What We Have Learned
With approximately 100 studies completing in recent years, NIJ has sought to aggregate and disseminate findings from these studies. Some projects studied the root causes and consequences of school violence, while others evaluated innovative school safety strategies. This dissemination effort is intended to assess what we have learned, help policymakers more readily use this knowledge and to identify outstanding research questions.
Results from some of these studies have been synthesized in the following NIJ reports:
- The Causes and Consequences of School Violence: A Review (2022)
- School Policing Programs: Where We Have Been and Where We Need to go Next (2022)
Resources
Justice Today Podcast Episode
Five Things and By the Numbers
- Five Things About School-Based Violence Prevention and Intervention Programs
- Five Things about Mass Shootings in K-12 Schools
- School Safety: By the Numbers (2017)
NIJ Articles
- Training for School Personnel to Prevent, Prepare, and Respond to School Safety Incidents: An overview of four common training topics and what the evidence says about their efficacy
- Tip Lines Can Lower Violence Exposure in Schools
- Cyberbullying in Schools: Meta-Analysis Finds That Tailored Programming Protects Students
- School Safety: Research on Gathering Tips and Addressing Threats (NIJ Journal)
- Many Teachers are Victimized by Students and the School’s Response Matters for Their Well-Being
- What Do the Data Reveal About Violence in Schools? (NIJ Journal)
- States' Roles in Keeping Schools Safe: Opportunities and Challenges for State School Safety Centers and Other Actors
Reports and Synthesis Papers
- The Causes and Consequences of School Violence: A Review (2022)
- School Policing Programs: Where We Have Been and Where We Need to go Next (2022)
- Synthesizing Knowledge on Equity and Equity-based School Safety Strategies (2023)
- Balancing the Components of a Comprehensive School Safety Framework Findings from NIJ’s Comprehensive School Safety Initiative Projects (2025)
- Public Mass Shootings Research
U.S. Department of Justice Partners
Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA)
- STOP School Violence Program - learn how BJA supports the STOP School Violence Act of 2018.
- National Center for School Safety - the center is the BJA STOP Program National Training and Technical Assistance provider and is a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional center focused on improving school safety and preventing school violence.
Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office)
- School Violence Prevention Program (SVPP) - learn about resources provided by COPS Office under the STOP School Violence Act of 2018. The Act gave the COPS Office authority to provide awards directly to States, units of local government, or Indian tribes to improve security at schools and on school grounds in the jurisdiction of the grantee through evidence-based school safety programs and technology.
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
- Visit the (OJJDP) to learn more about the STOP School Violence awards they make to implement evidence-based prevention and intervention efforts in a K-12 setting
- OJJDP FY24 Enhancing School Capacity To Address Youth Violence
Other Federal Partners
- SchoolSafety.gov - The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Department of Education (ED), U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) created SchoolSafety.gov to share actionable recommendations to keep school communities safe. SchoolSafety.gov aims to help schools prevent, protect, mitigate, respond to, and recover from emergency situations.
- StopBullying.gov - U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) maintains this website with content also provided by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Department of Education (ED), and U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ. StopBullying.gov provides information on what bullying is, what cyberbullying is, who is at risk, and how you can prevent and respond to bullying.
- Youth.gov - This U.S. government website is designed to help create, maintain, and strengthen effective youth programs. Included are youth facts, funding information, and tools to help assess community assets, generate maps of local and federal resources, search for evidence-based youth programs, and keep up-to-date on the latest, youth-related news.
History of School Safety Research and Evaluation at NIJ
In 1999, NIJ established the School Safety Technology program to develop, evaluate, and establish technologies and training to keep our schools safe. Technologies included concealed weapons detection, information technology, surveillance, and training and simulation. Further, NIJ funded applied technology assistance to local entities. Many of these projects had broader utility for a variety of criminal justice settings, including for law enforcement and correctional settings. This work yielded guides for schools and law enforcement agencies and culminated in two comprehensive review projects published in 2016: The Role of Technology in Improving K–12 School Safety and A Comprehensive Report of School Safety Technology.
Between 2014 and 2017, in response to high-profile incidents of school violence, NIJ launched and administered the Comprehensive School Safety Initiative, awarding an unprecedented $246 million across nearly 90 projects. The CSSI was an investment in developing knowledge about the root causes of school violence, developing strategies for increasing school safety, and rigorously evaluating innovative school safety strategies including supporting pilot programs and upscaling evidence-based strategies.
Since 2020, in partnership with the Bureau of Justice Assistance, NIJ has invested nearly $20 million additional funds in research on root causes of school violence and evaluations of the impact and effectiveness of awards made for purposes authorized under the STOP School Violence Act. These awards are mostly still in progress and many represent examination of many of the “next steps” identified by CSSI studies.