Violent Culture, Media Share Blame, Experts Say

Struggling to shed light on the schoolyard killings in Arkansas--the latest of three such incidents in the last five months--social scientists, physicians and policy experts Wednesday cited factors from ready access to guns to the specter of a new type of student-criminal: the “fledgling psychopath.”

Experts also laid the burden of blame on a popular culture that often glorifies violence as a way of solving personal problems. Some put the incident in the broader social context of violence against women, given that the teacher and four students gunned down were female and the two alleged assassins are boys, 11 and 13.

At the same time, some experts cautioned against overreacting. “This whole series of middle school and high school shootings is outside the envelope of the usual youth crime epidemic,” said Frank Zimring, professor of law at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall. “Youth firearm violence is way down from its 1993-94 peak and there is no indication of a turnaround.”

Nevertheless, this week’s shooting in Jonesboro, Ark., has aroused anxieties, particularly in the South, the home of all three of the fatal school shooting incidents--one in Kentucky, one in Arkansas and one in Mississippi. Recent research suggests that Southerners are more inclined than Northerners to react aggressively if insulted, perhaps because they have historically placed a high value on personal honor.

Homicides associated with a personal grievance are four times more common in Southern states than in Midwestern states, according to University of Michigan psychologist Richard Nisbett, co-author of the 1996 book “The Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South.”

To be sure, experts differ sharply on the basic question of whether the Jonesboro incident was an isolated, if deeply tragic, aberration--a contradiction to the welcome decline in national homicide rates--or part of a worrisome new pattern or trend.

Ronald Stephens, executive director of the National School Safety Center, said it represents an ominous new incursion of high-powered weapons into the sanctuary of the schoolyard. “The incident is a continuing wake-up call for every school to put together and develop strategies to make school safer,” he said. The Jonesboro deaths bring to 201 the number of fatal school shootings since his group began counting in 1992.

“The thing that is different about the [recent deaths] is the increase in multiple shootings and the increase in firepower,” he said.

After years of rising violence by juveniles, the recent trend has been a sharp drop in such crime. Juvenile homicide arrests fell 30%--from 3,102 to 2,172--between 1994 and 1996, according to Justice Department reports.

“There is a very special quality of fear that occurs when havens of safety can be penetrated in this kind of arbitrary and very frightening fashion,” added Zimring. “And we don’t want to reconstruct our social institutions to have metal screens in every seventh grade.”

A UC Irvine researcher in juvenile justice said the spate of recent shootings jars the nation because they are so rare. And as such, said Mike Males, the tragedies demand “perspective” by policy makers and the general public.

“Public schools are the safest places from murder in our society,” said Males, an author and doctoral candidate. “Los Angeles Unified [School District] has something like 600,000 students and there hasn’t been a homicide since 1995.

“That is remarkable, that you could have a half-million people in one community and not have a homicide for three years. It’s unheard of. . . . So you can understand why this is a national event. It is shocking.”

Experts called attention to many factors that may have played a role in the Jonesboro killings. But the point that they nearly all agreed on was the importance of guns. “I don’t think kids are more evil than they were a few decades ago,” said Dr. John May, assistant medical director of the Washington jail. “It’s just that they have more lethal means available to them.”

Federal research bears that out. In each year since 1988, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 80% of homicide victims 15 to 19 were killed with a firearm. That figure rose to 90% in 1994.

A 1996 CDC survey found that while 1 out of 24 students reported carrying a firearm in 1990, that figure rose to 1 in 12 in 1995.

In the old days, said Stephens of the safe-school program, kids would walk away from a fight with a few bruises. “Now it’s a body count.”

The National Rifle Assn. had no comment on new calls for tighter gun laws, said public affairs director Bill Powers.

“There is a time and place for that sort of political discussion,” Powers said. “But right now, in the traumatic aftermath of that event, the only reasonable response is sorrow and sympathy and concern.”

Beyond what some experts believe is excessive availability of handguns and other firearms is American society’s evident romance with using the weapons to resolve disputes and express anger. “We live in a culture of violence,” said Leonard Eron, a psychologist at the Institute for Social Research in Michigan who has studied the effect of violent entertainment on behavior.

“There’s so much violence on TV and in the media, and children are aware of it. Youngsters get to believe that the way you solve problems is by beating up on others.”

Eron and co-workers have been studying more than 800 people since 1980, when the subjects were 8 years old. Over the decades, the researchers have found that, compared to boys who watched rather mild shows on TV, boys who watched violent programs are more likely as adults to be aggressive, to be arrested for drunken driving and felonies, for instance.

Some social scientists emphasized the complex interaction between biology and family environment in fostering violent youth behavior. Donald Lynam, a University of Kentucky psychologist, has studied what he calls “fledgling psychopathy.”

Children with the syndrome, he said, exhibit the grandiosity and callousness that can be such a deadly combination in adult men. It appears to arise in kids who have both serious hyperactivity and the recognized psychiatric diagnosis known as conduct disorder, which is signified by fighting, cruelty and truancy.

Other researchers say such a new category may be needed to encompass events like that in Jonesboro. “When we see this kind of detached violent behavior that is very planned and very purposeful, usually we have to go beyond any mere situational factors that might have brought on the reaction,” said Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist associated with UC San Diego.

A similar view was voiced by the principal of the Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, where the shootings occurred. “I think we need to take a look at our society as a whole,” Karen Curtner said. “We need to look at how children are being fostered and raised.”