Award Date

5-15-2026

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Criminal Justice

First Committee Member

Alexandra Slemaker

Second Committee Member

Amber Krushas

Third Committee Member

Terance Miethe

Fourth Committee Member

Jacob Erickson

Number of Pages

105

Abstract

Kindergarten through 12th-grade (K-12) school homicides, defined as homicides that occurred on the property of a school serving kindergarten through 12th-grade students, account for about 2% of all youth homicides, but are still a serious problem in the United States. From 2000 to 2024, 372 K-12 school homicide incidents have occurred, in which 783 victims were killed and injured. However, prior research tends to either generally focus on youth homicides, school violence, or high-profile school shootings with multiple victims. This study aims to add to the literature by examining various incident-level factors of K-12 school homicide incidents that may influence the number of victims killed and injured. This study used publicly available secondary data on K-12 school homicides collected by the Violence Prevention Project. The Violence Prevention Project is a non-partisan and non-profit organization that collects data about various homicides in the United States. A negative binomial regression analysis was conducted to examine the expected effect that numerous variables had on the number of victim casualties. Results showed that most K-12 school homicide incidents involved handguns, but incidents involving long guns were expected to have higher casualties when compared to incidents involving intimate weapons. Most incidents were also escalations of a dispute, but incidents that involved other situations were expected to have higher casualties. Most incidents occurred outside but incidents that occurred indoors were expected to have higher casualties. Most schools did not report using security measures but those that did were expected to have higher casualties. This study showed that incident characteristics can influence the number of casualties during K-12 school homicides. A limitation of this study is that the Violence Prevention Project created this dataset by collecting publicly available information (e.g., newspapers, police reports, mainstream media, etc.). This means there is a possibility that some information could be inaccurate or lack details, as high-profile incidents may receive more attention than incidents involving only one victim. The cross-sectional nature of this study also prevents establishing temporal order. Further limitations are also discussed. Schools can use these findings to expand school safety strategies and push for the implementation of crisis intervention strategies to help identify at risk youth before they engage in violence. Future research could expand upon this study by further examining differences between K-12 and university homicide incidents or by comparing K-12 school homicides by different groups like comparing them by situation or by specific security measures. K-12 school homicides are rare but impactful incidents that research must continue to examine to keep schools safe.

Keywords

Firearms; K-12 school homicides; School safety; School shootings; School violence; Youth violence

Disciplines

Criminology | Criminology and Criminal Justice | Sociology

File Format

PDF

File Size

880 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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