On March 23, 2018, one day before the student-led “March for Our Lives” rally in Washington, D.C, the NPSC convened a congressional briefing on school violence where experts discussed topics ranging from early prevention efforts to reforms in laws and policies surrounding guns. Specifically, Dr. Dewey Cornell, Professor from University of Virginia, discussed evidence-based school threat assessment. When a student (or adult) makes a threat, whether through social media, online, verbally, or through gestures), an accurate threat assessment procedure must be initiated. Such proposals have been developed based upon scientific evidence and need to be more widely adopted. Some schools have simply suspended students who verbalize such threats, whether in jest or not, and require them to get a letter from a mental health professional prior to returning to school. School Resource or School Safety Officers have sometimes criminally charged students as young as eight years old with terroristic threats. Neither of these punitive approaches improves safety or reduces crime in schools.

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