crime and safety, organized in five sections: Violent Deaths at School; Nonfatal Student Victimization—Student Reports; Violence and Crime at School—Public School Principal/Disciplinarian Reports; Nonfatal Teacher Victimization at School—Teacher Reports; and School Environment. Many of the indicators repeat information from previous reports in the series (such as the 1996–97 data on school principal/disciplinarian reports) because current data were not yet available. The authors have clearly noted the source and year of the reported statistics, indicating if they are repeated from previous reports or have been updated in this report. Although the Indicators report does not discuss the findings in light of previous research studies, as does Are America's Schools Safe?, it does nevertheless provide a clear and succinct snapshot of school crime and safety.

The two reports together provide more accurate and comprehensive measures of school crime than were previously available. They form a basis upon which to develop sound policies and practices for school safety. The authors of Are America's Schools Safe? noted mixed results regarding the relationship between the use of various security measures in schools and victimization at school. The use of security measures (such as security guards, metal detectors, or school staff as hallway monitors) was not found to be associated with lower percentages of students reporting victimization (violent or property crimes) or being bullied. In fact, higher percentages of students reported victimization experiences in schools that had security guards. This result cannot be explained due to the limitations of the cross-sectional design of the SCS. Analyses cannot determine whether security measures were installed in response to student fears and victimization, whether the security measures instilled more fear, or whether fear and victimization simply persisted in some schools despite security measures. Longitudinal studies are necessary to assess the effectiveness of security measures and policies for school safety. Researchers may want to consider employing quasi-experimental designs that measure student reports of fear and victimization before and after implementing violence-prevention policies and security measures.

Unanswered questions about school safety underscore the need for school administrators to maintain complete and accurate records of school crime and disciplinary reports, to regularly survey students on victimization and fear, and to closely monitor behavior that creates an unsafe school environment. A new NCES survey that promises to provide additional valuable information from school principals is the School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS). NCES plans to release the first report on SSOCS data later this year.

Accurate and reliable reports on crime and justice are essential to inform the public. Most Americans' knowledge and opinions about crime and justice are based on what they see on television and read in the newspapers (Warr 2000). Critics of the mass media believe there is cause for concern when news reports are the public's sole source of information. The mass media exaggerate the true nature and extent of violent crime, presenting a distorted picture of criminals, victims, the causes of crime, and the criminal justice system (Surette 1998). Television and newspaper reports of school violence likewise present exaggerated and distorted views of students' risk of being seriously attacked or harmed at school (Lawrence and Mueller 2003). The widely publicized news stories on Columbine High School and other school shooting incidents unquestionably elevated students' and parents' fears of school violence (as noted in Are America's Schools Safe? ). A Gallup poll conducted 1 year after the Columbine shooting found that 63 percent of the parents of K–12 students believed that a similar tragedy was very or somewhat likely to occur in their community, and 70 percent agreed that the shooting made them more concerned about their child's safety at school (Gillespie 2000).

The information presented in the two featured reports clearly shows that most parents and students have less to fear for students' safety at school than elsewhere in the community. Violent crime in and around schools has declined over the past several years. The reports also show, however, that alcohol, drugs, bullying, and hate-related words and graffiti continue to be problems. Students' ability to learn is adversely affected by fear and an unsafe school environment.

In conclusion, the role of federal agencies in measuring and reporting on school crime and safety is key to providing the most accurate and reliable assessments of the problem. Both of the reports featured in this issue of the Quarterly provide a sound basis for decisionmaking on school crime and safety and point out the importance of maintaining accurate measures. The reports provide accurate information to guide policymakers and practitioners in developing effective programs and policies to prevent school crime and violence.