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
                            the street and you fight….they could call the police.  But on the other side of the street in front of the school,
                            they don't care.  They know you go to the school, but they just don't care, they let you fight
Moderator:  Why do you think they don't care?
Student C:  If you get caught and the police are there you go to jail.  Nobody is responsible for you. You go to jail on their [the
                  police’s] side.
Moderator:  Because you are off the [school grounds}?
Student C:  [On the school] side you get suspended.
Student G:  So in other words, you could be fighting across the street and even the principal would come out and just watch,
                  and they wouldn't do anything.
Moderator:  Have you seen that?
Student G:  Yes.

On their principal the Northern High Caribbean students offered:

Moderator:  What does the principal do?
Student C:  You don't see him at all.
Student H (female):  I’ve only seen him this year, and this is my second year at [Northern High].
Moderator:  So you are saying he is not active?  Doesn’t interact with the students?
Student C:  Big tall white guy.  He walks around with a walkie-talkie.  His office is way back in the corner.
Student I (female):  Our principal only takes care of the pretty part of the job.  He goes to all the luncheons, all the awards
                              ceremonies and things like that.  When it comes to the students, he doesn't get into that at all.  It's the other
                              administrators who have to deal with all the headaches.
Student E:  It seems funny, but a lot of students that I have known, seniors, say they don't know their principal. They say they
                 don't know how he looks.  I mean he is your principal, and the only time you see him is if there is a big assembly.
                 He doesn't interact with the students, you don't see him in the hall talking.  He doesn't come into class.  You hear his
                 voice, yes, but that's it.
Student F:  Most of the times I see him a lot, once in a blue moon you see him walking around in the hallway with a
                  walkie-talkie….

On the marshmallow effect—staff ignoring student misconduct—surrounding sexual harassment in the school, the Northern High Caribbean students revealed:

Moderator:  Ladies you have been very quiet.  What I would like to know is, do you have problems in school or in your
                    neighborhoods with unwanted sexual advances, young men or older men, giving you unwanted attention…,
                    touching on you, hitting on you, do you have any problems with that?
Student H:  Yes, in class.  I was in first period.  Everybody says I am teacher's pet, but I don't care….this football player sits in
                  the front and I sit like over the other side, he is like “[Student H], [Student H], come sit on my desk”  I am like,
                  “For what?”  He is like, “Come sit on my hand. Let me move my hand like that.”
Moderator:  You have to deal with that a lot in school?
Student H:  Yes.
Moderator:  What are some less extreme examples?  What about walking through the hall, do you have any situations like that?
Student H:  Yes, someone touch your butt, you don't know who it is.
Moderator:  Do the male teachers respect you?
Student I:  There are some teachers who know the boundaries.  They know where…to stop.   But there are other teachers
                 who can't seem to keep it in check.  I know one specific teacher who spends two days in the classroom per week.
                 He spends all the other times roaming the halls, [saying to the girls] “come here and talk to me.”  There are
                 boundaries.  If you are here to teach, you are here to teach, don't spend your time out in the hallway “conversating”
                 and all that kinda stuff.  And sometimes they want to give you hugs and all that stuff.  First thing, I am not
                 comfortable with that.  I don't like it when older men hug you, especially if you are not a relative.  But you know,
                 they think it's O.K.  They think it's just having a good student teacher relationship but sometimes it does make you
                 uncomfortable.
Moderator:  [Student C] have you witnessed any of that or has anybody hit on you at school?
Student C:  Yes, this one particular person
Moderator:  Student, teacher, security?
Student C:  Student.  This one particular person, we have assigned seats in my second period.  I am right here and he is right
                  here [next] to me.  Every time I walk by, he claims that I am throwing him shots
Moderator:  What does that mean?
Student C:  I am trying to show off my body to him or whatever.  He grabs on my breast.
Moderator:  What do you do?  Do you report this?
Student C:  Oh no, I take care of it myself.  I slapped him in the face.  Hooked him where the sun doesn't shine.  I let him know
                   I don't like it, and he keeps it up.  So I had to change my seat.
Moderator:  So you don't report this to the teacher?
Student C:  What they gonna do?  All they gonna say is,  “If it happens again let me know.”  And if you tell them again, [you get
                  a second time] “If it happens again let me know.”
Moderator:  So you don't think that you have any support from your teachers?
Student C:  No.

This general disgust with the adult staff in their school was also visible at King High.  On my very first visit to King High, the following student quotes sprang off the front page of the latest edition of the school newspaper:

“These teachers don’t teach us anything.”

“Those toy security guards play favorites, so we play the role of problem child.”

“I just don’t like it here.  It’s unfair.”

The article these quotations headlined, “Pointing Fingers:  Blame War at [King High],”  continued by describing the serious lack of cooperation between the King High administration, teachers, security monitors, and students.  King High’s principal blamed the problems on “miscommunications.”  As I looked closer, however, I discovered that what the principal characterized as miscommunications the students perceived as a truly poisoned and fractured atmosphere—a sense of non-caring that many students felt permeated the entire school.

On my second visit to King High, several events drove home King High’s non-caring climate.  As morning lockout began, a female security monitor found a female student doubled over in apparent pain and crying near a stairwell located near the school’s main entrance.  Obviously concerned, the female security monitor tried to console the young girl and find out what was wrong.  The girl would not respond, except with some low moans and tears.  A second security monitor approached and offered to help the girl to the school nurse’s office located 50 feet down the same corridor.  Then began an exchange that I still cannot believe:

Female security monitor to a passing female teacher:  There is a hurt girl there [pointing] headed toward the nurse’s office, but I
                                                                                don’t think the nurse is in.  Could you help her?
Teacher:  Even though I’m certified [as a nurse], the administration won’t get me insurance.  I have to protect myself.  Sorry I
               can’t help.  Why don’t you call 911?  That’s what it’s for.

The female teacher never even broke stride as she headed up the stairwell toward a nearby teacher’s lounge.  The teacher neither asked further about the hurt girls condition nor bothered to look toward the girl who was 20 feet away being helped by the other security monitor.  In my fieldnotes I wrote, “This lady never once showed concern for the student, just herself.”

Problems at King High were further highlighted by a King High assistant principal.  When I asked, “What are your biggest discipline problems?” she responded bluntly:

        My biggest problem with discipline is not the students.  It’s teachers who don’t teach, who don’t enforce the rules,
        who don’t maintain control of their students….F’s or expulsions seem to mean nothing to many students…I can’t
        accept that way of thinking…teachers have a chance to turn these kids around, not me or the security monitors.

I spent most of this particular day with King High’s chief security monitor responding to a stream of disruptive and defiant student discipline problems in classrooms, hallways, administrative spaces, and the cafeteria.  At one particular frustrating moment, when an office administrative clerk called on him after lunch to handle a verbally abusive student, the chief security monitor lamented, “I wish the administrators and teachers would try to maintain some control of students themselves and not simply call for the security monitors every time some kid acted up.”  As the day went on I could tell there was a significant rift between King High’s administrators, teachers, and students—as if they were three distinct factions warring among and against each other.  While with another King High security monitor, I witnessed the following exchange when a white-European teacher asked him to remove two malingering African-American girls from the library:

Security Monitor[to the student]:  Why couldn't you just do what the teacher said?
Girl One:  Because he’s prejudiced.
Security Monitor:  He’s prejudiced because he told you to do something you didn’t want to do?
Girl One:  Yeah, that’s right.
Security Monitor:  You don't seem to understand.  He’s the teacher and the adult.  You are the kid.  You do what he tells you whether you like it or not.  Understand?
Both Girls’ Responses:  Raised eye glances of defiance aimed back at him [the security monitor] as another security monitor arrived to escort them to the school’s office.

The student focus groups were also not shy about describing the King High tainted atmosphere as the following dialogue by King High students in the African-American group reveals:

Student A (male):  You could walk straight out the front door [of King High] and go across the street.  And then the boys just
                             chill right there and they just smoke weed and talk, holler at young ladies, and even holler at grown women
                             too.  It could be somebody’s mama they trying to holler at.
Moderator:  How come nobody is doing anything about all this?
Student B (female):  They don't care….
Student C (female):  Principals, if you talk principals, they won't do it….
                               [King High] just had a .... student government meeting with the principal to ask a few questions.  But it's
                               like she don't care….  You could go to anybody they won't do nothing about it.
Student D (female):  They send us home from school.  I know we are not supposed to dress bad, like “hoochie mama” in
                                school.  But if you have a jacket fit down, they can see a little bit a this, a little bit a that, they will send you
                                home.  “Turn around let me see you,” [they say.]
Moderator:  So they don't care about drugs, but they are worried about how you dress?
Student D:  You can't have no hat on.
Student E (unidentified):  And they'll walk around with their beepers.  “I'll take your beeper, why you got your beeper.”
Student C:  I cussed my principal out.  I say, “You worried about my beeper and what I got on. You need to be going out
                  there and worrying about that boy that's smoking in the bathroom.  What if he drops something in the bathroom?
                  Blows the whole school up.  And you are down worried about my beeper.”  I don't care about no principal….

In stark contrast to the glaring evidence of Northern and King Highs’ atmospheres of non-caring, I noticed only a slight undertone of tension between the administrators, teachers, and students at Everglades High.  Everglades High appeared to have the best on-site student intervention programs of the four schools investigated—programs that include very active school psychologist group therapy sessions, caring guidance counselors, and an active peer counseling program.  The peer counselors taught a variety of intervention classes (conflict resolution, stress reduction, etc.) and one or two peer counselors were always available to help students with problems.  Two peer counselors told me how they spent most of their time in one-on-one conflict resolution sessions:  student conflicts with students, and student conflicts with their parents. Everglades High also has an active student crime watch—something I did not find at either Northern or King Highs.  Between classes and at lunch, approximately 50 volunteer students help the security monitors and administrators monitor the school’s halls.  One Everglades High assistant administrator also boasted how:

        The teachers are a tremendous help with the class changes.  They usually stay near their classrooms and monitor
        student movements.  This teacher assistance is strictly voluntary.  The school board does not require teachers to
        fulfill such duties.

Confused over what I found at Everglades High—the atmosphere did not seem to match the school’s high violence levels—I turned to two of my fellow researchers who had spent considerable time over a two year period in Everglades High.  One researcher felt that students perceived many of the teachers as not really caring about them.  The second researcher added she thought 50 percent of the teachers seemed to care, but the other 50 percent did not.  The student interactions in the African-American and Haitian focus groups did not help resolve my concerns as neither group painted a picture of Everglades High as having either a caring or non-caring atmosphere.  There was one Haitian focus group discussion by an Everglades High female who had personal run-ins with two teachers.  There was only one general student depiction of Everglades High as non-caring.  An African-American focus group female student offered:

        The kids are selling [drugs].  The teachers know it.  The kids are selling during school.  ….you get 10 minutes
        between each break [class].  They go out in front of the school and smoke. Come back, go to class.  The smartest
        people are out there…valedictorians…the two smartest people in our school…I told [one student]…I told him you
        need cologne…it [marijuana smell] was getting up my nose.  He sits right in front of me in class…the smartest
        boy in our class.  He just smokes and smokes.  It’s ridiculous.  It makes me sick.

With the exception of this one student’s comment regarding the teachers not caring about school drug sales, there was no other depiction of Everglades High having a non-caring school climate similar to those so blatantly provided above for Northern and King Highs.  However, an Everglades High climate of caring was also not reported by the focus groups in the positive sense that Coral High students provided.

The following Hispanic student focus group dialogue about Coral High’s atmosphere speaks for itself.  This dialogue was spontaneous, one not specifically solicited by the focus group moderator.

Student A (female):  I think [Coral High] teachers are…good.  You can talk to them…most of them, not all of them of course.
                               It's not just like they are your teacher, "You have to do this and this."  No, you can talk to them.  You can
                               even get to be their friend besides [being] the student.
Student B (female):  The teachers are good and they care.  It depends though.  It depends on you if you want to.  They all
                               care.  They all care.  That's the point.  It depends on you, if you want to do the work, or not.   If you just
                               want to slack off, or whatever, it depends on you.  Because some of them tell you,  “If you don't care, I
                               don't care if you pass.”  And it's true.  If you're not gonna care, why should the teacher care?
Student A:  [Sometimes]….they will treat the good students the same way as they will treat the bad students….They treat you
                  the same way and then you feel bad.  Like sometimes I've even felt disrespect, disrespected, and that discourage
                  me.  And as far as the principal, I think he's a really good principal because compared to other schools I've been
                  to, I've never known any other principal like the one that I have now….he is always in the halls, he's always doing
                  stuff.
Student C (male):  I'd say it's 50-50.  Fifty percent care about you, want to help you out.  Some teachers just don't care if
                            you're a good student, or if you're bad.  They don't care about you, they don't try to help you out.  And as
                            far as the principal, I think he has a good personality.  He's a person you can get along with.  He can be your
                            friend.  He can be your principal.  As far as principals, I think he's the best one I've had so far
Student D (male):  He's the best problem resolver I've seen.  He's excellent.
Moderator:  He does a good job?
Student D:  Yeah.

Coral High also possesses a good counseling program, including peer counselors, and a student crime watch program.  A Metro-Dade police officer assigned to the school provides the students public safety instruction, runs a variety of school and community public service programs, and reported, “My most important job [at Coral High] is building good citizens.”  Of this study’s four schools, Coral High was the one where the project researchers obtained a solid “feeling” that a trusting and caring atmosphere exists.  This was unlike the clear non-cooperative and non-caring atmospheres in Northern and King Highs.  It also contrasted with Everglades High, where even though there were many positive signs, there was still the slight underlying tension of distrust in the air.

Remiss Security Forces

The third factor in constituting a school’s culture of violence is the performance of the school’s security force.  The Miami-Dade public school security program began evolving into its current structure in the late 1970s and 1980s.  Beginning with only a few security monitors in the more problematic schools, the school board hired and trained 20 School Resource Specialists (SRSs) in 1979.  At this point the school board knew they needed to upgrade security in the inner-city schools, but were not ready to commit to armed police officers in the schools. The 20 SRSs were trained in both security and student personal counseling and then deployed to the most problematic inner-city middle and senior high schools.  In 1983, a decision was made to place armed police officers in the schools.  At first these School Resource Officers (SROs), the armed uniformed police, were provided by the Metro-Dade police or by the incorporated city where the school was located.  In the late 1980s, the school board commissioned the Dade County Schools Police, their own independent police force.  One Dade County Schools Police officer is now assigned to each senior high school and others are assigned to middle and elementary schools where needed.  The Dade County Schools Police officers report directly to a central headquarters that answers to the school district.  While a cooperative working situation is desired between the Dade County Schools Police and each school, the school principals have no supervisory authority over their assigned Dade County Schools Police officer.  Even with the Dade County Schools Police officers on-site, some senior high schools still have SROs from local police departments.  With the commissioning of the Dade County Schools Police, those remaining from the original 20 SRSs were reassigned to the school security monitor program—usually to be the head monitor in inner-city schools.

The Dade County Schools Police has been the target of frequent criticism by other police departments and the Miami-Dade State’s Attorney’s office.  The State’s Attorney herself offered, “We have concerns about the level of [Dade County Schools Police] professionalism, the type of training they may or not receive, and some of their internal procedures.  They have a poor reputation” (Park 1997).  The Dade County Schools Police’s mediocre reputation results from two primary factors.  First, the force’s 147 officers are not required to undergo psychological and polygraph tests mandated for other county police agencies.  As a result of this lack of personal screening, some Dade County Schools Police officers are hired after they fail these same tests and are rejected by other Miami-Dade police agencies.  This causes problems with inter-agency cooperation as other Miami-Dade police agencies look upon the Dade County Schools Police officers as “second-rate” or “wannabe cops.”  Second, Dade County Schools Police investigations are highly politicized by the school district.  All school police investigations of school system personnel are subject to the approval and oversight of the school district’s Office of Professional Standards (OPS).  Several publicized cases in the Miami press document instances where OPS intervened in Dade County Schools Police investigations and prevented criminal charges from being filed against school system employees—some where children were victimized repeatedly by the school employees (Park 1997).  Other Miami-Dade police agencies argue that intervention by a non-law enforcement element (OPS) in police work subverts effective justice (Park 1997).  When questioned about OPS’s interference in Dade County Schools Police operations, one senior school district official replied, “If someone wants to follow the letter of the law, they shouldn’t be school police” (Park 1997).  Thus, while the misconduct or poor performance of individual Dade County Schools Police officers was not an issue uncovered in this study, their ability to adequately protect students is seriously questioned due to their strict oversight by non-law enforcement school district officials.

In response to increasing school crime and violence problems, the Miami-Dade public school security monitor program also expanded during the 1980s and early 1990s as additional monitors were added to many schools.  To become a Miami-Dade public school security monitor requires a high school education and a clean police record.  The monitors receive no formal training, relying instead upon on-the-job instruction and periodic security seminars held countywide on teacher work days.  The monitors wear green or red sport shirts with “School Security” stenciled in white letters on the back.  Starting pay for a new monitor is around six dollars per hour, which then increases with their number of years on the job.  Because of the low pay, most of the eight monitors I interviewed have second jobs.  The monitors report directly to each school’s assistant principal for discipline.  Each monitor is assigned a section of the school or outside school grounds to patrol (monitor), keeping in two-way radio contact among themselves, the assistant principals, and the assigned Dade County Schools Police officer.  Table 4 provides a summary of the security force personnel in the four schools.

School	DCSP Officers	Other SROs	Male Security Monitors	Female Security Monitors
Northern High	1	0	6	2
King High	1	0	12	2
Coral High	1	1	6	1
Everglades High	1	1	7	3

The marshmallow effect—where security monitors ignore student misconduct—is  pervasive among the security monitors in Northern, King, and Everglades Highs.  This contributes to each school’s sense of non-caring as students know when they violate school policies and regulations, they can probably get away with it.  Student focus group discussions previously presented highlight the security monitor marshmallow effect regarding lockouts, late-arrivals, and ignoring fights.  In Northern and Everglades Highs particularly, the security monitors appear to be selectively enforcing school rules and regulations.  As a result, although certain student behaviors may be prohibited, they receive unofficial sanction because security monitors and other members of the school's staff choose not to enforce school policies.  This non-enforcement of school policies is often a problem when security monitors become too friendly with students.  Another problem is the lack of clear guidance for the monitors to follow.  As a result of this lack of clear guidance, the security monitors often must decide for themselves what regulations to enforce—further cultivating the marshmallow effect.  The senior Northern High security monitor, one of the original 20 SRSs, explained:

        At the most recent security seminar, one group discussion leader presented a hypothetical case of a student
        infraction, a dress code violation or something.  The discussion then turned to all the ways the security monitors
        could help the student not repeat the behavior and at the same time show some compassion and not get the
        student in trouble with the administration.  I immediately jumped up and told the group leader and participants,
        "Compassion and rehabilitation of students isn't our job.  Our job is to ensure the safety of the students.  All
        infractions need to be reported so the administration can do their jobs as counselors and social workers-this isn't
        the security monitor’s job.”  Since this was contrary to the way the discussion was going, I knew that most of the
        people in the room didn't agree with me.

Another common problem is security monitor misconduct.  This turned out to be a serious complaint of the focus group students, as they described how male security monitors frequently sexually harass female students.  Evidence of this occurring sprang up at Northern, King, and Everglades Highs.  Two Northern High African-American female students reported:

Moderator:  So you don’t feel safer since they [security monitors] communicate with each other and they can call for help?
Student A (female):  They [security monitors] are too busy trying to have sex with us.
Moderator:  You are talking about the school security?
Student A:  Security, teachers.
Moderator:  Do you really believe that all the teachers and all the security guards….
Student B (female):  Yes!
Student A:  Not all of them.  As a matter of fact one [teacher] just got fired for having relations with a sophomore girl.  I mean
                  to tell them [security monitors], “Look, number one—you are too old for me.  Number two—you are not exactly
                  my dream guy.”  Working as a security guard at a high school?  It’s sick.  It’s so sick.
Student B:  At our school the security guards are pathetic.  I had to report a security guard.  He was harassing us.

King and Everglades High Haitian focus group students also offered:

Moderator:  In other schools, not the school you go to, but other schools, we heard stories where the security monitors were
                   making out with the girls.
Student A (Everglades High female):  Yes, it's true…one of my security guards tried to talk to me, he asked me for my phone
                                                         number, everything.
Moderator:  You guys worry about this?
Student B (King High female):  They fired one at our school cause he was fooling around with this girl.
Student A:  Like me, I didn't give him no way to get to me.  Every time he tried to talk to me, I would ignore him.  He tried to
                  follow me home, and I [would] go another way home, so there was no way he could get with me.  And also, the
                  security guards have no use in the school….When there are fights, security guards get beat up mostly all of the time,
                  because they try to break it up.
Moderator:  Security guards get beat up?
Entire Focus Group: YES!
Student A:  At my school one time, I was at the game, and big boys, they came out of a black car and jumped on this one little
                  boy.  The security guard was there.  He was trying to help the little boy.  They jumped him too.

Coral High Hispanic students were neutral about the security monitor program.  When asked by the focus group moderator what they thought of school security, they brushed right past the question and started talking about their teachers and principal.  The Coral High monitors therefore do not seem to have a negative effect on the school atmosphere.  However, my investigation reveals that at Northern, King, and Everglades Highs, while they no doubt do contribute to school order, the security monitors add to school discipline problems.  These three school’s security monitors therefore support Devine’s observations that remiss security forces allow neighborhood crime and violence to enter the schools, thus adding to the school’s culture of violence.

Student Fear of Victimization

As Devine submits, schools with cultures of violence and high levels of school violence perpetuate an ethos of fear that envelops the students.  The African-American, Caribbean, and Haitian focus group discussions revealed that these groups of students are most fearful of the frequent violent fights that occur in Northern, King, and Everglades Highs.  To kick off each focus group, the moderator asked the students to write down what they feared most while traveling to and from school and while at school.  Students were then asked to share their written answer with the group.  The majority of the Northern, King, and Everglades High students talked of their fear of being picked on, getting jumped, being “tried,” running into bad [violent] people, suffering harassment by gangs or gang “wannabes,” walking into fights, and being stabbed or shot—many of the same type incidents they discussed in more detail later in the focus group.   A Northern High Caribbean male student responded:

        As far as coming to school every morning, there is always something going on, like people in the hallway that
        don’t like certain people…people will fight you just for looking at them.  When you walk at all you have to look
        down.  And what [are] you looking down for?  [Because if ] you look up they [are] gonna fight you for
        something to do.

A King High African-American female replied:

        [I fear]… just walking out of my class and being stabbed and shot by some deranged type person.  They don’t like
        me, or don’t even much know me and don’t like me, and [they] just come up and stab me or shoot me—just for
        the simple fact they don’t like me….I done seen cases like that.

To help establish the validity of these initial student responses, the focus group moderators employed a final preference or “all things considered” question (Krueger 1994: 147).  The students were asked to reflect on their discussions and then write down the three things they feared most while traveling to and from school and while at school.  The students were told these answers would not be discussed with the group.  The majority of African-American and Caribbean students indicated they were most afraid of violent fights and guns in school.  The Haitian students, while some responded they were afraid of fights and guns, were almost unanimous in their fear of being bullied or harassed at school.  A couple of the Coral High Hispanic students also mentioned a fear of violent fights, however, the Hispanic student answers clustered more in non-violent areas such as being afraid of personal thefts or getting failing grades—responses similar to their initial focus group discussions.

Results

Table 5 summarizes the analysis of the ethnographic evidence for each school.  The findings for Northern and King High lend support to all of this paper’s original hypotheses.  At these two schools, where all three factors characterizing school cultures of violence are displayed, and high rates of neighborhood and school violence exist, the predicted high levels of student fear of victimization were also found.  The findings for Everglades High also lend support to all the hypotheses, with the exception of sub-hypothesis 3b which addresses the non-caring school atmosphere.  The ethnographic data does not conclusively establish whether Everglades High possessed a non-caring school atmosphere or not.  With little neighborhood and school violence, and no school culture of violence, the findings for Coral High data was not a good test of the hypotheses.  However, in a comparative sense, the Coral High data demonstrates that not all Miami-Dade senior high schools are the chaotic violence-ridden spots the media often depicts.

Concept Evaluated	Northern High	King High	Coral High	Everglades High
Student Fear Levels	High	High	Low	High
Neighborhood Violence Levels (Hypothesis 1)	Moderate-High	High	Low	High
School Violence Levels (Hypothesis 2)	High	Low according to official records	Low	High
School Culture of Violence Exists (Hypothesis 3)	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Discourse of  Denial Present (Sub-Hypothesis 3a)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Non-Caring Atmosphere Present (Sub-Hypothesis 3b)	Yes	Yes	No	Borderline
Remiss Security Forces Present (Sub-Hypothesis 3c)	Yes	Yes	No	Yes

Discussion

The Northern and King High ethnographic findings perfectly parallel Devine’s (1996) study in New York inner-city schools.  With the exception of the data on a non-caring school atmosphere, the Everglades High ethnographic findings also closely parallel Devine’s work.  The one difference between Everglades High and Devine’s study, and the anomaly over the low official school crime data for King High, require further explanation that in themselves may provide additional insights to school violence research.

King High’s investigation highlights the problem in using only one source of research data—especially when the source is crime statistics.  The King High inquiry demonstrated the utility of triangulating data sources—using both crime statistics and ethnographic data in this case.  Even though my study found King High possessed high levels of neighborhood crime, a school culture of violence, and high levels of student fear, the school’s official violence rate measured solely by official crime statistics was relatively low.  My investigation uncovered, however, that the ethnographic data (interviews, participant observations, and focus groups) about school violence, and not official crime statistics, is the best measure of King High’s violent atmosphere.  This still does not explain why King High’s official crime statistics are so low compared to Northern and Everglades Highs’.

King High officials insist they have no policy of under-reporting violent incidents.  Therefore, in evaluating all aspects of King High’s disciplinary program, my best explanation for the low school violence rate relates to the efficiency of the school’s security force.  King High’s security force has a reputation of being one of the best in the Miami-Dade public schools.  I found the King High security force to be well organized, enthusiastic, and extremely well led by the senior security monitor and the assistant principal for discipline.  Unlike the security monitor programs in the other three schools, King High’s program exhibited a keen sense of teamwork and camaraderie among the monitors.  The senior King High security monitor sets the tone for the other monitors with a friendly but firm demeanor.  He insists that the King High monitors do not take any “back-talk” from students—as evidenced by the previous cited exchange between the one King High security monitor and the two girls malingering in the library.  I observed the King High monitors not only correcting student behavior during the day, but holding mini-counseling sessions with each offender so that the student understood what acceptable behavior was and why it was important.  Thus, also unlike the security monitors the other three schools, the King High monitors fulfill a true student mentoring role as part of their security duties.  In contrast with the overall King High non-caring atmosphere, the fourteen security monitors do provide at least some adult caring to the school’s almost 2,500 students.

The King High security program also has a strong preemptive component.  Even the slightest rumor that a student fight is simmering triggers the senior security monitor and assistant principal for discipline to call in the students involved to try to resolve the situation and to explain to the students the consequences of fighting.  The King High monitors are also very pro-active at both preventing and intervening in student conflicts.  While fights still frequently occur at King High (four to five a week), the monitors normally intervene quickly before students are seriously hurt.  With few injuries resulting from fights, only one or two fights (out of the 15-20 that occur) each month are serious enough to generate a crime statistic—thus providing one explanation of why the King High official school crime data is so much lower than Northern and Everglades Highs’.

This commendatory view of King High’s security force, however, does not alter the conclusion that King High’s security force adds to the violent school climate.  King High’s security force is very good at preventing and reacting to some violence, and in so doing they have reduced both the total number of fights and the school’s violent crime statistics.  Other items found at King High—an atmosphere of police-power intrusion, some misconduct by the security monitors (female sexual harassment), and selective security monitor enforcement of school policies (the marshmallow effect)—still contribute to the local street violence infestation of the school.

Everglades High’s analysis highlights two keen insights in school violence research.  First, as a small town school, the findings for Everglades High demonstrate that Devine’s explanations for school cultures of violence do transfer outside the inner-city.  Devine does not claim that the propositions he uncovered regarding a school’s culture of violence can be used to explain school violence in other cities or in schools outside the inner-city.  Leaving it to other researchers to draw parallels with his findings, Devine notes, “…one does not need acute cultural antenna to surmise that these kinds of problems [school violence] are not confined to New York.  School violence has been amply described as a crisis of the 1990s, not just for urban schools but for rural and suburban schools as well….” (Devine 1996: 7).  My study of Everglades High confirms that school cultures of violence are not just an inner-city phenomenon, but may occur wherever schools are characterized by high neighborhood crime rates, high poverty rates, and large concentrations of minority or immigrant families.

Second, the Everglades High study discloses that Devine’s three factors contributing to school cultures of violence—discourse of denial, non-caring atmosphere, remiss security forces—do not have to be particularly strong to allow neighborhood violence to invade the school.  While Everglades High possesses a strong discourse of denial and a remiss security program, it appears to be teetering on the brink between a caring and non-caring school atmosphere.  In contrast to Devine’s discussions, Everglades High’s findings imply that a culture of violence may be possible even in a caring school atmosphere.  Based strictly on Devine’s work and this ethnographic study, it cannot be concluded that any of the three factors—discourse of denial, non-caring atmosphere, remiss security program—are, by themselves, necessary or sufficient for a culture of violence to exist.  It is more likely that there is a complex relationship among these factors.  The strength of these three factors vary, as this study reveals, and they no doubt can combine and interact in a variety of ways to create a school’s culture of violence.   Additional school violence research is required to investigate these complex relationships further.

Methodology

Instrument and Sample

Students in the three IEI project high schools that the ethnographic data revealed possessed school cultures of violence Northern, King, and Everglades Highs) were surveyed using a modified version of the California School Climate and Safety Survey (CSCSS).    The modified CSCSS (see Appendix A) is a self-report omnibus questionnaire designed to measure student perceptions of neighborhood and school personal safety-related experiences.  Versions of the CSCSS have been used successfully in California school research since 1989 (See Furlong, et al. 1995: 286).

Two categories of students were selected to participate in the survey.  First, the survey  targeted the approximately 270 minority and immigrant students in the longitudinal project investigating student academic orientation.  Research assistants in the project were each assigned a purposive sample of 30 students in a distinct minority or immigrant group to observe both in school and in their home and neighborhood environments.  Of the 270 project students, 77 were sampled in the survey.  Second, another purposive sample of students was administered the survey by IEI researchers where:  (1) researchers were observing the project sample students in class, and (2) teachers allowed the researcher to administer the survey to the entire class.  Three-hundred non-project students were sampled, yielding a total sample of 377 project and non-project students combined.   There were approximately equal numbers of male and female ninth through twelfth grade students surveyed.  Additionally, the ethnicity of students surveyed approximated the percentages of student ethnicities for each school shown in Table 1.

As with my ethnographic data, whenever student self-reported perceptions are included in a survey, there is a concern for data validity.  In the modified CSCSS survey, three validity check items were embedded among the questions.  These items represented plausible but unlikely situations (e.g., “I was voted student of the week four times last month”).  Students who responded affirmatively to all three of these questions were considered to have not provided forthright information about their perceptions and were therefore excluded from the analysis.  With these exclusions, only 234 students remained in the final sample analyzed in this section.

Measures

Dependent Variable.
Fear of victimization is conceptualized as personal fear or worry about crime or violence.  In the modified CSCSS survey, my dependent variable, Student Fear of Victimization, was measured by student responses to the Likert scale item (question):  “I felt perfectly safe at school.”  Students responding “disagree” or “strongly disagree” with this item were assigned a code of  “1” to indicate they were afraid of being victimized in school.  Students responding  “agree” or “strongly agree” with this item were assigned a code of  “0” to indicate they were not afraid of being victimized in school.

Independent Variables.
Four independent variables developed from the modified CSCSS were used as predictors of the dependent variable student fear of victimization.  These independent variables were designed to test both the Figure 1 causal logic and this paper’s original hypotheses.  The four independent variables included student perceptions of:  (1) neighborhood violence levels,  (2) school violence levels,  and two of the key factors associated with school cultures of violence:  (3) non-caring school atmosphere, and (4) remiss school security forces.  A measure of the third key factor associated with school cultures of violence, discourses of denial, was not included in the modified CSCSS.  Additionally, as my ethnographic data revealed that discourses of denial were a constant in each of the three schools surveyed (see Table 5),  I was unable to use data outside the modified CSCSS to incorporate it as an independent variable in the following analysis.  Appendix B delineates the modified CSCSS questions used to compile the independent variables.

Student Perception of Neighborhood’s Violence Level.
Students were asked on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = “not at all,” 5 = “very much”) how often certain categories of crime occurred in their neighborhood in the past year.  Student responses to items about people getting into fights, people threatening or bullying others, people carrying weapons (guns, knives, etc.), and dangerous gang activity were effectively combined into one perception of neighborhood violence index with an alpha of .89 for the total sample.  These categories of crime were selected as they closely parallel the categories of crime used by law enforcement to describe neighborhood violent crime rates.

Student Perception of School’s Violence Level.
Students were asked on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = “not at all,” 5 = “very much”) how often certain categories of crime occurred in their schools in the past year.  Student responses to items about people getting into fights, people threatening or bullying others, people carrying weapons (guns, knives, etc.), and dangerous gang activity were effectively combined into one perception of school violence index with an alpha of .79 for the total sample.  These categories of crime were selected as they not only parallel the categories of crime used by law enforcement to describe neighborhood violent crime rates, but were also the categories of crime the ethnographic data found students were most concerned about.

Student Perception of School’s Non-Caring Atmosphere.
Students were asked on a Likert scale of 1 to 4 (1 = “strongly disagree, 2 = “disagree,” 3 = “agree,” ” 4 = “strongly agree”) concerning their perceptions on how caring and responsive the adults were in their school in the last year. Student responses to items about teachers respecting them, students being treated fairly when they broke the rules, and teachers being fair were combined into one perception of caring atmosphere index with an alpha of .65 for the total sample.

Student Perception of School’s Security Force.
Students were asked on a Likert scale of 1 to 4 concerning whether school security monitors and school uniformed police (Dade County Schools Police and School Resource Officers) made them feel safer at school in the last year.  Students who strongly disagreed or disagreed (scale ratings 1 and 2 respectively) to both items were assigned a code of  “1” to indicate a perception of a remiss school security force.  Students who agreed or strongly agreed (scale ratings 3 and 4 respectively) to at least one of the two items were assigned a code of “0” to indicate a perception of a non-remiss school security force.

Results

Analysis Strategy and Procedures

A logistic regression analysis is used to test this paper’s hypotheses with the student survey data.   The logistic regression model evaluated prescribes:
        L1 = b0 + b1X1 + b2X2 + b3X3 + b4X4

Where: L1 = Predicted logit (log odds) that students are afraid of being victimized in school.
            X1 = Student Perception of Neighborhood’s Violence Level.
            X2 = Student Perception of School’s Violence Level.
            X3 = Student Perception of School’s Non-Caring Atmosphere.
            X4 = Student Perception of School’s Security Force.

Evaluating the student survey with the above logistic regression model has two purposes.  First, I attempt to determine the significance and strength of variables that predict Miami-Dade high school student fears of victimization.  Second, I hope to validate variables in the Figure 1 model.  The above logistic regression model first analyzes the total 234 student sample.  The model is then also used to investigate between school differences in the three sample schools (Northern, King, and Everglades High).  The between school analysis aims to find insights in the data that may further explain student fears of victimization.

Table 6 presents a summary of sample descriptive statistics for both the total sample (all three schools) and the three individual sample schools.  Included in Table 6 are the actual reported neighborhood and school violent crime rates for comparison with student perceptions of violence.  Table 7 provides the correlation matrix for all variables included in the logistic regression for the total sample.  Table 8 displays the results of the logistic regression model for both the total sample and the three individual sample schools.

Variable	All Three High Schools	Northern High	King High	Everglades High
Neighborhood Violent Crime Rates*	31.0#	20.2	32.8	34.5
Student Perception of Neighborhood’s Violence Level  (Scale: 1-5)**	2.33 (1.26)	2.27 (1.24)	2.60 (1.43)	2.17 (1.07)
School Violent Crime Rates***	10.8#	18.4	8.4	29.2
Student Perception of School’s Violence Level  (Scale: 1-5)**	3.23 (1.01)	2.88 (.90)	3.68 (1.16)	3.03 (.80)
Student Perception of School’s Non-Caring Atmosphere  (Scale: 1-4)**	2.66 (.68)	2.69 (.68)	2.58 (.75)	2.71 (.64)
Student Perception of School’s Security Force****	.27	.28	.21	.30
Student Fear of Victimization*****	.54	.56	.74	.37
Sample Size (N)	234	62	72	100

#  Statistic shown is aggregate for all of Miami-Dade County.
* Violent crimes per 1,000 residents (Calendar Year:  1996).  Includes murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.
   Sources: The Miami Herald, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Metro-Dade Police Department.
** Based on scale shown, values are the index means and standard deviations (in parentheses) of student responses to survey
     questions.  Larger mean values indicate a higher perception of respective violence or caring category.
*** Violent crimes per 1,000 students (School Year: 1996-1997).  Includes crimes that result in student injury or directly
       threaten student injury, including:  assault, battery, robbery, sex offenses.  Sources:  The Miami Herald and Dade County
       Schools Police.
**** Proportion of students surveyed that felt both armed school police and unarmed school security monitors made school
         safer.
***** Proportion of students surveyed who indicated fear of being victimized in school.

Analysis of the Logistic Regressions

The Table 8 logistic regression results reveal, for the sample of students from all three schools, that student perceptions of the school’s non-caring atmosphere and school violence levels are the only statistically significant variables in this study’s formal model.  Both of these variables are significant at the P < .01 level or better.  Neither the neighborhood violence nor school security variables are statistically significant in the test of the total sample from all three schools.  Table 8 demonstrates that the more students perceive a non-caring school atmosphere, the more fear students will have of being victimized in school.  Additionally, the higher student perceptions of school violence levels, the more fear students will have of being victimized in school.
 
The Table 8 logistic regression results also reveal that different independent variables are statistically significant at different schools.  The results at Everglades High mirror those for the total sample, reinforcing the results obtained for the total sample.  At Everglades High both the students’ perceptions of the school’s non-caring atmosphere and school violence levels are statistically significant in predicting student fear of victimization.   However, at King High, unlike the total sample and Everglades High results, only student perceptions of school violence levels is statistically significant.   Additionally, at Northern High, also different from the total sample and other schools, only the student perceptions of the school’s non-caring atmosphere is statistically significant in predicting student fear of victimization in school.

Discussion

The Table 8 logistic regression results lend confidence to two of this study’s hypotheses. The results lend support to Hypothesis 2 that prescribes high levels of school violence result in higher levels of student fear of victimization in school.  Additionally, the results lend support to Sub-Hypothesis 3b that prescribes non-caring adult school atmospheres are more likely to have school cultures of violence and higher student fear levels.  Hypothesis 2’s linking of student levels of fear to school violence levels is intuitive and could easily have been expected as a result of past school violence research and the ethnographic data presented earlier in this study.  Sub-Hypothesis 3b’s linking of a school’s non-caring adult atmospheres to student fear levels, and its confirmation as a statistically significant variable, is exciting in that this is an independent variable only recently hypothesized as a predictor of school violence levels and student fears of victimization (See Devine 1996; Walker 1995; Noddings 1996).

Further insight into student fears of victimization is possible when the Table 8 logistic regression results for individual schools are analyzed in light of Table 6’s descriptive statistics and with the results of the ethnographic data analysis.  This combination of statistical survey and ethnographic analytical results allows individual school data to be placed into a context that neither the student survey nor ethnographic data alone could provide.  For example, Table 6 reveals that for both the entire sample and individual schools, the Miami-Dade students surveyed perceive neighborhood violence levels as lower than the corresponding levels of violence in their respective schools.  The ethnographic investigation was not able to detect this difference in student violence perceptions.  Additionally, for the entire sample and for individual schools, students have an extremely low opinion of their school security forces.  While this paper’s hypotheses predicted this situation, the ethnographic data alone was unable to measure the student perceptions of school security forces as being so low (only 27 percent of students in the entire sample felt safer due to the security force presence).

At Northern High, Table 6 reveals that the student perceptions of neighborhood and school violence levels are comparable to the actual reported neighborhood and school violence rates.   Table 6 also reveals that Northern High student perceptions of school violence levels are not as high as those at the other schools.  However, the ethnographic study revealed that all key elements for a school atmosphere leading to violence already exists at Northern High.  Based on these results, the hypotheses in this study predict that as neighborhood violence levels increase (the current trend), so will school violence levels and student fears of victimization at Northern High.

For King High, the Table 6 student perceptions of both the neighborhood and school violence rates are elevated significantly above the other two schools.  This situation does not compare with the lower actual reported official violence rates for King High and its surrounding neighborhood also shown in Table 6.  In fact, the ethnographic and official county crime data revealed that King High and the surrounding neighborhood is in one of the most violence-prone sections of Miami-Dade County.  The ethnographic data demonstrated that King High possesses  school violence levels at least equal to Northern High, probably closer to Everglades High.  The ethnographic work revealed that this difference between official crime data and the actual school violence levels was the result of the extremely pro-active King High school security force that keeps the officially reported violence rates low.  Additionally, two high media visibility incidents at King High in early 1997 also help explain the elevated student fear and student perception of violence levels at King High.  First, in a February 1997 incident, a Haitian girl was shot in the face by another girl in front of the school as students were departing for the day (previously noted in the ethnographic analysis).  Second, in another widely publicized May 1997 incident, one girl severely slashed another with a razor at King High.  As discussed in the ethnographic data section, interviews and focus group interactions with King High students reveal their strong preoccupation with school and neighborhood violence.  This insight helps explain the survey results showing elevated student fear and perceptions of high violence levels at King High in spite of the relatively low levels of officially reported violence.

For Everglades High, Table 6 demonstrates that students have a much lower perception of neighborhood and school violence levels than the other schools.  This is also in contrast to the high neighborhood and school official violence data for Everglades High shown in Table 6.  Additionally, the Everglades High students as a group are the least afraid (.37 in Table 6) of the students surveyed.  There are two possible explanations for these finding.  First, Everglades High’s superior student and staff intervention programs may in fact have an effect on student fear levels.  Second, Everglades High’s neighborhood and school violent crime appears localized to several violent gangs.  The consensus of project researchers working in Everglades High is that students not part of these gangs generally feel that if they avoid the gang hang-outs, both in the neighborhoods and in school, they are protected from the violence.  Again, these are explanations for the lower student fear of victimization and lower student perception of neighborhood and school violence levels at Everglades High that neither the focus groups nor survey data revealed.

Conclusion

The above combination of ethnographic and survey research methods lends confidence to both the Figure 1 model and this study’s hypotheses.  Among the four Miami-Dade public high schools investigated, the three schools in neighborhoods with high violence levels (Northern, King, and Everglades Highs) were found to contain students with high levels of student fear of victimization in school.  These same three schools also exhibited high school violence levels that corresponded to high levels of student fear of victimization in school.  Additionally, these three schools were found to have school cultures of violence that also led to higher levels of student fear of victimization.

Three consistent factors were found in this paper’s ethnographic data that help explain the continuing existence of the school cultures of violence found in Northern, King, and Everglades Highs.  First, each school possessed school staff discourses that denied the school had serious violence problems.  Second, each school (with the possible exception of Everglades High) also exhibited non-caring school atmospheres among at least some school staff members.  Third, each of the three schools contained remiss school security forces that further contributed to the school violence problems.  The student survey data revealed that student perceptions of a school’s violence levels and student perceptions of the school’s non-caring atmosphere were the two most significant factors in the Figure 1 model and this paper’s hypotheses’ predictions of student fears of being victimized in school.

This paper validates Devine’s (1996) findings on school violence in New York inner-city schools.  It reveals that if school districts truly want to ameliorate school violence problems, they must look beyond common answers that call for upgrading school physical security systems and implementing student intervention programs, and also address the key factors that allow school cultures of violence to exist—discourses of denial, non-caring atmospheres, and remiss security forces.  This is especially true for the Miami-Dade Public School System where school cultures of violence are deeply embedded in public high schools in low-income and high crime neighborhoods that are attended predominately by minority and immigrant students.

Finally, this paper is far from the final word on school violence research.  Additional ethnographic work is needed in public high schools that contain varying neighborhood and school violence levels and differing school culture of violence factors.  Of major interest is the investigation of high schools surrounded by high neighborhood crime levels that do not embody school cultures of violence.  More extensive ethnographic work with high performing teachers, administrators, and school security force personnel who are located in schools with cultures of violence is also of interest.  Additional insights are possible by studying staff and student behaviors as these high performing school staff personnel cross school culture of violence institutional boundaries in attempts to reach students.  Investigation of middle and elementary schools is also needed, however, with a slight degree of caution.  Middle and elementary schools are very different institutions from high schools.  Therefore, the generalizations uncovered in this study pertaining to cultures of violence in high schools may not necessarily apply to middle and elementary schools.  Expanded survey data in a variety of differing schools is also required to further confirm the significance of the factors that comprise school cultures of violence and lead to student fears of being victimized in school.  The real value of this paper is in showing that school cultures of violence do exist and are significant factors in increasing student fears of victimization.

Endnotes

1.  This paper is part a Florida International University (FIU), Immigration and Ethnicity Institute (IEI) project studying the academic orientation of immigrant and native minority students in four Miami-Dade public high schools.  The project was supported by the National Science Foundation Anthropology Grant No. SBR-9511515, the Andrew Mellon Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation. I wish to thank Dr. Alex Stepick, IEI Director, and Dr. Stan Bowie, FIU Social Work professor, the two principal investigators on the project, and Mrs. Carol Dutton Stepick, IEI Director of Field Research, for their advice and assistance in the preparation of this paper.
2.  Unless otherwise noted, all quotes in this paper are taken from researcher fieldnotes, interview transcripts, and focus group transcripts collected as part of this multi-method study.  The majority of this material is from data collection by the author from January to July 1997.  Some material is also from project fieldnotes and interview transcripts of other researchers dating back to October 1995.
3.  The Miami-Dade County, Florida, metropolitan area had a total 1996 population of 2,043,316 and consists of the City of Miami (population 365,127), 26 other incorporated cities (population  577,761), and unincorporated areas of Miami-Dade County (population 1,100,428).  In November 1997, the county’s official name was changed from Dade County to Miami-Dade County.  Therefore, some of the agency names and quotes found in this paper refer only to the old Dade County designation.  In the remainder of this paper, wherever possible, I use Miami-Dade to signify the entire metropolitan area.
4.  Unless otherwise noted, all information concerning the Miami-Dade drug scene in this section is taken from an interview with the Metro-Dade Narcotics Bureau on July 31, 1997.
5.  Unless otherwise noted, all information concerning Miami-Dade juvenile gangs in this section is taken from an interview with the Metro-Dade Gang Unit on June 27, 1997.
6.  One gang member described a typical “beat-in” for The Miami Herald: “First three or four members of the group beat him up for three minutes….After a 20 second rest, the gang leader slaps him around for 30 seconds.  Finally, three of the gang members and the leader join in pummeling the applicant for 30 seconds.  The blows are inflicted with fists.  No weapons are used and the applicant is disqualified as a weakling if he falls on his knees more than three times” (The Miami Herald, August 4, 1997, p. 6B).
7.  Used extensively in marketing analysis, the focus group data collection method is finding growing use in social science research.  Focus groups entail gathering 6 to 12 informants around a table with a moderator to discuss a specific topic.  The principal advantage of focus group data collection surrounds the interaction effect among informants that allows data to emerge that would not be gained through either participant-observation or individual interviews.
8.  The focus group participants were a purposive sample.  We selected the students from the IEI project studying immigrant and native minority student academic orientation.  The African-American and Haitian focus groups included students from three of the project’s four senior high schools.  The Caribbean and Hispanic students were each from a single school.  An FIU African-American professor moderated the African-American and Caribbean groups.  A Jamaican graduate student assisted him with the Caribbean group.  A white-European FIU professor, who speaks both Haitian Creole and Spanish, moderated the Haitian and Hispanic groups.  Parts of each of these two focus groups were carried out in the students’ native language.  We conducted the focus groups in a Miami-area professional marketing research facility that allowed the rest of the project’s researchers to observe the groups through a two-way mirror.  The focus groups were both video and audio taped with later transcription.  Mexican students in the larger IEI project were not included as focus group participants due to logistical and scheduling problems.
9.  Researchers must ensure that the data they collect can be replicated by others and that they are in fact adequately measuring the variables under investigation.  I had significant help in these areas during the preparation of this paper.  Association with the larger IEI project was a major advantage.  I was constantly looking for consistency between my data and data collected by my fellow researchers.  Additionally, my inferences were closely critiqued by fellow researchers, ensuring coherence with the larger project.  While any mistakes in this study are solely my own, this paper is actually the result of a significant data collection and cooperative effort by all the IEI project graduate researchers.  Special thanks go to the following researchers who provided valuable input to this study:  Dora Acherman-Chor, Rose Bebon, Bobbi Birdsong, Linda Callejas, Gillian Dawkins, Emmanuel Eugene, Paula Fernandez, Lisa Konczal, Joe Lecusay, Jane Morgan, Cheryll Messam, Marjorie Picard, and Debbie Tweed.
10.  The problem with student responses was a significant factor in the student survey presented later in this paper.
11.  The key to good ethnographic work is finding consistency among a disparate collection of fieldnotes, interview transcripts, etc., and then uncovering underlying trends and patterns that provide general explanations for the research issue.  The analysis of ethnographic data must be verifiable, i.e., another researcher should be able to arrive at similar conclusions using the same documents and data.  My paper attempts to link diverse data from statistical crime reports, participant observations, informal interviews, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups into a consistent and convincing analysis.  My effort was assisted by the Miami media that found school violence and juvenile crime a popular subject in 1997, as evidenced by the many citations in this paper to their work.  Working with such diverse ethnographic and media material, I found myself forced to critically examine the issues from a variety of angles.  In the end, I can only hope that this paper provides a good explanation for the underlying reasons why some Miami-Dade schools experience continuing violence and why some students fear being victimized in their own schools.
12.  A note of caution is in order concerning assessing the reliability of crime statistics and crime rate data.  While most of the neighborhood crime data in Table 2 came from the Metro-Dade Police with jurisdiction throughout Miami-Dade County, data is also included from several independent police departments in Miami-Dade County’s incorporated cities.  Police departments define crimes, respond to crime reports, and compile crime statistics differently.  Diverse neighborhoods and ethnic groups also report crimes to the police differently.  For example, white non-Hispanic and older Hispanic immigrant neighborhoods generally trust in and have respect for the police and thus more readily report crimes than do new immigrants or African-American citizens that are distrustful of the police.  Such attitudes on reporting crimes were told researchers not only by police officers but also seen in student responses in the four focus groups.  Therefore, due to these potential differences in crime data compilation, Table 2 should be used only as a relative measure of the crime situations in the schools’ local neighborhoods.
13.  The neighborhood crime rates are calculated on crime statistics available for the general areas surrounding each school.  They do not correspond exactly with each school’s geographic boundaries.
14.  California School Climate and Safety Survey © VUSD-UCSB School Climate & Safety Partnership, Furlong and Morrison (1996). (See Appendix A.)
15.  Several other questions on the modified CSCSS also measured student perceptions of the school’s caring atmosphere.  The three questions selected for this index gave the highest alpha (.65) of any combination of these variables.  While this index did not generate a desired alpha of .70, it was considered sufficient to represent the concept as an independent variable in this paper’s logistic regression analysis.
16.  Three questions on the modified CSCSS measured the dependent variable—Student Fear of Victimization.  However, no index combination of these questions resulted in an alpha greater than .68.  Unable to reach a desired alpha of .70 for the dependent variable I was trying to explain, I decided to use a logistic regression for this paper’s analysis.  Using the .68 alpha combination as the dependent variable, a linear version of this paper’s regression model revealed the same significant variables as the logistic regression model described in this paper.
17.  In the original model for King High, the students’ perceptions of neighborhood violence was significant at the P < .05 level.  However, when either the caring atmosphere or school security variables were removed from the model, the neighborhood violence variable became not statistically significant.  This may be a result of the small King High sample size (N = 72).  Therefore, it is concluded the neighborhood violence variable was an unstable estimator and was listed as not significant in Table 8.
 

Directions for Students:  Thank you for participating in the Dade County School and Neighborhood Climate and Safety Survey.  We want to hear about the things at school and in your neighborhood that make you feel safe and unsafe.  Based on the past year, please answer the following sets of questions by either filling in the blank provided or by circling your answer on the survey form.  When circling answers, please circle only one answer for each question.

What is your gender? (Circle One)    Female       Male
 
What is your racial/ethnic background?  Please be specific.

What school did you attend most of this past year?

What grade were you in most of this past year?  (Circle One)   8th   9th   10th   11th   12th   Other
 
1.  How often did these things happen at your School in this past year?  Using the five choices below, circle your answer.

1.  Students using drugs (marijuana, coke, crack, roofies, etc.)….. 1      2      3      4      5
2.  Students destroying things (vandalism)………………………..1      2      3      4      5
3.  Students drinking beer/wine/liquor……………………………1      2      3      4      5
4.  Students getting into fights……………………………………1      2      3      4      5
5.  Students stealing things……………………………………… 1     2      3       4     5
6.  Students threatening or bullying other students………………. 1      2      3      4      5
7.  Students carrying weapons (guns, knives, etc.)……………….1      2      3      4      5
8.  Outsiders coming on the campus during the school day……… 1      2      3      4      5
9.  Students getting hurt in accidents on the school grounds……..  1      2      3      4      5
10.  Dangerous gang activity…………………………………… 1      2      3      4      5

**  This survey is a modification of the California School Climate and Safety Survey ©
VUSD—UCSB School Climate & Safety Partnership, Furlong & Morrison (1996).  The Florida International University, Immigration and Ethnicity Institute wishes to thank Dr. Michael J. Furlong, University of California at Santa Barbara, for permission to use the California School Climate and Safety Survey as a model for this project.
 
 
2.  How often did these things happen in your Neighborhood in the past year?  Using the five choices below, circle your answer

 1.  People using drugs (marijuana, coke, crack, roofies, etc.)….. 1      2      3      4      5
 2.  People destroying things (vandalism)………………………. 1      2      3      4      5
 3.  People getting drunk on beer/wine/liquor…………………..  1      2      3      4      5
 4.  People getting into fights……………………………………1      2      3      4      5
 5.  People stealing things……………………………………….1      2      3      4      5
 6.  People threatening or bullying others………………………. 1      2      3      4      5
 7.  People carrying weapons (guns, knives, etc.)……………….1      2      3      4      5
      8.  Dangerous gang activity…………………………………1      2      3      4      5
 9.  People breaking into homes………………………………...1      2      3      4      5
 
3.  This section asks about what your school or neighborhood was like in this past year.  When you answer, think about the way your school or neighborhood was most of the time.  Using the four choices just below, circle your answer.

1.  I felt perfectly safe at school……..……………………………………. 1     2     3     4
2.  They took good care of the school grounds…………………………… 1     2     3     4
3.  I liked everyone I met at school…………. …………………………… 1     2     3     4
4.  I felt unsafe going to school or on the way home after school………… 1     2     3     4
5.  When I’m mad, I break things…………………………………………. 1     2     3     4
6.  The school was ruined by gangs…..…………………………………… 1     2     3     4
7.  When students had an emergency at school, someone was there to help. 1     2     3     4
8.  Teachers were nice people….…………………………………………. 1     2     3     4
9.  I really wanted my school to be “the best”…………………………….. 1     2     3     4
10.  I always think before I act……………………………………………… 1     2     3     4
11. The school was the best one for me……………………………………. 1     2     3     4
12. The school was badly affected by crime and violence in the community. 1     2     3     4
13. School was worthless (junk)…………………………………………… 1     2     3     4
14. My teachers respected me……………………………………………… 1     2     3     4
15. When students broke rules, they were treated firmly but fairly………… 1     2     3     4
16. When I’m mad, I hate the world……………………………………….. 1     2     3     4
17.  I tell the truth every single time………………………………………… 1     2     3     4
18.  Gang members made the school dangerous……………………………. 1     2     3     4
19.  They kept the school campus well maintained and clean………………. 1     2     3     4
20.  Rules at school were stupid……………………………………………. 1     2     3     4
21.  My teachers were fair………………………………………………….. 1     2     3     4
22.  You could trust people at school………………………………………. 1     2     3     4
23.  There was nothing worth learning at school…………………………… 1     2     3     4
24. At the school, the students were really motivated to learn……………. 1     2     3     4
25.  Teachers let me know when I was doing a good job………………….. 1     2     3     4
26.  Drugs were a cause of violence at my school…………………………. 1     2     3     4
27.  I had close, helpful relationships with my teachers……………………. 1     2     3     4
28.  It payed to follow the rules at school………………………………….. 1     2     3     4
29.  Students helped make important decisions at school………………….. 1     2     3     4
30.  Adults at the school didn’t care about students……………………….. 1     2     3     4
31.  School was really boring………………………………………………. 1     2     3     4
32.  Students of all racial and ethnic groups were respected at my school… 1     2     3     4
33.  Crime and violence were major concerns on the school campus……… 1     2     3     4
34.  Grades at school were unfair………………………………………….. 1     2     3     4
35.  I get so mad that I want to hurt myself……………………………….. 1     2     3     4
36.  I was very successful at school……………………………………….. 1     2     3     4
37.  Students talking back to teachers was a problem at school…………… 1     2     3     4
38.  The school had a big problem with graffiti……………………………. 1     2     3     4
39.  The classrooms looked very nice……………………………………… 1     2     3     4
40.  Students got involved in sports, clubs and other school activities…….. 1     2     3     4
41.  At school, students and teachers really cared for each other………….. 1     2     3     4
42.  The rules at school were fair…………………………………………… 1     2     3     4
43.  I did not feel safe at school…………………………………………….. 1     2     3     4
44.  Teachers did a good job of stopping troublemakers…………………… 1     2     3     4
45.  I learned a lot about myself at school………………………………….. 1     2     3     4
46.  When I’m angry, I take it out on whoever is around………………….. 1     2     3     4
47.  I had many friends at school…………………………………………… 1     2     3     4
48.  I was comfortable talking to teachers about problems I might have…… 1     2    3     4
49.  I felt safe in my home or yard………………………………………….. 1     2     3     4
50.  I felt safe during the day in my neighborhood………………………….. 1     2     3     4
51.  I felt safe at night in my neighborhood…………………………………. 1     2     3     4
52.  I felt safe going to school in the morning………………………………. 1     2     3     4
53.  I felt safe at school……………………………………………………… 1     2     3     4
54.  I felt safe on the way home from school……………………………….. 1     2     3     4
55.  Drugs (marijuana, coke, crack, roofies, etc.) are available at school…… 1     2     3     4
56.  Drugs are available in my neighborhood……………………………….. 1     2     3     4
57.  School security monitors make me feel safer at school….…………….. 1     2     3     4
58.  Drugs cause violence in my neighborhood…………………………….. 1     2     3     4
59.  School uniformed police make me feel safer at school…………………. 1     2     3     4
60.  Police patrols make my neighborhood safer……………………………. 1     2     3     4
61.  Police really try to help people in my neighborhood…………………… 1     2     3     4
 
4.  This section asks about the things that happened to you at school in the last month.  Please answer by circling one answer for each item.  Which of these things happened to you at  School in the Last Month?  (We mean things that actually happened to you, not things you just heard about.)

1.  You were grabbed or shoved by someone being mean………………………. No   Yes
2.  You were punched or kicked by someone trying to hurt you…………………  No   Yes
3.   You were cut with a knife or something sharp by someone trying to hurt you.    No   Yes
4.   You personally saw another student with a gun on campus…………………..  No   Yes
5.   You were hit with a rock or another object by someone trying to hurt you…...  No   Yes
6.   You took ten field trips………………………………………………………No   Yes
7.  You went to a doctor or nurse because you were hurt in an attack or a fight......No   Yes
8.  You had something you owned smashed or damaged on purpose……………  No   Yes
9.  You had something you owned stolen……………………………………….. No   Yes
10.  You personally saw another student on campus with a knife or razor……….. No   Yes
11.  Another student stole something from you using force………………………. No   Yes
12.  Another student threatened to hurt you………………………………………No   Yes
13.  You were voted student of the week four times……………………………...No   Yes
14.  Someone yelled bad words, cursed at you…………………………………..No   Yes
15.  You were threatened by a student with a gun and you saw the gun…………. .No   Yes
16.  Someone made fun of you, put you down…………………………………....No   Yes
17.  Someone made unwanted physical sexual advances toward you……………...No   Yes
18.  Someone sexually harassed you (made unwanted sexual comments to you)......No   Yes
19.  You were threatened by a student with a knife and you saw the knife……….. No   Yes
20.  You were bullied, threatened, or pushed around by gang members………….. No   Yes
21.  You were threatened going to school or on the way home after school…….... No   Yes
22.  You were involved in ethnic or racial conflict among students……………….. No   Yes
23.  Someone tried to scare you by the way they looked at you…………………. No   Yes

5.  This section asks about the things that happened to you in your neighborhood in the last month.  Please answer by circling one answer for each item.  Which of these things happened to you in your Neighborhood in the Last Month?  (We mean things that actually happened to you, not things you just heard about.)

1.  You were grabbed or shoved by someone being mean………………………. No   Yes
2.  You were punched or kicked by someone trying to hurt you………………… No   Yes
3.   You were cut with a knife or something sharp by someone trying to hurt you. No   Yes
4.   You personally saw another person with a gun……………………………… No   Yes
5.   You were hit with a rock or another object by someone trying to hurt you…. No   Yes
6.   You won the lottery five times………………………………………………. No   Yes
7.  You went to a doctor or nurse because you were hurt in an attack or a fight.. No   Yes
8.  You had something you owned smashed or damaged on purpose…………… No   Yes
9.  You had something you owned stolen……………………………………….. No   Yes
10.  You personally saw another person with a knife or razor…………………… No   Yes
11.  Another person stole something from you using force………………………. No   Yes
12.  Another person threatened to hurt you………………………………………. No   Yes
13.  Someone yelled bad words, cursed at you…………………………………… No   Yes
14.  You were threatened by someone with a gun and you saw the gun…………. No   Yes
15.  Someone made fun of you, put you down…………………………………… No   Yes
16.  Someone made unwanted physical sexual advances toward you……………. No   Yes
17.  Someone sexually harassed you (made unwanted sexual comments to you)... No   Yes
18.  You were threatened by a person with a knife and you saw the knife………. No   Yes
19.  You were bullied, threatened, or pushed around by gang members………… No   Yes
20.  You were involved in ethnic or racial conflict with another person…………. No   Yes
21.  Someone tried to scare you by the way they looked at you…………………. No   Yes

6.  For the following questions, please circle your answer or fill in the blank space provided.

1.  How many students at your school would you consider to be close “friends?”
   A. One student  B. Two students  C. Three students  D. Four or more students  E. No students

2.  How many teachers at your school were you able to talk to about problems you might have?
   A. One teacher      B. Two teachers      C. Three teachers      D. Four or more    E. No teachers

3.  How many other adults (principal, counselor, nurse, etc.) at the school were you able to talk
     to about problems you might have?
   A. One other adult   B. Two other adults   C. Three other adults   D. Four or more other adults   E. No other adult

4.  How many times have you moved to a different school district in the last Five years?
   A. Once   B. Twice   C.  Three Times   D. Four Times   E. Five or More Times

5.  Which One of the following were you Most worried about in the past year?
A.  Getting good grades
B.  Violence in school
C.  Being accepted by your peers
D.  Violence in your neighborhood
E.  Getting along with your parents and other family members

6.  In general, what were your grades in the last school year?
A.  Mostly A grades
B.  Mostly B grades
C.  Mostly C grades
D.  Mostly D grades
E.  Mostly F grades

7.  Who was normally at home when you got home from school in the afternoon?
A.  No one
B.  Father or Mother
C.  Friends
D.  Brother or Sister
E.  Other relative

8.  How did you feel about going to school in the past year?
A.  I liked school very much
B.  I liked school quite a bit
C.  I liked school
D.  I didn’t like school very much
E.  I hated school

9.  Which of the following statements BEST describes you in the past school year?
A.  I was not involved in a gang and did not have friends who were in gangs
B.  I had friends in gangs but I was not in a gang
C.  I spent some time in a gang
D.  I spent a lot of time in a gang

10.  During the last month of school, how often did you miss full days of school because you skipped or “cut?”
A.  Never
B.  1 or 2 times
C.  About once a week
D.  More than once a week
E.  I skipped school more times than I attended the last month at school

11.  During the last month of school, how often did you go to school but skipped a class when you were not supposed to?
A.  Never
B.  1-2 times
C.  3-5 times
D.  6-10 times
E.  11+ times

12.  What is the highest grade in school which your father/stepfather/male guardian has
      completed?  If you’re not sure, make your best guess.  Mark only one answer.
A.  I do not live with my father or have a stepfather/male guardian
B.  He did not finish high school
C.  He finished high school
D.  He took some college, trade school, or military training
E.  He finished college

13.  What is the highest grade in school which your mother/stepmother/female guardian has
      completed?  If you’re not sure, make your best guess.  Mark only one answer.
A.  I do not live with my mother or have a stepmother/female guardian
B.  She did not finish high school
C.  She finished high school
D.  She took some college, trade school or military training
E.  She finished college

14.  What is the most serious thing to happen at school in the last year that caused you to feel less safe?

15.  Of all the people on your school campus, who did the most to help you feel safe?  What do they do to make you feel safe?

16.  Describe what you liked best about your school in the past year.

17.  Describe ways your school could be improved.

18.  What could you have done to make your school safer and better?

Independent Variable and Survey Questions                                                                           Potential Responses

Student Perception of Neighborhood’s Violence Levels:

How often did these things happen in your Neighborhood in the past year?
 
                 People getting into fights?                                                                                          1 Not at all
                 People threatening or bullying others?                                                                        2 A little
                 People carrying weapons?                                                                                        3 Some
                 Dangerous gang activity?                                                                                          4 Quite a bit
                                                                                                                                                5 Very much

Student Perception of School’s Violence Levels:

How often did these things happen in your School in the past year?
 
                 People getting into fights?                                                                                          1 Not at all
                 People threatening or bullying others?                                                                        2 A little
                 People carrying weapons?                                                                                         3 Some
                 Dangerous gang activity?                                                                                           4 Quite a bit
                                                                                                                                                  5 Very much
 
Student Perception of School’s Caring Atmosphere:

What was your school or neighborhood like in the past year?

             My teachers respected me.                                                                                          1 Strongly agree
             When students broke rules, they were treated firmly but fairly.                                      2 Disagree
             My teachers were fair.                                                                                                 3 Agree
                                                                                                                                                4 Strongly Agree

Student Perception of School’s Security Force:

What was your school or neighborhood like in the past year?

 School security monitors make me feel safe at school.                                                               1 Strongly agree
 School uniformed police make me feel safer at school.                                                               2 Disagree
                                                                                                                                                 3 Agree
                                                                                                                                                 4 Strongly Agree
 

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