School-Associated Youth Homicides, 1994–2018: What CDC Surveillance Shows

Homicides connected to schools are devastating for families, schools and whole communities, but they are a small part of the violence that kills young Americans: consistently less than 2 percent of youth homicides. CDC's School-Associated Violent Death Surveillance System, which has tracked them since 1994, finds that most look like the violence outside the school gates — and that is where much of the prevention has to happen.

What was counted

The system counts deaths that happen on a working public or private primary or secondary school campus, on the way to or from school, or at or on the way to an official school event. Cases are found through a systematic scan of news media — about 36,000 articles a school year — and confirmed with law enforcement or school officials. This analysis covered youths aged 5–18 who were killed.

From July 1994 to June 2016 there were 423 school-associated homicide incidents involving youths: 393 with a single victim and 30 with several, together 1.2 percent of the 39,208 homicides of youths aged 5–18 in that period. Eight more multiple-victim incidents from July 2016 to June 2018 brought the multiple-victim total to 38 incidents and 121 youth deaths.

Two different patterns

Single-victim homicides mirror youth homicide in the broader community: victims most often male, from racial and ethnic minority groups, and in urban areas, and frequently connected with gang activity or personal disputes. The average rate was 0.03 per 100,000 students; for multiple-victim homicides it was 0.008.

Firearms

Firearm injuries caused 70.4 percent of all the school-associated youth homicides studied. Many of the people who used guns were themselves under 18: 40.0 percent in single-victim and 60.5 percent in multiple-victim incidents. Earlier research found that most firearms youths used in school-associated deaths came from their own home or from a friend or relative — which is why the report stresses safe storage and keeping minors from unsupervised access to guns.

Prevention beyond the school

Because so many of these deaths resemble community violence, the report calls for prevention both on and off school grounds. CDC's A Comprehensive Technical Package for the Prevention of Youth Violence and Associated Risk Behaviors describes evidence-based options, among them:

• connecting young people with caring adults;
• building problem-solving and coping skills;
• reducing risk among youths who have already been violent;
• street outreach programs that train credible community members, such as former gang members, to change norms and defuse conflicts.

Limits

Only incidents reported in the media can be counted, and coverage changes over time, though cases were checked against other sources. Interviews came after the fact and may suffer from recall bias. Single-victim data end in June 2016, while multiple-victim incidents, which get extensive coverage, run to June 2018. Small numbers limit some comparisons.

Sources

Based on "Characteristics of School-Associated Youth Homicides — United States, 1994–2018," by Kristin M. Holland, Jeffrey E. Hall, Jing Wang, Elizabeth M. Gaylor, Linda L. Johnson, Daniel Shelby, Thomas R. Simon and the School-Associated Violent Deaths Study Group, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a work of the United States government in the public domain.