Threat Response & Intervention to Reduce School Violence.

A threat of violence should be considered a cry for help. Well developed threat assessment procedures facilitate the development and implementation of targeted intervention addressing the underlying social and emotional difficulties that lead to the violent behavior. Student safety planning can help to promote safe schools.

	Safety & Discipline. Most school districts across America have no tolerance policies regarding serious threats of violence. It is critical to understand the nature and context of the threat when responding to these behaviors. Simply expelling a student for threatening behavior does little to prevent school violence and does nothing to address the underlying problems that the student is likely experiencing.
	Therapeutic Interventions. Interventions should be targeted to address the underlying cause of the threatening behavior. Often, students who make serious threats of violence suffer from depression, alienation, victimization, and poor coping skill.
	Home & School. Student safety plans are used to facilitate a  threatening student's safe return to school following a threat of violence. A well developed plan identifies any behavioral, guidance, therapeutic, and supervision issues and how they will be addressed. The overview and example student safety plan documents to the right outline the key issues that need to be addressed following a threat of violence. The example document offers several interventions across several domains that may prove useful at home and school to mitigate future threatening violent behavior. Comments & suggestions to improve these documents are welcomed.

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