Risk management is not moving toward zero overall risk. It's deciding which risks to reduce at the expense of increasing others like balancing on a seesaw.
DAVID RIEDMAN
Beyond fortress building and outdated military theory, there are three flawed strategies that are being misapplied to prevent school shootings:
1. Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design
2. Broken Windows Policing
3. Unwinnable Wars Against Ideas
School security consultants, architects, and vendors have sold many school officials on creating campuses that use concepts of “Crime Prevention by Environmental Design”. This sounds good on paper until you actually read the academic articles about it.
Unlike property crimes that are based on opportunity, violent crime is usually committed by someone with a pre-existing relationship with the victim. School shooters are not random opportunists looking for “soft targets”, they are usually current students with a specific grievance directed at the campus. The height of the bushes may deter a thief from breaking into a house, but it doesn’t change the motivation of a jilted ex-lover to murder a former spouse.
If a school campus has a problem with burglars, trimming the bushes and adding fences might help. If the goal is preventing shootings, there is no evidence these designs deter a violent offender. In fact, spending limited funding on physical designs instead of social workers and crisis intervention programs might be increasing the overall risk of a shooting
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