Question

1. Discuss the dynamics of gangs in our society in general and in our schools in particular. Identify the essential steps for planning for a crisis in schools

Answer 1

Outlaw motorcycle gangs, organized crime, drug cartels and ethnic gangs come together for a common purpose that may start as a social thing but can evolve into something anti-social or criminal when the members who make up the gang are antisocial or criminals themselves.

Sociologists believe that a gang will take on the morals, or lack of morals, of the worst members and often exceed that lack of morals. This behavior often manifests itself in most or all of the gang's members, especially when they are together. This behavior can be explained as 'group dynamics,' which is essentially the way individuals behave when they are part of a group.

The behavior can become extreme. Such behavior is often displayed around the world during rioting. The riots that occur during or after sporting events or protests can lead individuals who may not be inclined to act in a violent manner to act in such a manner and exceed their own planned actions or expectations.

In the case of college students who usually display disciplined behavior and conformity, attendance at a post celebratory rally for their college's team can cause them to get 'caught up' in the more severe behavior of their fellow rally-goers. This can result in the usually behaved student becoming violent, undisciplined and uncontrollable.

This group dynamic that leads to bad behavior is also evident in so many of the "Girls Gone Wild" videos advertised on television networks after midnight. Individual behavior becomes elevated to the worse behavior being displayed by friends, as the crowds cheer them on with the presence of the camera and the brief opportunity for fame.

Many of these individuals, college students, girls going wild or gang members may later be shocked by their own behavior.

Several gang members have told me that they were dabbling in minor crimes such as graffiti and petty larceny before their membership in the gang but committed more serious and more violent crimes far beyond their nature and expectations as a member of the gang.[PAGEBREAK]

One long-time gang member admitted to me that he never thought he could kill someone even if his life had depended on it but was involved in several gang-related murders as a member of his New York City gang. He freely told me he became physically ill during the first murder and, as he stated, 'puked his brains out' immediately afterward. Such stories were typical of the many gang members that I have interviewed during my law enforcement career and subsequent contacts.

I'm not making excuses for those individuals who typically, and as I have learned, join gangs, many members are merely followers. The hard-core members, overall, number a few in most of the gangs across the U.S. Nevertheless, the members of the gangs I'm going to highlight would easily kill someone or have already killed some or many. These gangs have shown a level of violence that may have led to their members, who were initially unwilling to reach such a violence level, become a savagely violent and callous person.

There is no excuse for someone who consciously makes the change from a person who is non-violent to someone who is violent and eventually kills with or for his gang. All are equally guilty.

Many gang members I have met, when isolated from their gang, show their true personalities. They often show signs of low self-esteem, being frightened by the thought of being alone in the streets or other traits quite opposite of the traits they show when with the other members of their gang.

These gang members can be merely frightened children who grow up into frightened adults who learn to victimize others as a way of making them feel better or committing crimes, because it seems easier than working at making an honest living. These frightened individuals lack discipline and social skills. Many have dyslexia or another form of learning disability, while others are bipolar or have attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Some gang members fit the typical profile for what we would expect from a street thug. They come from dysfunctional families and lower socioeconomic and high-crime neighborhoods. There are also those members who come from solid backgrounds and middle-class neighborhoods who gravitate to gangs for popularity, street credibility, money-making or protection.[PAGEBREAK]

While many gang members have different personalities and traits and come from a variety of broken homes, most seem to be looking for an identity of their own or a chance to belong to something. These reasons satisfy powerful needs to an individual, especially a teenager. These needs include, but are not limited to, self-preservation, protection, love, discipline, identity, camaraderie, power, money, popularity or a chance to stand out or to get respect.

After the gang forms, it creates its own subculture that develops social standing and mores. Sociologically speaking, the gang becomes its own society for its members, while those members lose the connection to normal society and their biological or legal families.

Their goal is to maintain the function of the gang and the individual's social standing within the gang. Members may naturally fall into comfortable roles within the group. Leaders develop from those members who are usually more violent than the others or those members that are more charismatic or who have the desire to lead. Members with proven track records as risk-takers will socially end up near the top of the hierarchy of the gang. Those members who are less motivated and lack the guts of the others will take on less important roles.

Mores—moral rules and customs of a social group—develop as the gang develops. Acceptable behavior for the gang such as drug selling, drug use, shootings, stabbings, sexual deviance and other behavior become the norm for the gang.

Gang members find it increasingly difficult to interact in mainstream society. They make excuses for their behavior and blame everyone else for their failure. The more disconnected they get from society, as outlaws, the closer their connection to the gang and its mores.

This helps keep the gang's control over its members stronger. The members become more disconnected from society, old friends and real family. The activities of the gang become their normal functions. Others are viewed as outsiders and, at times, enemies. There is a lack of empathy toward others.

The gang's limited social conscience causes the individual member to find it difficult to interact with others who aren't members of the same gang. The gang becomes a job and a social function at the same time.

School administrators and crisis team members can create safe, secure, and peaceful schools free from the destructive influence of violence in all of its forms. To do that, schools must implement purposeful, coordinated strategies to increase levels of safety and security and simultaneously promote student wellness and resilience. These efforts improve students’ readiness to learn and build positive school climates.

School violence is a broad term that includes overt aggressive behaviors such as physical fights on campus, bullying (including online bullying or cyber-bullying), physical assault, bombing, arson, or other deliberate means of causing harm to the staff and students. Sadly, it includes rare, tragic, devastating school shootings. In addition, school violence includes more covert behaviors that increase fear and diminish school safety such as threats of injury at school, weapons possession, and harassment. In some communities, gangs recruit school-age students to be members and contribute to violence in schools.

When violence occurs at school, trust is violated, which thereby diminishes schools’ efforts to attain their primary mission of educating all students and helping them to reach their full potential. While not all instances of violence can be prevented, policies and procedures that support a balanced cross-discipline approach to school safety and emphasize clear communication, foster positive personal connectedness, and implement evidence-based support will be most effective in preventing school violence.

Strategies for Creating Safe Schools

Efforts to reduce school violence are most successful when they use multiple strategies selected specifically for each school’s needs. No single strategy or program will create a safe school and effective efforts require collaboration among administrators, teachers, school psychologists, other school mental health professionals, school resource officers, parents, students, and community agencies.

Create school–community safety partnerships. First, it is critical to engage in a systematic planning process to understand the school’s safety challenges and opportunities. Establish a school leadership team that includes key personnel: principals, teachers, school-employed mental health professionals, instruction professionals, school resource officers, community members, and a professional skilled in data collection and analysis.

Conduct a needs assessment for planning and selecting programs and interventions. School safety measures should be geared to the specific needs and culture of the school community. A needs assessment can identify strengths and risks, such as the types of violence that occur, the context in which they occur, the most frequent victims, and the effectiveness of discipline procedures and existing intervention efforts. The needs assessment should also look at staff members’ specific strengths and existing resources that may be deployed more effectively. The resulting data help guide decisions regarding program and strategy selection and professional development.

Establish comprehensive school crisis response plans. It is critical to have crisis plans for multiple crisis situations with clearly defined roles for each member of the multidisciplinary crisis team. Plans should also consider the importance of the mental health response to minimize the traumatic impact of such events. Therefore, crisis response plans should have explicit procedures for reaffirming physical health, ensuring perceptions of safety and security, reestablishing social support, evaluating psychological trauma risk, and providing the interventions appropriate for the level of risk.

Balance measures to ensure both physical and psychological safety. Intruder-based, armed violence is not only extremely rare but also extremely difficult to prevent. Solutions that may seem obvious and simple, such as metal detectors and armed security officers may not be the most effective means of prevention. Schools cannot be barricaded against all possible harm. Trying to do so is counterproductive to maintaining a healthy learning environment. Excessive building security does not promote a sense of safety or student well-being (and can undermine it), nor does it provide a guarantee of safety when an armed intruder is willing to die. Reasonable physical security—such as locked doors; lighted and monitored hallways; and visitor check-in, check-out systems—must be combined with violence prevention and positive behavior supports.

Enhance efforts to create and maintain a positive school climate that promotes learning, psychological health, and student success. School administrators must balance physical security with efforts that foster student resiliency, connectedness, and social competency. Central to this effort is helping students and their families feel valued and personally invested in keeping their schools safe. This relates to teaching codes of conduct, bullying prevention, conflict resolution, personal responsibility, respect, and compassion. Promoting trusting student-adult relationships is essential to students feeling safe and empowered to report potentially dangerous activity (including threats of violence and suicide). Such reporting is one of the most effective school safety strategies.

Respond systematically to all threats made by students. Schools can and must respond to all threats that students (and others) make on school campuses. Use a threat assessment approach for evaluating and intervening with students’ potential violent behavior. Although research shows that the vast majority of student threats of school violence do not result in actual violence, they nonetheless provide opportunities to better understand and respond to any special needs of the students making the threats and the students being threatened. Each threat needs to be reviewed and threat response efforts at school should be based on research-validated procedures. Collaboration and communication with other education, mental health, and law enforcement agencies is essential to an effective process, which should be incorporated into the school safety plan and training.

Promote antiviolence initiatives that include prevention programs for all students. General interventions include school-wide violence prevention programs. These activities encourage all students to experience positive emotional development and to use nonviolent means to resolve their personal conflicts. Such programs are natural bridges between interventions that focus on individual change and those seeking to establish the positive climate and culture of the school.

Provide adequate access to mental health services and supports. Mental health, behavior, safety, and learning are integral to one another. Yet only a fraction of students in need actually receive mental health services, and among those who do, the majority access those services in school. In many schools, however, the availability of school-based mental health professionals remains inadequate. School administrators should consider how their school-based mental health personnel are engaged and then consider advocating for more staff members if necessary. School psychologists, counselors, and social workers can offer assessment and counseling to students and can consult with families and teachers to provide effective interventions and supports. They are trained to do so within multitiered systems of support, such as Response to Intervention, which promotes learning and sustainability of supports over time.

Intervene with students who experience significant school behavioral adjustment problems. Implement strategies that foster students’ social–emotional skills that are associated with adaptive coping and resilience. For students who are experiencing social and/or psychological distress, the complex problems they face require the coordination of interventions across school and community agencies. Schools alone cannot address the myriad needs of these students. For this small number of students, cooperative agreements may be needed with community mental health, juvenile probation, child welfare services, alcohol and drug treatment, and other youth and family-serving agencies.