Harsh and reactionary school security measures, including policing, surveillance technology, and emergency preparedness strategies increased substantially in the two decades following the mass shooting at Columbine High School in 1999. These strategies have limited empirical support for preventing violence in general and mass shootings, in particular. Instead, they have proven to be problematic, often doing more harm than good by criminalizing student misbehavior, contributing to negative school climate, and having psychological impacts on students’ perceptions of safety. In recent years, many schools have started to explore promising alternative approaches, including threat assessment, positive behavioral interventions, restorative practices, and improving relationships between students and adults. This article reviews the trends in school security from the 1990s through the present, drawing on national data from the U.S. Department of Education and scholarly research on school security. Our specific focus will be on the changes in school security that have been made to prevent or minimize the impact of potential school shooters. We also discuss the consequences of the school security boom and the future directions to ensure school safety.

As the United States is experiencing unprecedented high rates of incarceration, especially of minorities and marginalized communities, racialized punishment has been addressed by many scholars (Alexander 2010;Wacquant 2001; Cole 1999, Tonry 2011Stevenson 2014). Studies have shown the connection between racialized structures of inequality, punishment, and colonization (Agozino 2000, 2003; Irwin and Umemoto 2016; Bosworth and Flavin 2007). However, scholars have recognized a void in the discussion of colonial theory in the field of criminology (Agozino 2003; Cunneen and Tauri 2016; Bosworth and Flavin 2007). In this paper, I identify several ways in which criminology is closely tied to colonialism. I argue that a colonial criminology perspective assists in identifying power distinctions that construct notions of difference, thus providing a more nuanced understanding of crime, violence, and criminalization as a response to oppression and alienation. I focus primarily on colonialism in Hawai'i because of its fairly recent colonization and continuing indigenous struggle for Hawaiian sovereignty. Furthermore, Hawai'i is representative of racial and ethnic inequality and disparity within the United States criminal justice system, as the majority of both the adult and juvenile incarcerated populations in Hawai'i are of Native Hawaiian and/or Pacific Islander decent.

Of course, ensuring safe environments in the U.S. educational system is paramount. It is also evident, however, inequalities associated with immigration, race/ethnicity, and situational context can impede school safety pursuits. Although prior research has revealed a pattern between “downward” assimilation and increased experiences with student-level violence and disorder for the children of racial/ethnic immigrants (i.e., first- and second-generation), investigations about school-level rates of violence and disorder associated with the context of reception remain uncertain. Our study seeks to contribute to the research about immigration, racial/ethnic inequality, education, and violence by examining the associations between context, school violence, and crime, and the schooling of children of immigrants by drawing on a context of reception conceptual framework to address three research questions. First, is there an association between an increasing proportion of children of immigrants and school crimes (i.e., violence, property damage, and substance use)? Second, are there differences linked to the context of reception (i.e., urban, suburban, town, and rural) in the association between the increasing proportion of children of immigrants and school crime? Third, are there racial/ethnic differences in the association between the increasing proportion of children of immigrants and school crimes in distinct contexts? Findings indicate that the children of racial/ethnic minority immigrants have significantly distinct associations with rates of school violence and crime across all contexts; however, there are important and distinctive nuances that are presented and examined.

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