School violence remains a serious American problem, especially in America’s inner-cities.  Mainstream strategies to reduce school violence have focused on combinations of upgrading school security postures (more guards, metal detectors, etc.) and in improving student intervention programs (peer counseling, conflict resolution, etc.).  This paper investigates another aspect of school violence—school cultures of violence—that few schools recognize as a serious problem and that mainstream strategies fail to address.  School cultures of violence entail school administrators, teachers, and students becoming socialized into an environment where school violence as a method of student interpersonal relations is tolerated or perhaps considered inevitable.  This paper develops, through an ethnographic and survey study of four Miami-Dade public high schools, how school cultures of violence are allowed to exist through a combination of factors that include:  (1) school staff discourses of denial that school violence problems exist, (2) non-caring school atmospheres, and (3) remiss school security forces.  In those schools with cultures of violence, it is shown how high neighborhood crime rates are allowed to invade the schools, resulting in higher levels of school crime and increased student fear of being victimized in school.

Introduction

                I fear going to school one day and a Haitian might don’t like me and say “Look at that American, I don’t
                like that American”….and they might come over there…they’d be 50 of them jumping [me]….I feel like I
                [might] just walk in and just say the wrong thing and get whooped, get beat down….They [are] so crazy,
                they bring weapons to school, I mean guns, knives, everything, everybody.
                                                                                            Male African-American Tenth-grader

I found this Miami-Dade County, Florida,  teenager’s response upsetting.  Guns and knives in school?  Afraid of getting “whooped” and “beat down?”  This teen was not talking about life on a crime-ridden city street or in some local jail.  He was talking about walking down the halls of his urban public high school!  This teen’s experiences were obviously a long way from the school memories of my own small town Mid-Western upbringing.

In researching school violence and student fear, I quickly discovered that many of America’s senior high schools, once seen as the bastions of community scholarship, have transformed from centers of learning to centers of violence.  Today, especially in America’s inner-cities, many school grounds project images of impenetrable “school fortresses” sporting 15-foot high barbed wire-topped security fences and iron bar-covered windows and doors.  The news media and Hollywood, as seen in Michelle Pfeiffer’s 1995 movie Dangerous Minds and Tom Berenger’s 1996 movie The Substitute, often characterize inner-city schools as chaotic battlefields where armed police and security patrols are locked in mortal combat against drugs, gangs, and violence.  In a 1994 survey of America’s school boards, 91.5 percent of respondents in school districts with more than 25,000 students reported school violence as a problem (Weisenburger, et al. 1995: 34).

In response to growing school crime and violence problems, the President and the nation’s 50 governors adopted National Education Goal Six (Goal 6) that prescribes “By the year 2000, every school in America will be free of drugs and violence and will offer a disciplined conducive environment for learning” (OERI 1993: iii).  However, even with Goal 6’s focus on school drug and violence issues, nationwide between 1991 and 1994:  student drug use increased (24% to 33%), students offered drugs at school increased (18% to 24%), students threatened or injured in an attack at school only slightly decreased (40% to 36%), and teachers threatened or injured in an attack at school increased (10% to 15%) (NEGP 1995: 50-52).  None of these indicators predict even partial accomplishment of Goal 6 by the year 2000.

After pouring hundreds of millions of tax dollars into school security programs, why do many of America’s schools remain infested with violence?  Two mainstream views on how to solve school violence problems have emerged.  One view offers that the causes of school violence are ineffective control of students and school grounds.  Advocates of this view normally offer that, even though millions of dollars are spent on security programs, the resources are still not sufficient to control the spread of school violence.  They contend that schools require even more armed on-site police, more roving security guards, more metal detectors, and more electronic surveillance equipment.  Another view downplays such “school fortress” security measures and argues that the causes of school violence are within the students themselves.  They submit that school violence problems are solvable through the expansion of proven intervention programs, most notably for student mentoring, conflict mediation, anger resolution, and peer counseling.

My look inside four Miami-Dade senior high schools reveals another explanation for the causes of continuing school violence—one completely different from either of the mainstream views.  I discovered that a “culture of violence” exists in some Miami-Dade public schools, a culture where interpersonal violence becomes a normal way of life for many students.  I found three key factors that contribute to these school cultures of violence:  school officials denying they have a violence problem, uncooperative and non-caring school atmospheres, and misconduct by the very security forces intended to control the violence.  This paper develops how combinations of these three factors perpetuate high levels of school violence and contribute to increasing student fears of being victimized in their own schools.
 

Theoretical Framework

School crime and violence studies proliferate in the fields of public policy, educational leadership, school psychology, criminology, sociology, social work, and anthropology.  The academic study of violence in public schools dates to the late 1960s and early 1970s when consistent reporting of school-based crime and violence incidents first began.  By the mid-1970s, these raw incident reports were aggregated into national computations.  By the late 1970s, researchers working in the field of school violence prevention and reduction began to realize that fear of crime and violence represented a more serious problem to students than the actual offenses themselves.  At this early stage in school victimization research, researchers recognized that the fear resulting from the daily incidents of crime and violence that surround students was an extremely complex problem affecting the social and learning climate of the entire school (Ruebel 1978: 339).  Recent research demonstrates that children exposed to violence develop levels of fear that lead to poor school performance, aggression, anti-social and disruptive behaviors, and a variety of post-traumatic stress disorders that include: depression, brief reactive psychosis, dissociative amnesia, panic disorders, and dream anxiety disorders (Jenkins and Bell 1997: 15-19). Victimology research confirms that long term stress from the fear of being victimized “tends to produce a massive shutdown in the growth and repair capacities of the organism” (Ball 1976: 393).

Fear of victimization is conceptualized as personal fear or worry about crime and violence.   Individual fear can be operationalized by subjectively measuring the individual’s feelings concerning their personal safety or by a series of questions that measure how much they worry about being victimized (Giles-Sims 1984: 223-224).  School victimization studies address a variety of individual variables, including:  student age, gender, school grade, race, class, ethnicity; and societal variables, including:  school size and racial composition, school and neighborhood crime levels, local culture, geography—all hypothesized to influence both student perceptions of the likelihood of their victimization and their subjective worry about crime and violence.  For example, the 1993 National Household Education Survey reveals that 29 percent of elementary and 34 percent of middle school students worry about becoming crime victims, however, at the high school level only 20 percent of students report such worries (NHES 1993; Nolin, et al. 1996: 218).  The 1991 National Crime Victimization Survey found that students who felt drugs were easy to obtain at their schools were twice as likely to fear physical attack at school as students who reported drugs hard to find in school (NCVS 1991: 5).  The NHES 1993 and 1989 National Crime Victimization Survey show that students at schools with gangs consistently report higher levels of fear than students at schools with no gangs (NCES 1995).  Also students who are actual victims of school crimes, or those who witness school crimes, have greater fear for their personal safety (Furlong, et al. 1995: 257).

MacDonald (1996) found that student perceptions of school violence are the most important factor in student fear levels.  As one middle school female student offered, “school violence is anything that makes us afraid to come to and stay in school” (MacDonald 1996: 83). Studies of school crime statistics reveal that while actual in-school victimizations are fairly rare (murders, armed assaults, rape, etc.), students are most worried about minor victimizations (unarmed assaults, bullying, sexual harassment, etc.) (Gottfredson and Gottfredson 1985: 83-90). Additionally, while students worry most about minor victimizations, due to fear of reprisals, the vast majority of these minor acts of victimization go largely unreported (MacDonald 1996: 90-91).

Two key trends emerge from past student victimization and school violence research.  First, high levels of school crime and violence are associated with high levels of crime and violence in the school’s local neighborhood (Devine 1996: 1-17; McDermott 1983: 279).  These findings support those who advocate that school crime is simply a reflection of crime in the community (Lawrence 1998: 3-4).  Second, the level of student fear of victimization in school is strongly associated with levels of actual school crime and violence (Devine 1996: 1-17; McDermott 1983: 280-281; MacDonald 1996: 83-91; NCES 1995; NCVS 1991; NHES 1993). The past research also does an excellent job of describing school violence and explaining the general characteristics of students who are the most fearful.  However, little of this research addresses why schools have been unable to break the linkages between neighborhood and school violence—thus making schools a safe refuge for America’s youth.

Devine (1996) provides one of the latest explanations for the continuing violence in America’s schools.  Devine compiled ethnographic data on school violence over a 10 year period in New York inner-city high schools.  These New York schools were attended primarily by minority and immigrant students and were located in neighborhoods with high crime rates.  From this research, Devine concludes that the ethos of fear experienced by students is the result of a “culture of violence” that permeates many schools.  Devine defines a school’s culture of violence as a situation where violence becomes normalized in everyday school life.  In other words, school administrators, teachers, and students become socialized into an environment where school violence becomes an accepted, if not predominant, means of student interpersonal actions (Devine 1996: 1-17, 128).

Devine argues that three primary factors characterize schools that contain cultures of violence.  First, he submits that schools with a culture of violence also possess a “discourse of denial” concerning the violence itself.  He describes how administrators and teachers avoid, downplay, or outright deny school violence as a serious problem in their schools.  When administrators and teachers do acknowledge a violence problem, usually at a much lower level than actually exists, they often rationalize that its causes and solutions lie in the family or community—anywhere but in the school itself.  Second, Devine argues that development of a school climate of non-caring helps cultivate the culture of violence.  He attributes one cause of non-caring schools to teachers being removed from primary responsibility for student discipline.  Instead, techno-security measures (security patrols, metal detectors, etc.) replace the teachers as the primary mechanisms for student discipline.  He holds that reliance on techno-security programs for discipline eliminates the historical interpersonal bond between teachers and students.  Third, Devine submits that school security forces, meant to reduce school violence, actually assist the entry of street violence into the schools.  Many security forces inject a sense of police-power intrusion into the schools that results in high levels of student mistrust.  These feelings of mistrust and actual misconduct of the security force personnel add to the overall school culture of violence.  Devine offers that when schools possess discourses of denial, non-caring school atmospheres, and remiss security forces, the boundary between school and neighborhood becomes porous and the school finds itself invaded by neighborhood crime and violence.  Thus, instead of becoming a refuge for students from violence, the school itself perpetuates high levels of violence and student fear.

School violence is a politically incorrect topic in many school districts.  Despite school crime statistics that show moderate to high levels of violent school acts, school administrators use a variety of measures to camouflage violence’s existence and perpetuate a discourse of denial.  One measure is to hide violence under categories of less threatening words (Devine 1996: 21). Traditional education writers often use quasi-equivalent words such as “school conflict,” “student misconduct,” or “student malaise,” when in fact they are referring to school violence.  A second  measure is for administrators, while reluctantly admitting violence’s existence, to downplay its significance.  Comments such as “while we have crime in school, things are much better than they were a year or two ago” are common in schools where school staffs refuse to accept the true impact of their school violence problem.  Third, school administrators and teachers may choose not to see the violence that surrounds them at school.  This is especially true for acts of  psychological violence.  Psychological violence includes acts of bullying or sexual harassment that educators choose not to acknowledge in school as they are seen as “rights of passage” that students must go through on their way to adulthood (Bludworth 1996: 2-8; Lee, et al. 1996: 383-417; MacDonald 1996: 83-91; Roberts and Coursol 1996: 204-212; Stein 1995: 145-162). Finally, where violence cannot be ignored, administrators and teachers often find it easier to blame its causes on situations outside the school.  For example, in a 1993 nationwide survey, teachers responded that the major problems of school violence were:  (1) lack of parental supervision at home (71%), (2) lack of family involvement with the school (66%), and (3) student exposure to violence in the mass media (55%) (Met Life 1993).  Low socio-economic neighborhood status, differences between school and home cultures, and early child abuse are other reasons school administrators and teachers often present as causes of school violence that are beyond the school’s control.

Beginning in the 1970s and early 1980s, a process began in many school districts whereby the responsibility for student behavior and discipline was transferred from teachers to newly formed school security forces.  This transference of responsibility was the result of two conditions:  (1) rising school crime and violence levels, and (2) the message from American society that teachers and schools should focus on improving student academic skills.  Underneath this second condition lay the not-so-subliminal societal message that teachers should “steer clear of the non-academic, do not get involved in imparting your own standards of conduct or values, etiquette, and behavior on students” (Devine 1996: 10).  Hurst refers to the emergence of school security programs and removal of teacher responsibility for student discipline as the “separation of mind, body, and soul” (Hurst 1991: 183-200).  The teacher becomes responsible for the student’s mind, the school (administration and security force) for the student’s body, and the family for the student’s soul (values, etiquette, etc.).

Teachers, encouraged by their unions, were generally all too happy to remove themselves from student discipline matters and concentrate only on the students’ cognitive or intellectual development.  As one teacher put it, “The unions tell teachers ‘Hands off!  Hands off students!  Stay away from conflict!  Don’t get in the middle!  Don’t get involved!’” (Devine 1996: 83).  The teacher unions take such a stance as they continually lose court cases where the insurance industry refuses to pay the medical bills for teachers hurt breaking up fights or getting between students.  Initiated by teachers’ unions, backed by police, and accepted by local school boards, general guidance issued to teachers confronted with violent students nationwide includes:
        1. Your first priority is to avoid getting hurt.
        2. When a violent situation erupts, immediately call for help—call the principal or security.
        3. Disband any crowd that gathers.
        4. Then, with the crowd gone, deal verbally with the fighter(s), but remember—there is no obligation for teacher physical
            intervention (Hawley 1997).

With their removal from primary responsibility for disciplining student “bodies,” teachers become withdrawn from emotional and social involvement with students.  Rather than becoming sculptors of the students’ minds and bodies, the traditional teacher-student mentoring bond is broken.  In schools where teacher emotional and social withdrawal from students occurs, school discipline declines in several ways.  First, teachers no longer maintain a before- or after-school, lunch-period, or between-class presence in school hallways and common areas.  The network of teacher “gazes,” so critical to school hallway discipline prior to the late 1970s, disappears—unable to be replicated by the handful of school security personnel.  Second, since students know teachers have little say in student discipline, teachers often face chaotic classrooms—sometimes even forced to negotiate classroom order with their students.  Students all too quickly become aware that they have the “power of refusal” and that through this power they can subvert a teacher’s lesson plans and system for class order (Hurst 1991: 185-190).  Third, with no perceived disciplinary responsibilities, teachers take a laissez-faire approach to all school discipline matters, ignoring even common student misbehaviors ranging from acts of psychological violence (bullying, sexual harassment, etc.) to violations of student dress codes.  This results in a situation coined by Devine as the “marshmallow effect”—whereby students push and probe the “marshmallow” of school rules and regulations until they see how much it will give way (not be enforced) (Devine 1996: chap 4).  Serious manifestations of the marshmallow effect contribute to a non-caring school climate—a condition where the students know no one cares enough to enforce school policies or regulations.

Other recent studies also point to the relationship between “caring” school environments and school violence.  Walker highlights that “schools with low levels of violent behavior are distinguished from those with high levels by a positive school climate where nurturance, inclusiveness, and community feeling are evident” (Walker 1995: 3).  Noddings argues that for school violence prevention programs to work “students must believe that the adults in their schools and communities care about them, that their well-being and growth matter” (Noddings 1996: 186).

When caring adults are not present in the student’s family or community environments, the only place they have to turn for caring adults is their schools.  With teachers removed from responsibility for the “body” of the student—with their emotional and social bonds to students broken—responsibility for adult caring then falls on school administrators, counselors, and security personnel.  These school staff members are seldom able to provide the needed sense of adult caring.  There are often more than 400 students for every school administrators or counselors, and due to their many diverse responsibilities, administrators and counselors seldom have a chance to spend “quality” time with any but a few students.  Thus, suddenly the school security force personnel—the adults students encounter most frequently in school hallways, the protectors of the student “bodies”—assume informal responsibility for student mentoring and development of the sense of “caring” that students require.  School security personnel are unable to adequately perform this mentoring or “caring” role for two principal reasons.  First, school security forces are usually small, with a student to security personnel ratio that often approaches 500 to 1.  Second, school security force personnel are neither assigned nor prepared for a pedagogical role in student development.  As Devine points out, “the low status [security] guards…are ill equipped for the task of socializing youth into productive roles in Western society” (Devine 1996: 27).

School security forces consist of a combination of armed uniformed police and unarmed roving security patrols.  The security force may report directly to the school board or through an assistant principal for discipline to the school’s principal.  Security patrol personnel, low paying jobs that only require a high school diploma and clean police record, are often the first adults the students encounter each day on school grounds.  In some schools, security personnel operate metal detectors at the school entrances.  In others, the security personnel simply patrol or watch entrance areas.  As Devine highlights, the student’s first encounter with security may be the “duet of mutual mistrust” as the student undergoes their first daily control of the “body”—the mandatory morning metal sweep or weapons’ frisk (Devine 1996: 28).  During the day the armed school police and security patrols “walk their beat” among the school hallways and other common areas—remaining in two-way radio contact among themselves and the school’s administration.  Many schools have security buzzers in their classrooms that allow teachers to automatically call for security assistance.  Minor school security violations (loud arguments, scuffles, small thefts, unauthorized absence from class, etc.) are usually adjudicated through the school administrative discipline system (detentions, suspensions, expulsions, etc.).  However, when there is personal injury resulting from a fight, large dollar value thefts, or other incidents that would qualify as crimes in the community, the incidents are usually referred to the armed school police who begin investigations, issue citations, and make arrests—with the incident eventually resolved in the local court system.

Through the implementation of school security forces, several conditions arise that both contribute to an atmosphere of non-caring and allow the intrusion of neighborhood crime and violence into the school.  First, the school, once perceived as a non-threatening sanctuary from societal evils, experiences an oppressive climate of police-power intrusion.  As authority figures, students often see armed school police and security patrols as the enemy—an enemy onto whom large masses of students transfer their feelings of mistrust and frustration every day (Devine 1996: 27).  Second, the security personnel are often the perpetrators of misbehavior or crime within the school.  Male security personnel are often implicated in sexual harassment incidents with female students.  Security personnel may also be involved in various school ground crimes ranging from drug sales to thefts.  Third, security personnel are often a major part of the marshmallow effect.  At times security personnel only selectively enforce school rules and regulations.  The marshmallow effect is especially evident when security personnel have their own “pet” students who appear to be immune to school discipline requirements.  Through the deployment of school security forces, Devine argues “the security force serves as one (but not the only) mechanism for the introduction of street culture, [thus] the school becomes a site for the reproduction of violence, beyond anything else” (Devine 1996: 95-96).

From Devine’s work in inner-city New York schools, the following proposition appears true:
            Proposition:  For schools in inner-city high crime neighborhoods that are attended predominately by minority and
            immigrant students, when a school culture of violence exists, neighborhood violence is allowed to infest the school,
            resulting in high school violence rates and high levels of student fear of victimization.

School cultures of violence are further characterized by the students, especially the most disruptive and delinquent students, having the real control of the school hallways and classrooms.  Thus, the school becomes no more than an extension of the street culture that exists in the local neighborhood.  In schools with cultures of violence, neighborhood violence invades the school and an increased ethos of student fear results.  Figure 1 displays the resultant causal logic.

                                                                       School Culture
                                                                         of Violence                    Student Fears
                                    Neighborhood                                                   of Victimization
                                       Violence                        School                         in School
                                                                           Violence
 

Research Design

This paper is the result of a multi-method study focused on assessing the application of the Figure 1 causal logic to four selected Miami-Dade public senior high schools.  Using crime statistics, media reports, interviews, direct observations, focus groups, and student surveys, I assess the relationships among levels of neighborhood violence, school cultures of violence, levels of school violence, and student subjective fears of victimization.  My level of analysis is the school.  My central research question asks:  Why do students at some Miami-Dade public senior high schools have higher fears of victimization at school than others?  My general hypotheses prescribe:

    Hypothesis 1:  Schools in neighborhoods with higher violence levels contain students with higher levels of fear of victimization in school.

    Hypothesis 2:  Schools with higher in-school violence levels contain students with higher levels of fear of victimization in school.

    Hypothesis 3:  Schools with cultures of violence contain students with higher levels of fear of victimization in school.  Three sub-hypotheses help establish the existence of school cultures of violence and corresponding student fear levels:

        Sub-Hypothesis 3a:  Schools with discourses of denial about school violence are more likely to have school cultures of violence and higher student fear levels.

        Sub-Hypothesis 3b: Schools with non-caring school atmospheres are more likely to have school cultures of violence and higher student fear levels.

        Sub-Hypothesis 3c: Schools with remiss school security forces are more likely to have school cultures of violence and higher student fear levels.

The four Miami-Dade public senior high schools selected for this study were part of a broader study of immigrant and native minority student academic orientation.  The schools contain concentrations of different immigrant and native minority groups and were selected to allow the study of potential differences among  inner-city, suburban, and small-town/rural neighborhoods and schools.  The four schools are summarized in Table 1.

Note 1:  The neighborhood data is based on the 1990 U.S. Census.  Since 1990, neighborhood demographic data in each school’s neighborhood has changed and neighborhood demographics now more closely match the individual high school data.
Note 2:  The high school data is based on school year 1996-1997 data provided by each school.
*Pseudonym used throughout this study.
** Hispanic is the local preference for Latin or Latino.

Northern High.  Bordering several middle-income suburbs, Northern High is located on the boundary between Miami-Dade’s inner-city and suburbs in a low- to middle-income neighborhood containing a mix of African-American, Caribbean, and Haitian families.  Predominately an African-American neighborhood prior to the mid-1980s, Caribbean and Haitian immigrants increasingly moved into the neighborhood in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  Northern High students are 64 percent black with approximately equal numbers of African-American, Caribbean, and Haitian students.  The other 36 percent of students are Asian, Hispanic, and white-European.

King High.  In the center of one of Miami-Dade’s poorest and most violent neighborhoods, King High is an inner-city school surrounded by the area’s largest concentration of African-American and Haitian residents.  Once 90 percent African-American, increasing Haitian immigration in the 1980s and early 1990s has made Haitians a majority of the school’s students.  King High’s students are 91 percent black with the other 9 percent consisting of Hispanics and white-Europeans.  The neighborhoods around King High were the site of several racial disturbances during the 1980s.

Coral High.  Once surrounded by Miami-Dade’s largest Cuban middle-class neighborhoods, Coral High is a suburban school located in a still predominately Hispanic neighborhood.  Due to a large influx of Central and South American immigrants beginning in the early 1980s, the Coral High neighborhoods are now a combination of both low-income and middle-income Hispanic families.  Coral High’s students are 90 percent Hispanic, with the remaining 10 percent a combination of blacks and white-Europeans.  Because of Coral High’s reputation for good students and few problems, it is a frequently requested assignment by teachers and school administrators.  Many of the school’s magnet students admit applying to Coral High in order to avoid problems in other schools.

Everglades High.  Located in a small town/rural agricultural area, Everglades High draws students from some of Miami-Dade’s most economically depressed families.  Everglades High has a more equal mix of African-American, Haitian, and Hispanic students than the other schools in the study.  The majority of the Everglades High student’s families work in low-paying jobs in the local agricultural industry.  However, Everglades High also draws students from several middle-income neighborhoods.

This paper presents a story of crime and violence in Miami-Dade public high schools.  It is the story of four different Miami-Dade neighborhoods.  It is also the story of four very different Miami-Dade senior high schools.  Following this section, I discuss Miami-Dade county-wide crime and violence, focusing on the role of juveniles as both criminals and victims.  Next, this paper’s hypotheses are tested using ethnographic data obtained in the four schools during the 1996-1997 school year.  Finally, the hypotheses are tested a second time using data from a student survey conducted in the four high schools during the summer and fall 1997 semesters.  This final section also compares the results from the ethnographic and survey efforts.  What follows may be upsetting, maybe even shocking, to some readers.  Nevertheless, the story of Miami-Dade school violence and the resultant student fear is one that is happening in schools across the country and desperately needs telling.

Miami-Dade County-Wide Crime and Violence

            I think it is important to start off with understanding that our juvenile problem, our crime problem, our
            increase in violence, is really a reflection of what is happening across America.  So our youth problem is
            really mirroring what’s happening around the country. We do have a very serious youth violence problem
            in this community.  We find that younger and younger kids are committing more violent acts….(Putney 1997).
                                                          Kathy Fernandez-Rundle, Miami-Dade County State’s Attorney

Nationwide, Miami-Dade possessed the sixth highest major-crime rate in America for 1996—137 major-crimes per 1,000 residents—following national leader Atlanta, Georgia (at 171).  After holding the nation’s number one crime spot for at least two years in the early 1990s, the 1996 ranking was a further improvement from Miami-Dade’s 1995 overall third place national ranking.  In terms of violent crime (murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault), Miami-Dade ranked fifth in the nation for 1996—31 violent crimes per 1,000 residents—following Atlanta (33); Gary, Indiana (33); Newark, New Jersey (33); and top-ranked Baton Rouge, Louisiana (43) (Robles 1997b).

Crime statistics alone, however, can be misleading.  Miami-Dade is not a homogeneous community with a consistent countywide crime rate.  Instead, Miami-Dade sports a culturally diverse population crammed into a 20 mile wide strip of dry land sandwiched between the aqua- marine Florida Straits and the alligator-infested Everglades.  Among its mosaic of ethnically and income-segregated neighborhoods there is a wide variance in Miami-Dade crime rates.  Affluent Miami-Dade areas—Miami Beach, Coral Gables, Key Biscayne, etc.—have a fairly low incidence of violent crime.  However, many of the Miami inner-city areas—Little Haiti, Liberty City, Little Havana, etc.—and nearby-incorporated cities—Hialeah, Homestead, Florida City, etc.—possess violent crime rates that climb even higher than the county average (see Figure 2).  This study looks at four of these ethnically segregated and often violent neighborhoods.

Figure 2.  Map of Miami-Dade County. (Source:  Miami Business Profile, 1996-1997)

Miami-Dade Juveniles and Crime

In the larger Miami-Dade crime picture, juveniles hold a special spot.  Juveniles, the underlying focus of this study, are not just those fearful of being victimized in Miami-Dade.  They are also the perpetrators and victims of much of the crime and violence South Florida experiences.  It is important to understand exactly how juveniles fit these multiple roles in the Miami-Dade crime environment.

Within all of Miami-Dade in 1996, one out of every five violent crimes (murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault) was committed by persons 17 years old or younger.  Twenty seven percent of the 1996 armed robberies in the entire county were committed by juveniles.  Miami-Dade police departments made a total of 18,735 juvenile arrests in 1996, of which 1,167 juvenile offenders were direct filed for adult prosecution due to the serious nature of their offenses (murder, rape, crimes committed with guns, etc.).  In the juvenile arrests for 1996, 778 firearms were seized (Putney 1997).  A Northern High neighborhood police officer explained to a fellow researcher one reason why there is so much juvenile crime in Miami-Dade:

            What’s happening now is, people get to know the system.  Adults hire juveniles to commit their crimes.  These
            crimes include car theft and drug smuggling.  A kid can get anywhere from $100 to $300 for one stolen
            vehicle.  These kids get their juvenile records sealed once they turn 18 years old.  When an officer brings up the
            name of an adult criminal, who was a juvenile offender, they would see a clean record and the phrase “juvenile
            past.”  Unfortunately the phrase “juvenile past” is very vague.  It can include a range of offenses from spray
            painting to murder.  Apparently the kids are also aware of the system.  They know that they can’t go to jail.
            Instead they are placed in a juvenile detention center, “juvy.”  The kids love to go to “juvy.”  There they can
            watch TV, play video games, and hang out with their peers. (Fieldnotes of Gillian Dawkins, October 25, 1995)

Guns are another serious problem adding to Miami-Dade crime and violence.  Miami-Dade residents, like many Americans, possess an almost mystical worship of guns—a climate within which juveniles become comfortable with guns at an early age.  One Miami-Dade County official stated “[We] have a gun culture, a glorification of guns. [There] seems to be a sense if you do not have a gun on you, you are not well dressed….” (Putney 1997).  A 1997 county grand jury concluded that there was an “epidemic” problem of kids having access to guns in South Florida (Fields 1997).  A 1997 Miami Herald poll of 400 county teens revealed that 31 percent of those 13 and 14 years old, 45 percent of those 15 and 16 years old, and 59 percent of those 17 to 19 years old, believed they could get a gun on the street within a few days (Seeman and Acle 1997).  Thirty-seven percent of the Miami-Dade teens in the same poll reported they knew someone at school who had been injured by a gun (Seeman and Acle 1997).  Forty-eight percent of the same teens said they worried about getting shot (Seeman and Acle 1997).  A Miami Herald editorial summarizes the close association between Miami-Dade teenagers and guns:

        It’s easier for a teenager to get a gun with which to cruise the streets than it is for that teen to get a driver’s
        license.  And a significant number of teens perceive a gun to be just as necessary to their way of life.  That’s
        frightening.  Too many kids are living in unpredictable, violent environments in which guns are just one more
        deadly component….The stories [about the Miami-Dade teen gun poll] confirmed not just the presence of guns
        in teens’ lives, but the level of overall violence tolerated in their larger environment
                                                                                                (Miami Herald Editorial 1997).

 By the time Miami-Dade students reach senior high school, many are hardened veterans of family and street violence.  Many Miami-Dade students, especially those U.S. born, have been living in a climate of violence for as long as they can remember.  One Dade County Schools Police official characterized the situation as “some of these kids are 12 going on 30.”  Another Dade County Schools Police official told of an occasion where an elementary school principal asked her to talk to several disruptive kids:

            I bring them in one at a time and I go “Why are you acting bad?”  And the stories they tell me, I was in shock.
            I was like—“What!”  This one little girl goes “Well, my mommy was shot in the elbow because she was doing
            crack on the corner.”  I went—“Whoa!”…it is amazing and these are just little teeny kids.  And one little kid
            old me, I mean some of the things they tell me are just unbelievable.  Like, “Why did you bring a knife to
            school?”  “Well, that’s how my mommy and daddy fight.”…every time I deal with the little teeny ones, I
            always go—“Oh My God!--don’t the parents realize this is their image [to their kids]….”
                                (Transcript of interview conducted by Paula Fernandez and Jane Morgan, November 4, 1996.)

A middle school art teacher, at a school that feeds students to Northern High, asked students to write and illustrate a short story about an experience they had in the last year.  Accompanying a picture of herself giving her shoes to an older male, one young girl wrote:

            I had just bought the new Ken Griffey’s.  I wore them to school.  After school I was walking home.  Two guys
            jumped out of a white Camry.  They said, “Give up the shoes or we’ll hurt you.”  I wanted to run away.  I
            couldn’t.  I was scared they would shoot me.  I gave up my shoes and walked home in my socks
                                                                                            (Farrell and Arthur 1997).

Another student in the same art class drew and wrote of a playground drive-by shooting where he was grazed in the arm by a bullet and his cousin shot in the back.  A third wrote of being extorted for money by a school bully—until he and a friend jumped the bully and beat him up.  Another boy wrote of being pressured by friends to help commit a home-invasion—a case where he was arrested and spent two weeks in jail.  Having worked in Miami-Dade schools for several years, the art teacher was not surprised that guns, crime, and violence were common subjects in the illustrated stories (Farrell and Arthur 1997).

Miami-Dade Juveniles and Drugs

Miami-Dade juvenile drug problems must also be placed in the context of the county-wide drug scene.  Police refer to Miami-Dade as a ‘smorgasbord” of drugs.   South Florida is a major illegal importation site for Colombian cocaine and Colombian and Mexican heroin.  Miami-Dade was especially hard-hit by the late 1980s and early 1990s crack epidemic (Inciardi, et al. 1993: 73-96).  In 1996, 52 percent of Miami-Dade juveniles arrested were reportedly crack users (Jameson 1997).  While some Colombian and Jamaican marijuana is smuggled into South Florida, most of the marijuana used is grown locally, much of it through hydroponics.  Miami-Dade is also a major importation point for shipments of Rohypnol from South America and Mexico—the “date rape” drug also known as roofies on the street.  Designer and synthetic drugs are also widely available.  The Miami-Dade distribution of this smorgasbord of drugs is carried out by an eclectic mix of sellers—ranging from organized crime groups to smalltime street-corner entrepreneurs.  Miami-Dade’s overall drug problem is similar in many ways to other American urban areas, however, the Miami-Dade problem is exacerbated by its strategic geographic location on the smuggling routes to the U.S. from Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean.  Due in large part to this strategic location, for those wishing to procure illegal drugs, juvenile or not, Miami-Dade is a diverse and boundless shopper’s bazaar.

Miami-Dade Juvenile Gangs

Juvenile gangs present another growing problem in Miami-Dade.  Florida State Statute 874.01 (May 18, 1994) defines a criminal street gang as a formal or informal group of three or more persons; who have a common name or common identifying signs, colors, or symbols; and whose members individually or collectively engage in a pattern of criminal street gang activity.  Under this definition, Miami-Dade police departments have identified 60 active gangs with 4,863 known members and associates.   In comparison with Los Angeles’ 8,000 gangs and 150,000 members, Miami-Dade’s gang problem is small—but it is growing.  The Metro-Dade police highlight that there are many differences between Miami-Dade’s gangs and those in other large U.S. cities.  The Miami-Dade gangs are not as territorial as gangs in many cities.  Miami-Dade gangs are more likely to roam the entire county or even the entire state of Florida.  The gangs are especially noticeable at county youth events (sports events, youth fairs, etc.).  The Miami-Dade gangs do not wear colors except on special occasions, although gang-specific bandannas are common.  While many of the gangs are ethnically constituted, others will accept members from any ethnic group.  In recruiting new members the gangs are most interested in personal loyalty and the individual’s desire to be in the gang.  Initiation for gang members is normally a combination of committing a violent crime and then being “beat-in”  by the other gang members.  The Miami-Dade gangs are not as hierarchically organized or directed as those in other cities.  They are often just loose associations of voluntary juvenile criminals.  Gang members may be as young as 10, 11, or 12, with most gang members opting out of the gang life after they turn 18.  Eighteen is the magic age because gang members know the justice system will no longer treat them as juveniles and they face hard prison time if convicted of a crime.  There are very few Miami-Dade gang members older than their mid-20s.

There are no separate Miami-Dade female gangs.  Instead, females make up 6 to 8 percent of the membership of male gangs and can be just as hardened and violent as the males.  One 15 year old female gang member, indicted for attempted first-degree murder, used a knife to pierce a female high school student’s lung and slash her throat.  This 15 year old girl wrote in her arrest statement:

            I went to the kitchen and got a knife and sharpened it with a sharpening block and then wrapped it up with a
            napkin…Then I went to the laundry room and got some tape and brought it to my room and wrapped the
            bottom part of the knife, so that I’d have a better grip (Robles 1997a).

While the Miami-Dade gangs are small in number, they commit a disproportionate share of the county’s juvenile crime.  A June 1997 raid on one Miami Hispanic gang, The Tenth Street Thugs, resulted in 43 indictments covering 146 crimes, including: 2 murders, 26 attempted murders, and assorted kidnappings, robberies, and assaults.  Police investigators reported they were “astounded at the extent and complexity of [the Thugs’] drug sales, principally crack in Little Havana” (Llado 1997).  Miami-Dade’s juvenile gangs normally play a middleman role in drug distribution, providing neighborhood security and the necessary coordination between various drug importers and the local street-peddlers.

In short, metropolitan Miami-Dade, the sixth most major-crime-ridden area in the U.S. for 1996, possesses immense crime and violence problems.  High juvenile crime rates, an underlying gun-worship culture, frequent family violence, juvenile victimizations, drugs, and gangs—all present major challenges that the students in this study must face, some on an almost daily basis.  This crime and violence pervades not only Miami-Dade neighborhoods but also the schools.  It is no wonder that many of these teenagers are terrified!

The ethnographic data for this paper comes from participant observations, informal interviews, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups.  I conducted several days of participant observations and informal interviews in each of the four selected Miami-Dade senior high schools with assistant principals for discipline, school counselors, Dade County Schools Police officers, on-site Metro-Dade or local police officers where assigned to schools, and school security monitors.  I conducted semi-structured interviews with personnel at the Metro-Dade Police Gang Unit, Metro-Dade Narcotics Bureau, and Metro-Dade Community Policing Bureau (DARE program).  With several fellow researchers, I helped coordinate focus groups with students from each of the selected schools to gather data surrounding student experiences with crime and violence in their neighborhoods and student subjective attitudes concerning fear of victimization in their schools.

Three primary advantages resulted from our use of student focus groups.  First, the focus groups were able to tap the students’ subjective attitudes toward crime, violence, and fears of victimization.  Since such attitudes are normally not observable, participant observation alone would not have provided this data.  Second, the interactions among the focus group student participants brought out data that would not have been obtained in individual interviews.  The students were more than ready to talk about crime and violence and their corresponding fears, literally feeding off each others’ answers.  In fact, the students might have talked for hours about their fears of victimization if the focus groups had not been limited by the moderators to two hours each.  This interaction effect, resulting in data not otherwise collectable, is the true hallmark of focus group use.  Third, a large amount of data was gathered quickly (saving me a lot of time).  The equivalent of 40 interviews worth of student data was obtained in only 8 hours of focus group work.

We organized the four focus groups by student ethnicity.  Due to animosities between Miami-Dade ethnic groups, we felt that the students would be more comfortable and forthcoming if separated into their own ethnic groups.  The four groups consisted of African-American (7 female, 5 male), Caribbean (English-speaking West Indian—6 female, 5 male), Haitian (6 female, 4 male), and Hispanic (3 female, 4 male) students.

Reliability and validity of data are always concerns in any social science study.   I was most concerned with two potential problems surrounding the dependability of informants.  First, one of the factors I evaluate for each school is the existence of a discourse of denial surrounding the school’s possible culture of violence—a situation where I expected informants would not reveal the true school violence situations.  To overcome this problem, I questioned several school administrators, counselors, police, and security monitors about each school’s primary discipline problems.  I then compared this interview data to independent crime statistics and police reports to assist in evaluating if a discourse of denial existed or not.

Second, responses from teenage informants must always be approached with caution.  Youthful exuberance and bravado, especially in group settings, are always a concern.  Sometimes it is “cool” for teens to self-report direct experience with crime, violence, drug pushers, or gangs, when in reality they only have third or fourth hand knowledge of the data.   Additionally, as a King High assistant principal drove home, teens often take otherwise insignificant incidents and blow them far out of proportion to their real meaning.  The focus group format actually helped us ensure the students were honest with their answers.  The other members of the focus group were always quick to challenge any student’s response in which they did not agree or thought there might be exaggeration or distortion.  The focus group moderators were also proficient at indirectly challenging student responses by coaxing the other students to evaluate answers with questions such as “What do the rest of you think about that answer?”  Thus, it is felt this paper provides a valid assessment of immigrant and minority student general attitudes toward violence and fear of victimization.

The ethnographic data collected is analyzed in light of Figure 1’s causal logic and this paper’s hypotheses.  First, I look at the violence levels in the neighborhoods surrounding the four Miami-Dade schools.  Second, the levels of violence in the schools are addressed.  Third, the cultures of violence in each school are assessed as I look for evidence of the key factors of discourses of denial, non-caring school atmospheres, and remiss security forces.  Fourth, I evaluate the ethnographic data for student fears of being victimized in school.  Finally, the results are summarized and compared to this paper’s hypotheses.

Neighborhood Violence Levels

Before students at the four Miami-Dade schools even arrive on campus, many must first navigate violence-ridden neighborhoods.  Table 2 summarizes the neighborhood crime data in the vicinity of the four selected schools.  Table 2 reveals that many of this study’s students have good reason to be afraid in their neighborhoods.  The overall major-crime and violent-crime rates (number of crimes per 1,000 residents) for the neighborhoods surrounding King High and Everglades High exceed the county averages.  By itself, Everglades High’s neighborhood crime rates would place them number two in the nation in both the overall major-crime and violent-crime categories—somewhat surprising for a small town/rural area.  Northern High’s neighborhood major-crime and violent-crime rates (123.6 and 20.2) are slightly below the Miami-Dade County averages, however, most American communities with similar rates would still consider themselves crime- and violence-ridden.  The Coral High neighborhoods have the lowest major-crime and violent-crime rates (108 and 7.9) of the four project schools.  The most significant factor in Coral High’s neighborhood crime profile is that while its property-crime rate is similar to the other schools’ neighborhoods, its violent-crime rate is significantly less than the violent-crime rates for the other three neighborhoods.

To really understand the crime situation in a particular neighborhood, spend time with the local police.  This is exactly what my fellow IEI graduate researchers did in their first year (school year 1995-1996) on the project.  Each researcher conducted  a “ride-along” familiarization with police near their assigned schools.  In general, all the researchers experienced crime and violence situations that directly support the Table 2 neighborhood crime data.  Those assigned to Northern, King, and Everglades Highs reported observing a variety of police responses to potentially violent neighborhood disputes, burglaries, and home-invasions, while also being told stories by the police of local drug activities, gangs, and drive-by shootings.  Researchers in Coral High heard of some local gang activity, but found the police more involved in writing traffic citations.  One Coral High researcher did witness a police response to a defiant Hispanic teenage boyfriend who would not leave his Hispanic girlfriend’s home after being told to go by the girl’s mother—this was the most action she saw in an entire six hour “ride-along.”

A second way of understanding neighborhood crime is to ask those who live there—after all not everything is reported to the police.  Students in all four focus groups revealed just such information about their friends’ and families’ experiences with crime and violence in their own neighborhoods—data that further supports the Table 2 statistics and the “ride-along’ impressions.  In the Caribbean, Haitian, and Hispanic focus groups, one-third to one-half of the students disclosed personal or family experiences with neighborhood crime or violence over the past year.  The Caribbean and Haitian focus group students recited personal and family experiences with crimes that included incidents of being robbed of jewelry on the street, observing cases of indecent exposure, being solicited for sex, being victims of home-invasions, and having bicycles and cars stolen.  The Hispanic focus group students reported incidents in the Coral High neighborhood where one male student was hit by a car, neighbors (but not them) experiencing home-invasions, cars being broken into, bicycles being stolen, and the females being subjected to sexual harassing “catcalls” on neighborhood streets.  These reports from the Caribbean, Haitian, and Hispanic students could be classified as your “garden-variety” general street crime—most of it property crime with only a few instances of violent crime (robberies, etc.) revealed.  However, the responses of the African-American focus group students startled all of us in the IEI project.

When the African-American focus group moderator asked the students, “How many of you have friends or relatives that were the victims of crimes over the last year or so?”—almost every one of the 12 students raised their hand.  As the students’ hands went up, a hush went over those of us observing behind the two-way mirror in the focus group facility—only broken by an occasional “Wow!” as the students began to tell their stories.  Three months before, one King High male student’s brother was killed by a gunshot in a disagreement over a girl.  Another King High male student’s cousin received a broken leg in a fight over a girl.  A King High female reported “A lot of people I know got robbed…[at] gun point and knife point.”  Two Northern High females discussed family arguments where guns were eventually drawn.  One of these female students related:

        I was setting down and both of them [her mother and uncle] start pulling out guns and waving them [at her
        step-father]….One of the guns went off.  Thank God I had ran.  I didn’t know what to do.  I was right there when
        it happened….My uncle’s little son told me “If someone says something about my uncle or his kids, he takes it real
        hard and just starts pulling out guns.” They had a gun just waving—my mom and my uncle.  They jumped my
        step-daddy…my uncle threw his clothes out and my mama got vases and started throwing at him…she even got a
        knife, she tried to kill him.

An Everglades High female student described how her female cousin was shot by a jealous suitor:

        This other guy was trying to talk to my cousin in front of her boyfriend’s face….He kept on “trying” my cousin,
        so they got in a quarrel….First he pulled out his gun…everybody started running, saying “He’s got a gun! He’s
        got a gun!”  So they all got in the car, my cousin, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend’s brother.  As they were going
        home…he pulled up behind them and was shooting through the window and she [the cousin] got shot in the
        back.  My cousin’s boyfriend got shot also.

These responses followed earlier African-American focus group discussions where two Northern High females reported their homes broken into and property stolen in the last year.  A King High male also cited:

        We got kind of a quiet neighborhood, but yesterday we had a water fight and some boys came from [outside the
        neighborhood]….they started fighting our boys and I was there playing.  Then I was watching the fight and a boy
        pulled out a gun and started shooting….It happened yesterday afternoon after school, and I was scared, I started
        running cause I was scared that I might be caught up or shot up, and that’s the only thing I fear.  I stay in the
        house every other day.  I don’t even go outside.

A Northern High female described how she answered the door one day and a man ran into her house, stole her beeper, and then ran off.   The same Northern High female also reported:

        There was one time where I was walking right across the street from my house.  This guy walked up to me with a
        gun and said “Give me your chain.”  I'm like “Huh!”  He was like, “Bitch you heard me give me your f___ing
        chain.”  And I was like “Ah!”  And he said “Say something and I will shoot you.”  And I am like “Here.”  He was
        like “You got some money.”  I was like, I didn't even say nothing.  He was like “Yes you do, yes you do!”  And I
        was like “No.”  He snatched my book bag and he dumped everything out.  I had like three dollars to catch the
        bus.

These African-American teenagers, almost to a student, had experienced some rather recent and personal crime and violence.  These teens seem to live in community  “war zones,” conditions other researchers characterize as neighborhoods where “chronic danger resulting from community violence displaces the fundamental safety children need” (Garbarino, et al. 1992: 2).

The Table 2 statistical data, the police “ride-alongs,” and the focus group results all paint a fairly consistent picture.  The neighborhoods surrounding Northern, King, and Everglades Highs have serious crime and violence problems.  The Coral High neighborhoods have only moderate crime and low violence.  The next section investigates how much of this neighborhood crime and violence has invaded the four schools.

School Crime and Violence

Table 3 provides school year 1996-1997 school crime data.  For Northern, Coral, and Everglades Highs their reported school crime rates (number of crimes per 1,000 students) closely parallel their neighborhood crime rates.  Northern and Everglades Highs’ overall school crime rates are higher than the previous year’s overall county school crime rate.  The personal (violent) school crime rates for Northern and Everglades Highs are also significantly higher than the previous year’s countywide average.  This personal (violent) school crime category includes those crimes that do or could injure students such as assault, battery, robbery, and sex offenses.  While Coral High’s overall school crime rate is just below the county average, its personal (violent) crime rate is lower than the countywide average and considerably lower than the personal (violent) crime rate at Northern and Everglades Highs.  Even though the Table 2 neighborhood violent-crime rates and Table 3 school personal (violent) crime rates are based on slightly different definitions of the crimes themselves, the corresponding levels of overall and violent crimes for both neighborhoods and schools for Northern, Coral, and Everglades Highs are very similar.

The official school crime data analysis leaves King High as an anomaly.  With high neighborhood crime rates and a reputation as one of the most crime-ridden and violent schools in Miami-Dade, King High’s overall school crime rate (34.8) is well below the previous year’s county average.  Additionally, its personal (violent) crime rate (8.4) is also lower than the countywide average (10.8) and well below that of Northern and Everglades Highs, the two schools with high neighborhood crime rates similar to King High’s.  For now, I look at other evidence of King High violence and return to this crime data anomaly later.

While drugs, gangs, and armed assaults usually receive the most attention in school crime statistics and media coverage, past research reveals conflicts (fights) related to everyday student interactions are actually a much greater problem (Kenney and Watson 1996: 453).  The vast majority of the data concerning personal (violent) crime rates shown in Table 3 are assaults and batteries surrounding student fights.  These fights are in fact the most serious violence problem in all Miami-Dade public schools.  As one Northern High assistant principal highlighted “Students are a product of their environment and culture.  As the environment gets more violent—so do the students.”  A Northern High security monitor reported that “If there is anything the students were most fearful of, it was getting involved in one of the frequent fights.”  An Everglades High assistant principal cited that student fights were his biggest discipline problem.  He stated “The [Everglades High] kids are not viciously violent, but for some reason I don’t understand, they come from a fighting bunch.”

The Table 3 school crime data reflects only a small percentage of the fights that take place in the four schools.  Unless a fight causes serious damage to at least one student, or unless it appears pre-planned and is a particularly vicious attack, the pugilists are usually handled through school administrative channels rather than referred for arrest and court action (thus showing up in school crime statistics).  For example, in the first 15 minutes of my first day of participant observation in Everglades High, two fights broke out.  In the first fight, four African-American students (all cousins) jumped two other African-American students as the result of an argument that started the night before in a local neighborhood.  All six were suspended from school for the School Board’s mandatory 10 days for fighting.  In this fight, one of the group of two was knocked senseless, unable to recall his name or where he was, and thus required medical attention.  Because this injury occurred, one of the group of four cousins was issued a police citation.  The second fight was between two Hispanic ninth-graders, again over a neighborhood disagreement from the night before.  Since there were no personal injuries in this fight, both were just suspended for 10 days.  Thus, of the eight fighters that morning at Everglades High, only one was issued a police citation reported in the Table 3 data.  I believe it is safe to estimate that 10 percent or fewer of the actual fights occurring in schools show up in school crime data.

My research reveals that student fights are the major violence problem in Northern, King, and Everglades Highs.  On the other hand, student fights and other violent acts are of little concern in Coral High.  One Coral High security monitor reported:

        In the last four months, I can only remember four fights and three of them were girls fighting over boyfriends.  In
        seven years, I have only seen two gun incidents—both were several years ago and involved students who turned
        themselves into the office saying they brought the guns as they feared for their lives while traveling to school.  I
        can only remember one knife fight in seven years—two guys fighting in front of the school.  Actually, it’s rather
        boring around here.

In Northern, King, and Everglades Highs however, there is a much different opinion of student fighting.  A Northern High assistant principal cited:

        We do have frequent fights.  Most are intra-ethnic and the vast majority are girl versus girl.  The fights are
        usually over boys or over “He said—She said” problems.  The girl fights tend to get especially ugly as girls rip off
        earrings and hair weaves and most girls come equipped with long fingernails that cut badly.

A King High security monitor reported (despite the low King High crime rate data):

        A few years ago, there were 2 to 3 fights a day [ at King High].  Now the fights are down to 4 or 5 a week.  Most
        of the fights are over boy-girl matters.  Boys fighting boys and girls fighting girls over the opposite sex.

During one full day I spent at King High, two fights broke out.  One fight originated at a nearby off-campus basketball court and was rekindled in a classroom—both fighters were suspended.  The second fight was a continuation of the first—among the friends of the two fighters suspended earlier.  None of these fights resulted in police citations.
An Everglades High counselor, a veteran of over 15 years at the school, offered:

        All the fights I remember started outside the school and then were brought into school.  I think that students bring
        the fights to school because they know someone will separate them—while in the community they may have to
        fight until one or both sides is seriously injured.  Over the past two years most of the fights have been between
        groups in the Mexican migrant labor camps….These fights have been going on for so long, no one even
        remembers what started them in the first place.  Machismo is the main contributor to these fights.  Lack of
        parental control due to a combination of low socio-economic conditions [parents forced to work 2 and 3 jobs]
        and low levels of parent education are what causes the fights.

A second Everglades High counselor submitted:

        The school’s problem with fighting is that both the black and Hispanic low socio-economic cultures tell their kids
        to fight back.  If they don’t show courage when challenged, they’ll get it worse at home.  Most girl fights are over
        mundane things like “She tried me” or raising their eyebrows at another student during a glance.  You’d be
        surprised how many eye-movements have caused fights between 15 year old girls.  These stupid reasons for
        fighting are a sign of the narrow worlds in which these girls live….The boys [at Everglades High] carry weapons
        related to “watching their backs.”  The students fear two things:  (1) getting hurt, and (2) losing face.

The Dade County Schools Police officer at Everglades High also reported:

        Assaults are the primary student problems I deal with.  Last fall the [Mexican] groups were fighting in school
        several times a week.  When one of the [Mexican] students was shot in the back [off the school grounds] before
        the first of the year, the fighting subsided.  Fights carry over from the community to the school because students
        know they can find each other at school.  I believe at least 20 percent of the students at [Everglades High] carry
        some type of weapon, mainly knives and razors, due to their fear of retaliation.  Eighty percent of the students at
        [Everglades High] want to be here.  The other 20 percent have no respect for authority figures and are the ones
        who cuss out the school staff and are always in some type of trouble.

This Dade County Schools Police officer’s estimates of 20 percent of the students being armed, and 20 percent as the ones causing trouble, were the same estimates I heard from the King High senior security monitor.

The school staffs at Northern, King, and Everglades high schools thus paint a picture of school violence characterized by frequent student fights.  For these three schools, fights are almost an everyday event with but a small percentage of the fighters receiving police citations that appear in school crime reports.

The four student focus groups provided an almost identical image of the fight situations in the four schools.  The African-American, Caribbean, and Haitian focus groups (from Northern, King, and Everglades Highs) described a climate of frequent fights at their schools.  The Hispanic (Coral High) focus group participants barely mentioned student fights.

The African-American, Caribbean, and Haitian students relayed a variety of stories about student fights that surrounded situations of jealousy and envy between students.  Many of their stories centered on disputes over boyfriends and girlfriends.  Also discussed were disagreements between different “cliques” or groups of friends.  These disagreements often turn into fights—frequently with weapons.  When the African-American focus group moderator asked “Who is bringing these weapons to schools?” a King High male answered:

        Everybody, mostly girls.  Cause it’s something to do with girls.  It’s like girls out there don’t even like each other.
        You see girls walking...they have a fight…somebody gets cut real bad…just like two months ago when the girl got
        shot in the eye for running her mouth.  (Note:  Three months before this focus group a King High Haitian girl was
        shot in the eye with a small caliber pistol by a Haitian girl from another school.  The shooting occurred after
        school and across the street from King High.  The two girls, once friends, had been arguing for several weeks
        before the shooting.  The wounded girl lived.  One King High security monitor reported that many King High
        students thought the injured girl brought the shooting on herself.  She knew the second girl had a gun, but still
        kept harassing and “talking trash” to her up to moment before the shooting.)

An African-American  King High female added:

        Let me tell you how a lot of things and incidents start…Two girls start as friends and they have a conflict no
        matter what.  Could be over weaving your hair, they have conflict.  This person will hang with these people, tell
        people stuff she has done….that’s how fights start.  I mean girls get cut up, stabbed, kicked, shot—it don’t
        matter.  They don’t care, they could fight you about the shoes you have on…they would take your shoes and your
        clothes.

In the Caribbean focus group, a Northern High female highlighted:

        Sometimes they just fight for stupid stuff.  Sometimes if they don't like you they just jump you for no reason.  Like
        the other day they jumped one of my friends, a girl on the bus, and beat her up real bad, broke her arm, swelled
        up her face and stuff.  Like some boys in school, if you don't talk to them, they want to go with you, and you don't
        talk to them, they set other girls or other kids to jump you and beat you up….

When the Haitian focus group moderator asked if they worried about fights in school the following exchange took place:

 Student A (Everglades High female):  Yes and you know…people get attacked for no reason.  There could be a shoot out,
                                                          and they are trying to get this person, and they don’t find them, and it’s you [they get].
 Student B (King High female):  At times they feel like—since you got our best friend…they will try to hurt that person…try to
                                                get to you….
 Moderator:  So do you guys bring knives and guns to school?
 Student A (Everglades High female):  Yes.  You know they have these knives now, they are pens, and inside the pen [the
                                                          blade] comes out.  And they stick razors under their tongue—they carry it around school
                                                          all day.
Student C (King High male):  And they eat and talk. I mean this little Spanish girl…she was like there, was like a conflict going
                                             on right, with this other Spanish girl, so she said, “[Student C] I am going to have a fight.”  I say,
                                            “What's up man.”  I mean she showed me that blade, I say,  “How you carry a blade under your
                                            tongue.”  I said, “Can you talk with it.”  She said, “Yes.”

Even without seeing the Table 3 data, anyone listening to the African-American, Caribbean, and Haitian student focus groups would quickly infer that violence permeates their schools (Northern, King, and Everglades Highs).  Students resorting to physical violence in response to interpersonal conflicts appears to be a fact of life at all three schools.  At Coral High, even though Table 3 reveals some fights do happen, they appear to be so infrequent that the Hispanic students hardly mention them.  Why are violent students’ fights a serious problem in at least three of the schools investigated?  This paper’s next section examines whether these schools display the key factors that characterize school cultures of violence.

School Cultures of Violence

Devine (1996) argues that when a culture of violence exists in a school, neighborhood violence is allowed to invade the school.  Three underlying factors—a school discourse of denial, a non-caring school atmosphere, and remiss school security forces—allow the school’s culture of violence to exist.  Devine’s research builds a consistent case for these three factors that cultivate a culture of violence.  This paper now evaluates these same factors in the four Miami-Dade schools.

Discourses of Denial

A discourse of denial is the first and maybe foremost factor in a school’s culture of violence.  The Miami-Dade County Public School System’s discourse of denial begins at the top, as indicated by one 1996-1997 school year incident.  In one Miami-Dade inner-city senior high school (a school district adjacent to King High), the senior class valedictorian ignored her prepared graduation speech and used the forum instead to speak openly about the inefficient and repressive administration at her school.  This particular inner-city high school had recently moved into a newly built, modern school facility that immediately became plagued with vandalism and violent crime.  The brave valedictorian blamed the school’s administration for ignoring problems and not taking corrective actions.  To the cheers of her fellow students, she stated, “I believe our stress could have been eased considerably had we had a more supportive administration” (Walters 1997a).  I thought it odd that the public discourse following this event in the local media did not surround the problems this valedictorian raised, but on how school principals could ensure future valedictorians followed their prepared scripts.  There was discussion of pre-approving or censoring graduation speeches (a procedure the school board rejected) or of bypassing traditional valedictorian addresses and having the speeches given by students selected through an in-school competition.  The discourse focused almost totally on how to keep school officials from looking bad in public, as neither the school’s administration nor school board acknowledged responsibility for the severe problems at this particular school.  A recent public school graduate, in a letter to The Miami Herald editor supporting the courageous valedictorian, added:

        All too often some school officials are (or pretend to be) oblivious to the serious problems that their schools face.
        But they cannot remedy a problem until they admit they have one.  The buck has to stop somewhere
                                                                                                                        (Arguez 1997).

In typical discourse of denial style, even when Miami-Dade public school officials admit a problem exists, they tend to deflect the blame elsewhere.  For example, when a special school board panel of prominent local leaders investigated discipline policy in Miami-Dade schools, a recently retired school official (he was apparently the only person the media could find to comment when the panel issued their report) agreed with the panel’s findings that called for more in-school student intervention programs.  However, this same official also stated that the school system alone should not shoulder the full responsibility for student misbehavior.  He rationalized, “Many of the problems we see are beyond our control” (Walters 1997b).

While discourses of denial may manifest themselves in a variety of ways, three key issue areas help characterize the discourse surrounding school crime and violence in a particular school—drugs, gangs, and student fights.  A senior Dade County Schools Police official forewarned us that we would find rampant discourses of denial over these issue areas in our four schools as he stated:

Some principals don’t want to admit it, because they don’t want that school labeled as a problem school.  But every school in Dade County has gang problems.  And every school in Dade County has drug problems.
                                    (Transcript of interview conducted by Paula Fernandez and Jane Morgan, November 4, 1996.)

Every school staff member I interviewed in the four schools, except one, either reported drugs were not in their schools, or if they admitted they did have a drug problem, it was only a small one.  The one exception was a new Northern High assistant principal.  In fact, both myself and my fellow researchers constantly saw evidence of drug use in the four schools—mainly marijuana use before school and during lunch and class changes.  An Everglades High security monitor even showed me where the school’s top students normally went to smoke marijuana (and be left alone by the school staff) at lunch.  The student focus group participants also talked openly of wide-scale drug use by the students before school, at lunch, and during class changes.  The Northern High assistant principal who openly admitted her school had a drug problem, told a story of how one day she encountered an outside intruder (from King High) selling small amounts of marijuana freely in the Northern High hallways.  Even in the relatively crime-free Coral High, Hispanic focus group students estimated that between 10 and 30 percent of the students regularly use marijuana during school.

Supporting our own observations from the four schools, the Metro-Dade Police Narcotics Bureau explained that the drug problem in Miami-Dade schools centers on two principal areas.  First, the police confirmed that small quantities of marijuana, crack, and even alcohol are regularly brought into the schools for personal use.  There is not sufficient data to estimate if the number of students using drugs in school each day reaches the 10 to 30 percent mark estimated at Coral High (but in layman’s terms—it is a bunch).  At Everglades High, two counselors hinted they have no idea how bad their school’s drug problem is—nor does the school seem overly concerned with addressing the problem.  One of these Everglades High counselors offered, “We never know if there is a [drug] problem until a student or their parents come in to request counseling to kick a habit.”  Second, the police described how students with an entrepreneurial bent—those wanting to risk a felony arrest—may also bring small quantities of low-cost drugs—marijuana, crack, roofies, etc.—to school for sale.  As a Northern High assistant principal opined, “cocaine and other drugs are too designer and too expensive for kids….”  A federal law makes sale of drugs within 1,000 feet of a school a felony offense.  The Metro-Dade Narcotics Bureau admits this law has been effective in keeping drug pushers away from most schools.  However, the police also point out that students do not have to rely on buying drugs in school, as the drugs are so widely available in all Miami-Dade neighborhoods.  Thus, a significant problem in Miami-Dade schools, as all our ethnographic data highlighted, is frequent in-school student drug use and very small-scale drug sales—a condition that all four school staffs in this study essentially deny is a problem.

In Northern, King, and Everglades Highs the discourses of denial about gang activity is even more severe than that of drugs.  Every school staff member interviewed at these three schools, every last one, admitted that while gang members attended their schools, there were no gang activities in the schools.  Northern and King High officials reported they had come to “understandings’ with several local gangs to help keep gang activity out of the schools.  A Northern High assistant principal explained that the school and local police “had talked to gang leaders outside the school and convinced them to keep the gang activity out of the school.”  A King High assistant principal talked about her calling in the gang leader of one particular student gang-member in minor trouble and explained to him the consequences of any gang activity arising in the school.  She felt this meeting had established an “understanding” between the gang and the school—one the gang had not violated in almost a year.

Although local police reported there were gang members in the Coral High student body, the Coral High administrators interviewed also all denied the school had gang problems.  In questioning the Coral High Hispanic students in the focus group about gangs, they reported that while there were groups of students that gathered in school (punk rockers, hip-hops, etc.), these groups were essentially social in nature and did not threaten other students.  This was in stark contrast to student focus group reports in Northern, King, and Everglades high schools.

Northern, King, and Everglades focus group students described school atmospheres permeated by threatening gangs.  A King High African-American male student described a typical gang run-in:

        Second period…I go to second floor…you see all of them hanging along.  Radios, boom boxes, hanging on the
        wall—security trying to get them inside a class.  One of them [tried to stop me]—I mean they were blocking the
        hallway.  I say, “Come on man you can’t block the hallway.  I’m gonna be late.”  And one of them said, “What
        you gonna do about that?”….They getting an attitude with me right.  So I had my friend, he was one of them—he
        said, “Leave that alone, just let them pass.”

I found that the difference between school staff and student perceptions of school gang activity is a problem of definitions.  I uncovered little evidence of school gang activity that met the strict Florida statute definition for criminal street gangs which emphasizes the gang’s use of common symbols and their continuing criminal street activity.  I uncovered no evidence that gang members on registry with the Metro-Dade Gang Task Force are committing an inordinate number of crimes in school, or even causing severe problems.  In fact, the Metro-Dade Gang Task Force highlighted that by the time they turn 16, most gang members on registry have dropped out of school.  Based solely on the Florida statute definition—the school staffs were technically correct in their evaluations that no gang activities were occurring in the schools.  What the student focus group participants reported as gang activity was actually just cliques or gang “wannabes.”  These cliques of “toughs” and gang “wannabes” are staking out territory in Northern, King, and Everglades high schools’ hallways and common areas, then harassing passing students.  These normally all male groups are mimicking gang activity they see on the street—bullying, taunting, and generally intimidating passing students.  Some of this low-grade harassment ends in violent student fights.  Thus, these threatening groups contribute significantly to the culture of violence in these schools.  While they are not officially gangs by Florida statute, the focus group results revealed that these groups are constantly harassing students in Northern, King, and Everglades high schools.  However, whether gangs or not, school staffs deny that these threatening groups are problems in their schools.

Finally, evidence of discourses of denial surrounding violent student fights was found at each of the four schools.  However, in each school the discourse of denial manifested itself quite differently.

One Northern High assistant principal admitted student fights were a major problem.  This particular assistant principal was just finishing her first year’s assignment at Northern High.  When a second assistant principal, one with over 15 years experience at Northern High, was asked about the school’s biggest problems, she responded “students who skip or are late to classes.”  When asked specifically about school fights, this second assistant principal replied “There are occasional fights, three in one day last week.”  Her tone told me and a fellow researcher that she did not find the fights a particularly serious problem, or simply accepted them.  Additionally, while a Northern High security monitor admitted the students were probably the most afraid of getting caught in the many school fights, he also reported his biggest problem was “keeping the school halls clear during classes.”  As one responsible for breaking-up the many fights, it appeared to me that this security monitor apparently accepted their existence.

King High’s discourse of denial over student fights was more subtle.  A King High security monitor listed tardy students, unmotivated students, and non-caring parents as the school’s major discipline problems—not fights.  This was the same King High security monitor who reported the school was experiencing 4 to 5 fights a week, well below the 2 to 3 fights a day a few years ago.  Such downplay of the fights’ importance is another sign of a discourse of denial.  Two King High assistant principals also did not mention fights when discussing the school’s major problems.  As with Northern High, it appeared the student fights were an accepted part of the King High climate.

Coral High also exhibited a discourse of denial regarding student fights.  Throughout several days of participant observation and interviews at Coral High, the school administrators, security monitors, and teachers hardly mentioned any fight problems.  Only one Coral High security monitor revealed there were several fights in the current school year (four in the previous four month period).  The Table 3 school crime data discloses that Coral High does experience infrequent student fights.  Thus, even though the fights are not frequent, they still occur, but the  Coral High staff and students apparently rationalize them as no problem.

Everglades High’s discourse of denial concerning student fights was unique compared to the other schools.  The Everglades High assistant principal for discipline, his administrative assistant, school counselors, and security monitors all freely admitted student fights were a major school problem.  These school staff members dealt daily with the school’s frequent fights and their fallout.  However, one counselor indicated that this openness about the school’s violence situation by those in the “trenches” was not the school’s general attitude.  She told a story of how during a crisis staff meeting after a student shooting on school property two years before, she raised the issue that as a result of this shooting and several other violent incidents, the Everglades High students were afraid for their own safety at school.  She then explained, “It was apparent no one among the administrators and teachers present wanted to hear this, and I have been treated like an outsider at the school ever since.”  The principal of a small, independent magnet school, co-located on Everglades High’s property, also vented her frustrations over the violent climate that she feels the Everglades High administration seems to do nothing about.  She described recent cases where one of her students was violently attacked as part of a gang initiation, another was robbed of jewelry at knife point, and she herself was hit in the face as she tried to break up an assault on one of her students by another student.  Thus, while the Everglades High staff responsible for responding to and cleaning up after these fights talks openly about them, the staff I spoke with expressed the sense that  the overall school administration seems to ignore the continuing existence of fights and the ramifications of fighting in school.

In summary, the entire Miami-Dade County Public School System promotes a system-wide discourse of denial about school problems of crime and violence.  This denial naturally permeates individual schools as administrators do not want to “buck” the system or look bad to the public.  Northern, King, and Everglades Highs appear to have strong discourses of denial concerning drugs, gangs (threatening groups), and student fights.  Coral High’s discourse of denial primarily concerns drugs, with a lower-grade denial of student fights.  These discourses of denial, I believe, are just the first step in cultivating a school culture of violence.

Non-Caring School Atmospheres

The second factor characterizing a school’s culture of violence is the existence of a non-caring school atmosphere.  Every school creates its own unique atmosphere or climate.  This atmosphere is based on a combination of factors that include:  the school’s physical plant, school policies, staff action or inaction (both real and perceived), staff and student body composition, and the interactions between students and school staff.  Often an outsider, as myself and the other project researchers were in the Miami-Dade schools, can almost “feel” a school’s unique atmosphere by spending just a little time inside the school.  Of concern here are the feelings of trust and caring that each school’s unique atmosphere exudes.  As one Northern High assistant principal offered, “Students deal with an awful lot of dysfunctional family problems…and they bring these problems to school.  Many of the kids just want attention, they want someone to care…something they don’t get at home.”  A lack of a trusting and caring atmosphere, as Devine argues, adds significantly to a school’s culture of violence.

A minuet of distrust starts between the students and staff of Northern and King Highs as the morning class bell rings.  Contrary to the depiction of television and the movies, and differing from what Devine found in New York inner-city schools, none of the four Miami-Dade schools have entryway metal detectors through which the students must pass.  Instead, at Northern and King Highs the feelings of distrust begin between students and staff at morning and after-lunch “lockouts.”  During lockouts, the external school doors are shut and the halls cleared.  Those students late to school or late to class are shepherded to one external door, where a school administrative assistant for attendance issues class-entry slips along with requisite detentions and suspensions for repeat offenders.  At times, especially in the mornings, there are so many late students that lockout can last up to two hours.  The students despise this procedure as displayed in the African-American student focus group discussion of lockouts:

Student A (King High male):  ….you could be one minute late and they will send you to lockout and you'd be up to lockout for
                                             about two hours, and that's the whole class period.
Moderator: Exactly what does lockout mean?
Student A:  You come to school late, one minute late…
Student B (King High female):  You come to school late and they send you to the cat walk [King High second-floor external
                                                door].
Student A:  And then they try to like suspend you for being late, they know you got problems.
Moderator:  O.K., when they lock you out, you just can't come to school?
Student C (King High male):  No.  You have to go through a whole two hour process just to get to school.
Moderator:  What's going on outside the school when you're locked out?
Student B:  Long, big long lines ......
Moderator:  Any problems taking place out there?
Student B:  At our school it makes people want to drop out, cause the principal we have is very strict.  You have 30 minutes
                  you can't get out, you can't be out of the classroom, it's 30 minutes you can’t be in the hall, it's what they call a hall
                  sweep, cause if they catch you out in the hall, it's an automatic CSI [in-school suspension].

At Coral and Everglades Highs, the morning minuet for late students takes different courses.  Late Coral High students are allowed to pass unhindered to their classrooms, where their first period teachers notify the administration that they were late.  Administrators then deal later in the day with the students who are repeat offenders.  Coral High reports approximately 100 students are late to school each morning, out of a total population of over 3,500 students.  In comparison, King High, with only 2,495 students, reports there are sometimes 300 to 400 students at morning lockouts.  A Northern High security monitor, with almost 20 years experience at several Miami-Dade schools, unknowingly highlighted the reason for lockout or late student problems as being related directly to the school policy of removing teacher responsibility for the “body” of students.  He reported:

            The whole late-to school [lockout] problem arose when the teachers quit giving out detentions.  When the
            teachers gave late detentions, the kids would run to class in order not to be late.  Now only administrators give
            detentions.

However, as the continuing long lines at Northern and King Highs’ lockouts reveal, detentions and suspensions seem to have little effect on student behavior.  A King High security monitor with over 20 years experience in King High reported she had never seen detentions change the behavior of a single student.

Everglades High uses a totally different late student system.  At Everglades High, where late morning arrivals do not seem to particularly worry anyone, the security monitors are assigned to issue detention slips to late arrivals.  However, this procedure has become rife with Devine’s  marshmallow effect—allowing students to break the rules—as this conversation during the Haitian student focus group revealed:

Student A (Everglades High female):  ….If I come late…you have to get a detention in order to go to class.  So if I go to the
                                                        security monitor, he gives me a detention and he takes the yellow part and throws it in the
                                                        garbage. He does not turn it in.  So I go free.  I don't have to serve detention.
Moderator:  So he is your friend, so he will take care of you?
Student A:  No, it's not because he is my friend, it's because he likes the way I look.  Mostly all of them [security monitors] do
                  that.  But if it's someone else…
Moderator:  So do they do just the girls then?
Student A:  Mostly guys.
Moderator:  And how [you guys],  they do that to you?
Student B (King High female):  The boys always get through.
Student C (Everglades High male):  Not really, I don't be getting in trouble that much.
Moderator:  Well let's use a specific case. If you are late, right, and the guy was to write up one of these things, does he throw
                    it away like he does for [Student A].
Student C:  No.  He sends it.
Moderator:  [Student D], does that ever happen to you?
Student D (King High male):  Once.
Moderator:  And what happened?  They threw it away, or they turned them in?
Student D:  It's not like I'd be serving them anyway.
Moderator:  [Student E], how about you?
Student E (King High male):  I mean, what I think is that, this is off the topic, what I think is [King High] right, if they were to
                                            charge a dollar for a person to get in for being late, they would have made a whole lot of money.

Once students pass their morning run-in with administrators and security monitors, they next encounter their teachers.  As with the nationwide trend, Miami-Dade public school teachers are not required to monitor school hallways or other common areas.  They are encouraged to maintain an active learning classroom, to show students they care, and to maintain classroom discipline without the use of force.  School district guidance states that teachers should “utilize force only when the student or other students are in immediate danger—or when the teacher or other staff member—is in danger of physical abuse” (Wheatley 1996-1997: 15).  Otherwise, the teacher is instructed to call for assistance from security or other staff members when situations progress beyond their control.  How they perform these responsibilities seems to depend on the individual school.

Students in the African-American, Caribbean, and Haitian focus groups displayed a general disgust for their teachers and administrators at Northern and King Highs.  The following rather lengthy set of dialogues from the Caribbean student focus group spotlights Northern High’s student dissatisfaction toward the school’s entire non-caring atmosphere.  On teachers and security monitors the Northern High Caribbean students submitted:

Moderator:  So if a fight starts at school, who parts the fight?
Student A (female):  Sometimes the teachers.
Student B (male):  If it really gets bad, the administration will actually have to come out there and break it apart themselves.
                            Than you see the security guard running in.  [In a mimicking tone] “Oh, break it up, break it up.”
Student C (male):  Now they’ve got them buttons in the class.  They will let you fight… All the teacher does is press the
                             button.  They watch you fight.
Moderator:  When they press the button, what happens?
Student D (unidentified):  They say, “Do you have a problem?”  They have someone monitor the [main office security] board.
                                       It has classrooms [listed].  They just tell the security guard.  You fight [in the classroom] until the
                                       security guard gets there.
Student B:  That isn't effective anymore.  ….if you look and the teacher’s over here, and the boxing is on the other side of the
                  classroom.  The teachers are not gonna get involved.  They don't get paid enough to get boxed out.
Student E (male):  If the fight is in the classroom, if the fight is in the hallway, or on the school compound itself—you don't have
                            an emergency code to call the office to let the security guard know.  I have seen several fights where—there
                            is a fight there, and the security guard is here, and he is standing there and he is laughing.
Student F (male):  Most of the times the students have to do it.
Moderator:  Students have to break up the fights?
Student F:  Most of the time it's [the students] that have to do it, not the security guard.  They [the students] are the security
                  guards themselves.

On the school administration Northern High Caribbean students revealed:

Student G (male):  Administration is so stupid.  If you are fighting, there's a street [in front of the school] and if you go across
                &n