SCHOOL SHOOTINGS AND VIOLENCE Chair: Thomas Görgen Chair: Thomas Görgen

101 We will discuss the implications of these results for a better understanding of the juvenile justice system’s ability to effectively motivate offenders and prevent recidivism.

2.7 SCHOOL SHOOTINGS AND VIOLENCE

References:

Corbin, J. & Strauss, A. (1990). Grounded Theory Research: Procedures, Canons, and Evaluative Criteria. Qualitative Sociology, 13, 3-21.

Newman, K.S., Fox, C., Harding, D.J., Mehta, J., & Roth, W. (2004). Rampage. The social roots of school shootings. New York: Perseus Books.

Sommer, F., Leuschner, V., & Scheithauer, H. (2014). Bullying, romantic rejection, and conflicts with teachers: The crucial role of social dynamics in the development of school shootings – A systematic review. International Journal of Developmental Science, 8, 3-24.

0118 - SUBSTANTIVE AND TRANSIENT THREATS OF HOMICIDAL SCHOOL VIOLENCE – DIFFERENCES IN WARNING BEHAVIOR AND SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL FACTORS

Nadine Ahlig (Germany)¹; Vincenz Leuschner (Germany)¹; Herbert Scheithauer (Germany)¹ 1 - Freie Universität Berlin

School shootings or school attacks, defined as violent acts at school by (former) students, who intend to kill at least one person associated with the school generate a great deal of concern and fear even though they are rare events (Bondü & Scheithauer, 2014). Contrary, schools have to face threats of school shootings very frequently, nevertheless only a few of these threats are put into action. Experts found that all school shooter in the US and Germany leaked information about their plans prior to the attack by communicating their intentions in some way (e.g. verbal, written). Therefore, the need of finding reliable and specific criteria to distinguish between a substantive threat which could lead to a potential lethal attack and a transient threat which occurs out of situation is an essential issue we have to face, since check lists and profiles for identifying potential school shooter lack specifity and will likely result in false positive identifications and stigmatization. Meloy et al. (2014) show that there are significant differences between school shooters and transient threateners in terms of warning behaviour (pathway, fixation, identification, novel aggression, energy burst and last resort, revealing important implications for prevention.

In our study we expand these findings by comparing students, who started to prepare an attack which was foiled (substantive threateners, N=14) and students, who made threats without having intentions to put them into practice (transient threateners, N=100) with regard to frequency, content and details of threats made as well as the student’s warning behaviour, demographics, prior criminal record, psychiatric history, personal characteristics, affinity towards weapons and violence, family situation, social situation and protective factors. By comparing these groups we found more factors for assessing the seriousness of threats and its potential for homicidal school violence. For analyses a newly developed, reliable and

103 References:

Bondü, R., & Scheithauer, H. (2014). Kill one or kill them all? Differences between single and multiple victim school attacks. European Journal of Criminology, 1-23.

Meloy, J. R., Hoffmann, J., Roshdi, K., & Guldimann, A. (2014). Some warning behaviors discriminate between school shooters and other students of concern. Journal of Threat Assessment and Management, 1(3), 203-211.

0119 - SHOOTING UP LOUGHBOROUGH: THE CASE OF A UK WOULD-BE SCHOOL SHOOTER / TERRORIST

Athina Caraba (United Kingdom)¹

1 - City University London, Centre for Law Justice and Journalism

This paper presents the findings of the case study of a United Kingdom teenager who was accused of preparing a “new Columbine” (school shooting) and stood trial twice for preparing acts of terrorism, under the Terrorism Act 2000. The paper is based on primary and secondary data (evidence collected at the trials, interviews and newspaper coverage). The defendant’s trials took place in late 2013 and 2014 and, as neither jury could reach a verdict, he was cleared of the terrorism-related charges and is currently serving a Hospital Order (s37/41 of the Mental Health Act 2007) for three separate charges of possession of explosives under the Explosive Substances Act 1883.

The paper tests the theory of the social roots of rampage school shootings proposed by Newman et al (2004) to explicate such crimes committed by teenagers who are current or recent students of the schools they attack. It is conceptualised as a constellation theory of a combination of factors and postulates five necessary but not sufficient conditions for any such event to occur:

· Self-perception of extreme marginalisation in the social worlds that count

· Psychosocial problems that magnify the impact of marginality

· Cultural scripts that lead the way towards an armed attack

· Failure of surveillance systems

· Gun availability

In the case examined, all five conditions seem to have been present: the teenager was an isolated outsider whose extreme racist views and general “weirdness” set him apart from his peer group; he suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome (a form of autism) but remained undiagnosed until his arrest; he had an obsession with mass murderers, the Columbine shooting, weapons and the military; his mental health issues remained undiagnosed until after

his arrest and his behavioural problems were misjudged; he was in possession of a number of weapons, consisting of airguns, knives and partially assembled IEDs. Although an actual event did not take place (the teenager was arrested for an unrelated incident), it is argued that the case is a credible application of the theory. This paper also considers the issue of the construction of this phenomenon as a terrorist “threat”, reflecting shifts in the UK’s counter-terrorism legislative framework.

0120 - BEYOND SCHOOL SHOOTINGS AND TERRORIST VIOLENCE: MULTIPLE HOMICIDES COMMITTED BY YOUNG OFFENDERS

Thomas Görgen (Germany)¹; Benjamin Kraus (Germany)¹; Anabel Taefi (Germany)¹ 1 - German Police University

The paper reports findings from an analysis of German cases of multiple homicide offences committed by offenders aged 12 to 25 between 2003 and 2013; the analysis is based on public prosecutors’ files. Existing research on multiple homicide offences is generally rare and largely limited to school shootings and similar killing sprees, terrorist attacks, and serial homicide offences, the latter being characterized by a cooling-off period between the acts constituting the series. Phenomena of young offenders’ multiple homicides outside of these categories are grossly under researched although they are more frequent than any of the highlighted types of offences. Multiple homicide offences by young offenders are embedded in diverse contexts, such as intergenerational family conflict, gender-based violence, substance abuse, mental health problems, suicidal tendencies, intergroup hostility, or ordinary criminal activity. The paper presents data on victim and perpetrator characteristics, offence dynamics, context and background factors and provides a preliminary case typology of the field. Findings are discussed with regard to homogeneity/diversity of young offenders’ multiple homicides, the specificity of dynamics leading up to such acts, and the explanatory power of concepts from research on juvenile violence on the one hand and models addressing school shootings and terrorist violence on the other for the phenomena under study.

1124 - FRAMING THE SITUATION: A SITUATIONAL PERSPECTIVE ON SCHOOL SHOOTINGS WITHIN DIFFERENT CULTURAL FRAMES

Vincenz Leuschner (Germany)¹; Herbert Scheithauer (Germany)¹

1 - Freie Universität Berlin, Department of Educational Science and Psychology

From a micro-sociological perspective (Collins, 2008), violent acts can be understood and explained by the interactional dynamics between perpetrator(s), victim(s), and bystander(s) in

105 and prepared violent acts, perpetrators must overcome tension and fear to carry out their attacks. Collins (2014) argues that school shooters build a deep backstage of private rituals around a hidden arsenal of weapons to overcome this tension and fear. This leads to clandestine excitement, as a unique source of emotional energy and motivating force to carry out the attack. There are various indications for the validity of this theory in school shooting cases that occurred in the last twenty years. However, analyses of these cases of school shootings show that beside private rituals, most perpetrators referred to cultural scripts and to narratives of former school shootings (e.g. Newman et al., 2004). This becomes particularly obvious if one compares historical cases with current school shooting attacks. Furthermore, analysis of performative aspects of shooting situations shows that perpetrators seem to intend to place messages to the public. With respect to these findings, it is necessary to extend the micro-sociological theory by including these aforementioned references to social frames as motivating forces. This in turn leads to the extension of the triadic perspective of micro-sociological approaches (perpetrator, victim, and bystander) by including the public as fourth part of the situational configuration.

2.8 THE BOUNDARIES AND STRATEGIES OF NATIONAL COUNTER-TERRORISM