Prevention, in the context of school safety, is the proactive process of identifying and mitigating a potential risk of harm to someone. Of course, we all want to play in the arena of prevention. So, where do we start? We start with understanding our risks or threats. It is not sufficient to just identify our threats. We must understand why and how they are threats. It all starts with identifying the types of threats that you will likely encounter. So, add this to the list of assessments you will need to complete. If you are keeping track of the different types of assessments you need to complete, we are at 4: Security, Safety, Policy, and Threat/Hazard. These assessments should be completed regularly to ensure your plans are current. There are mandates to create “All-Hazards” plans for all public schools. However, as mentioned, identifying the hazard is only the first step. We must understand the threats and what they mean to our schools.
Understanding what a threat means to schools requires examining its characteristics. For example, we are all familiar with the fire threat at our schools. For more than 60 years, we have been required to conduct numerous fire drills each year. However, looking closer, we can understand the threat fire poses. The last death related to a fire in school occurred in 1958. Building code changes have virtually eliminated fire as an actual threat. Going deeper, while fire poses a threat to all of us, we are more likely to die from the smoke it produces than the fire. Going even further, let’s look at the progression the fire must take to become a fire. You need a source of heat, fuel, and oxygen. Very few threats, none I know of, just materialize out of thin air.
We are now discovering even earthquakes give us warning signs. Suppose you have seen any of my posts or blogs or listened to my podcasts (Coffee with Kelly: a discussion on school safety) on violent threat identification or management. In that case, you are likely familiar with the “Pathway to Violence.” This is a sequence of steps that those who pose a threat of violence to a school typically go through. For example, the steps are victimization, grievance, violence ideation, research and planning, pre-attack preparation, probing and breaching, and finally, the act of violence. If we examine the “Pathway to Violence” as a warning system, we can start looking at all our threats as having a “Pathway to …” and having its own set of warning signs. Why is this important to us and our safety?
If we understand the pathway that leads up to the point where a hazard or threat impacts our school, we can start to identify early warning signs for each of our hazards or threats. If we can see the early warning signs early enough to take action to prevent or mitigate their impacts, we can save lives and reduce injuries. We are trying to shift from passively waiting for an event to actively responding as soon as we recognize early warning signs along its identifiable pathway. If you know the “Left of Bang” timeline, we are trying to push our response as far to the left as possible.
To accomplish this, we go back to the beginning and identify all the hazards, threats, events, or incidents we will likely face. Then, you need to examine them and determine what makes them a danger to your schools. Then, reverse engineer the steps necessary for the circumstances to play out for them to have an impact. Look at the “Pathway to Violence” as a prevention tool (see Figure 1 below).
Figure 1
Referencing the “Left of Bang” timeline, with the attack being “zero hour,” every step before the attack is an opportunity to identify a threat and take steps to prevent it. While we show seven steps connected by four associated links, there are often hundreds, if not thousands, of steps and, therefore, opportunities for us to prevent an attack from occurring. Most of these preventative steps can be implemented before we have identified a threat. This is where policies and culture come into play: anti-bullying laws and policies, early warning signs and, concerning behavior identification, etc.
Take the “Pathway to Violence” model and strip it of all the categories. This will become your template for identifying all your threats. Working backward from “Bang” or “Zero-hour,” you can now begin to understand your threats or hazards and how they threaten your school. Suppose you understand your threats/hazards and how they threaten your school. In that case, you can identify the steps necessary to prevent them from occurring or, at minimum, mitigate their impacts on your school's safety. All that is left is to create one for each of your identified threats/hazards.
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