FBI Opposes the Profiling of Students

By David A. Vise and Kenneth J. Cooper
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 7, 2000; Page A03

The FBI said yesterday it strongly opposes developing student profiles to predict future violence, favoring instead a series of steps to assess the seriousness of individual threats and determine how to address them.

In a 45-page study released as students across the country returned to the classroom, the FBI rejected the controversial practice of profiling, saying it is virtually impossible to predict who will commit the next violent act.

Profiling has been criticized because of its use by police departments to target some minority groups and its potential to stigmatize students who do not pose a threat.

"One response to the pressure for action may be an effort to identify the next shooter by developing a 'profile' of the typical school shooter. This may sound like a reasonable preventive measure, but in practice, trying to draw up a catalogue or checklist of warning signs to detect a potential school shooter can be shortsighted, even dangerous," the FBI said.

"Such lists, publicized by the media, can end up unfairly labeling many nonviolent students as potentially dangerous or even lethal. . . . Seeking to predict acts that occur as rarely as school shootings is almost impossible."

Instead, the FBI unveiled a multi-pronged plan to assess violent threats, suggesting that a student's personality, as well as family, school and social dynamics, must be analyzed by school administrators, teachers and counselors to determine how to respond.

"It does look helpful," said Judy Seltz, spokeswoman for the American Association of School Administrators. "It helps administrators differentiate different kinds of threats." For the FBI threat assessment to succeed, Seltz said, it is important for administrators to undergo "some very thorough staff training before there's a crisis."

But Vincent Schiraldi, president of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a Washington think tank, said the potential for misuse of the FBI report through harmful profiling of students outweighs any benefits it might produce at a time of declining school and juvenile violence.

"I don't think this is going to help," Schiraldi said.

Gavin de Becker, whose California company has marketed computer software for assessing student threats, concurred with the FBI's rejection of profiling and embrace of threat assessment.

"A threat is to a school shooting what a cough is to tuberculosis. In other words, it's one symptom. . . . You have to look at all the symptoms before you can come up with a diagnosis," he said.

De Becker said "many refinements" were made in his Mosaic for Assessment of Student Threats after a trial in 25 schools across the country. This year, every police department in California will have access to the software, which also will be available for use by many more schools across the country, he said.

The FBI provided a list of clues to look for after a student has made a violent threat. Under student personality, the FBI listed 28 characteristics, ranging from fascination with violence-filled entertainment to inappropriate role models. Under family dynamics, it listed access to weapons, lack of supervision of television and Internet use and evidence of violence at home.

Under school and social dynamics, the FBI said clues include the use of drugs and alcohol, involvement with peers who share extremist beliefs and feelings of detachment from school.

"All threats are NOT created equal," the FBI report emphasized, adding that responses must be tailored to fit the seriousness of the threat.

A panel of experts at an FBI media briefing yesterday also opposed "zero tolerance" policies, concluding that automatic expulsions could make students more violent.

FBI agent Marie Dyson, who worked on the report, said getting students to inform teachers or administrators about violence threatened by peers remains a major challenge. "The biggest problem is students are too afraid or too much a part of a code of silence," she said.

The report, called "The School Shooter," includes ideas generated by an FBI-sponsored symposium on school violence last year and an in-depth review of 18 suburban and rural school shooting cases. It does not address some of the threats faced by urban schools, particularly ones associated with gang violence.

It said the most serious threats are those that are direct and specific, such as, "At eight o'clock tomorrow morning, I intend to shoot the principal. . . . I have a 9mm. Believe me, I know what I am doing. I am sick and tired of the way he runs this school."

The FBI's rejection of profiling to predict school violence should not be confused with the work of the bureau's behavioral sciences unit in Quantico, Va., which develops in-depth profiles of suspects after a crime has been committed. Those profiles, based on information gathered at crime scenes and other relevant data, are used to guide probes, according to FBI agent Larry G. Ankrom, who heads the unit.

The study also concluded that news coverage magnifies widespread, incorrect impressions of school violence by characterizing it as an epidemic and making it appear as though all school shooters are generally alike. It also said the media puts too much emphasis on easy access to weapons as the most important risk factor in school violence.

The report outlines steps for school administrators to take after determining a threat is serious and credible, including contacting law enforcement authorities.

Despite the report's conclusions, school officials in Wallingford, Conn., intend to proceed with a plan to distribute a behavior profile next month to help teachers, parents and high school students identify potentially violent students.

"Nobody can predict 100 percent but . . . there's enough research and practice, enough experience out there, for us to be able to identify people who we should be concerned about," said Joseph Cirasuolo, superintendent of a 7,000-student district between Hartford and New Haven. "We expect very, very few people to be identified."

Warning Signs

The FBI recommends considering four areas in assessing whether a student is likely to carry out a specific threat. Warning signs include:

Personality Traits and Behavior: Student collects injustices and nurses resentments; dehumanizes others; shows exaggerated sense of entitlement, signs of depression and a pathological need for attention; has trouble managing anger; shows a dramatic behavior change; has unusual interest in sensational violence.

Family Dynamics: Student's relationship with his parents is particularly difficult or turbulent; parents accept or minimize pathological behavior, setting few limits and possibly seeming intimidated by student; student has access to weapons and there is little monitoring of what he watches on TV and sees on the Internet.

School Dynamics: Student is detached from other students, teachers and school activities; school does little to prevent or punish disrespectful behavior or bullying; a pecking order exists among students, who also observe a "code of silence" about telling staff of their concerns about other students; access to computers and Internet is unsupervised.

Social Dynamics: Student is intensely and exclusively involved with a group that shares a fascination with violence or extremist beliefs; student's use of drugs and alcohol, and his outside interests, should be examined; the period after a violent incident that receives widespread media attention is a particularly dangerous time, because of possible copycat behavior.