Understanding School Shootings with Crime Script Analysis

Abstract

Mapping the antecedents of school shootings is an important step towards understanding and predicting when the tragedies occur. This study uses Crime Script Analysis (CSA) to map the variety of behaviors and precursors in sequence. An in-depth analysis of 16 school shooters in the United States of America was used to build a crime script. The results showed five key scenes through which school shooters progressed in the lead-up to their school shootings. The approach is the first to provide a temporal account of school shooters planning of their crimes and forms the foundation for future school shootings to be added to. This research also shows how a CSA approach can be used to generate crime prevention strategies for future school shootings.