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School Safety Facts

1. Section 2, Table 141 in The Statistical Abstract of the United States 1998 shows the following regarding the Leading Causes of Death (and overall probabilities of dying) for children in the U.S. 
    
   • boys run a much higher risk of death (from any cause) than do girls
   • the chances of a child aged 5-14 dying from any cause was 1 in 4,444 (1 in 3,745 for boys, 1 in 5,495 for girls)
   • the chances of a person aged 15-24 dying from any cause was 1 in 1,049 (1 in 712 for boys, 1 in 2,079 for girls)
   • accidents were the leading cause of death for all ages in the U.S. through age 24
   • children aged 5-14 are over 6 times as likely to die in an accident as to be murdered (6.16 times for boys, 6.8 times for girls)
   • people aged 15-24 are almost twice as likely to die in an accident than to be murdered (1.66 times for males, 3.35 times for females)
      
2. From the statistics shown below, it is safe to say that

• a child's risk of being murdered in any given year is roughly 1 in 25,000
• children run a much greater risk (between 50 and 100 times greater) of being murdered away from school than at school
• adults murder children 3 times as often as children murder other children
• killings on school property (and murders of children in general) have been declining since the early 1990s
• child suicide is as big a problem as child murder
• boys are at much higher risk of being murdered than are girls

3. Facts about schools in the U.S.
   
    during the 1995-96 school year

 

Public Schools	# of schools	# of students enrolled
Elementary	61,165	32,341,000
Secondary	20,997	12,500,000
Combined	2,796	N/A
Other	2,167	N/A
Total	87,125	44,841,000
Private Schools	# of schools	# of students enrolled
Elementary	N/A	4,427,000
Secondary	N/A	1,260,000
Total		5,687,000

Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1998
             Section 4: Education (Tables 255 and 270)

 during the 2001-02 school year

Public Schools	# of schools	# of students enrolled
Elementary	65,228	30,946,000
Secondary	22,180	15,215,000
Combined	5,288	1,275,000
Other	1,416	82,000
Total	94,112	47,518,000
Private Schools	# of schools	# of students enrolled
Elementary	16,530	2,831,000
Secondary	2,538	807,000
Combined	8,155	1,525,000
Total	27,223	5,163,000

Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2004-05
             Section 4: Education (Tables 228 and 246)
 

4. Deaths on school grounds (includes children and adults, killings and suicides)

School Year	# of Deaths
1992-93	55
1993-94	51
1994-95	20
1995-96	35
1996-97	25
1997-98	40
1998-99	26

Source: the National Center for Education Statistics' Violence and Discipline Problems in U.S. Public Schools, quoted in School House Hype: School shootings and the real risks kids face in America.  The figure for the 1998-99 school year is from the press release announcing the Justice Policy Institute's 2000 report School House Hype: Two Years Later.

5. Deaths on school property
   
    during the combined 1992-93/1993-94 school years

1. 76 students died.

• 63 murders
• 13 suicides

2. 29 non-students died.
3. Of the 105 deaths

• 87 were male
• 18 were female

 during the 1999-2000 school year

1. 22 students died.

• 16 murders
•   6 suicides

2. 10 non-students died.

Source: Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 2004 (U.S. Departments of Education and Justice)

5. Children aged 5-19 murdered in the U.S.

		# of murders	# of murderers identified by age	# of murderers under 18
1995	Total	2,428	1,265	304 (24%)
	male	1,735
	female	693
1996	Total	1,960	1,053	252 (24%)
	male	1,385
	female	572
	unknown	3
1997	Total	1,733	941	207 (22%)
	male	1,220
	female	512
	unknown	1
2003	Total	2,030	N/A	N/A
	male	1,861
	female	167
	unknown	2

Source: the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, 1995-2003
 

6. Children aged 5-19 who committed suicide in the U.S.

Year	# of suicides among those 5-19 years old
1992	2,161
1993	2,205
1994	2,270
1995	2,227
1996	2,119

Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1999
                Section 2: Vital Statistics
                                  Table #149: Suicides by Race, Age and Method: 1980 to 1996

Year	# of suicides among those 5-19 years old	Male	Female
2002	1,773	1,476	297

Source: Leading Causes of Death, 2002 (National Center for Health Statistics)

7. According to the authors of School House Hype: School shootings and the real risks kids face in America

• The number of kids killed by gun violence each year in schools (40 on average in the period 1992-98) is about half the number of Americans killed each year by lightning strikes (88 in 1997).  NOAA has published statistics on deaths from lightning during the period 1959-94.  Their report states, "There were 3239 Storm Data deaths in the US from 1959 to 1994 (Table 3 and Figure 4 and 5) for an average of 90 per year. The same analysis can be made for deaths using the network-detected ground strikes as in the previous section for casualties. The result is one death for every 345,000 flashes in the US."
• Any given child has roughly a 1 in a million chance of being killed by a gun on school grounds in any given school year.  (In School House Hype: Two Years Later, the authors show that since their original report this risk has been cut in half to roughly 1 in 2 million.)

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original web posting: Tuesday, May 4, 1999
last modified: Tuesday, April 07, 2009