When Prevention Takes Center Stage

Part I: Rethinking School Violence Pathways

In a segment that aired March 1 titled “Breaking the Cycle of School Violence,” 60 Minutes centered its reporting on prevention—an emphasis often overshadowed in public debate.

Rather than return to the familiar binary between gun access and mental health, the program examined how the back stories of suspected shooters often followed identifiable pathways marked by unaddressed early trauma, escalating grievance, warning behaviors, and crisis points.

Interviewed for the segment, criminologists Jillian Peterson and James Densley, co-authors of the award-winning The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic, suggested that serious prevention begins long before a weapon enters the picture. Their research reframes school violence not as an eruption without explanation, but as a process that unfolds over time—and often in plain sight.

While acts of violence are often sudden, the pathways leading to them seldom are. When that distinction is understood, the debate shifts from reaction to prevention.

A key component in many documented pathways to violence is early trauma—commonly referred to as adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs. In their research, Peterson and Densley describe how such adversities can compound over time. ACEs may include abuse, neglect, domestic instability, substance abuse in the household, or prolonged exposure to violence. These cumulative adversities do not predetermine future harm, since most individuals who endure early trauma never commit acts of violence.

But in the cases Peterson and Densley studied– research that was profiled in the New York Times in January 2023– early trauma frequently appeared as part of a longer arc toward an identifiable crisis point.

That arc often included social isolation, grievance formation, a mounting sense of crisis, and in many instances, “leakage” behavior in which intentions or fantasies were communicated to others before an attack.

Viewed this way, school violence does not emerge from nowhere. It develops over time through an accumulation of warning signs. Opportunities for intervention present themselves. Prevention, therefore, is less about predicting the unpredictable and more about recognizing patterns early enough to respond. When adults are equipped to identify trauma, respond to a crisis, and take warning behavior seriously, the pathway can be interrupted before it advances toward irreversible harm.

One of the most actionable findings in Peterson and Densley’s research is what they call “leakage”—the tendency of individuals on a pathway toward violence to signal their intentions in advance. Leakage can take many forms: disturbing drawings, written statements, threats shared with peers, online posts, or explicit comments about plans to harm others.

These signals often appear piecemeal—seen by different people at different times—and can seem ambiguous in the moment. In hindsight, however, they frequently form a recognizable pattern.  The goal for families and schools is not to know everything; it is to practice discernment– realizing when repeated signals, combined with crisis and grievance, warrant intervention.

The 2021 shooting carried out by Ethan Crumbley illustrates this dynamic. In the hours before the attack, Crumbley reportedly produced drawings depicting a firearm and references to death. He was brought to a counselor’s office and later returned to class. Within a short time, he carried out the shooting. Whatever conclusions one draws about broader causes, the case reflects the pathway model in stark form: early distress, visible warning behavior, a crisis point, and access to a weapon converging in a compressed window of time.

Understanding violence as patterned does not lessen the tragedy of lives lost, but it can reduce the sense that such events are entirely inexplicable.

The work of prevention lies in recognizing the signals, strengthening mental health supports, and acting decisively when warning behaviors align with known risk factors. In that sense, prevention is less about prediction and more about interruption.

Asked directly during the 60 Minutes segment whether anyone could have stopped them, Jillian Peterson described how every perpetrator she interviewed answered “yes.” That response challenges the reflex to label shooters as monsters beyond reach.

If perpetrators are only seen as aberrations, prevention feels futile. If we see them as people moving along a pathway, intervention becomes conceivable.

When the pathway model is taken seriously, prevention becomes less reactive and more relational. It requires schools, families, and communities to pay sustained attention to early distress rather than waiting for a crisis to announce itself. It asks adults to notice patterns rather than isolated incidents—to see trauma, grievance, and warning behavior not as separate problems, but as accumulating signals.

This is difficult work. It involves strengthening mental health resources, improving communication between parents and schools, and responding to leakage behavior with clarity rather than hesitation. It also requires having a tolerance for false alarms: most youth who struggle will never become violent, and not every warning sign foretells catastrophe. But the absence of certainty does not justify inaction.

In that sense, the 60 Minutes segment signaled a meaningful shift in emphasis. When violence is understood as something that develops over time, prevention becomes less about hardening buildings and more about interrupting trajectories. The focus moves upstream—toward the early conditions that shape vulnerability long before an act of violence is carried out.

For families who have lost children, prevention is not theoretical. That shift matters most to those who have already endured loss.

In the 60 Minutes interview, one parent, reflecting on a daughter remembered for her warmth and spirit, questioned whether the country is truly moving toward prevention or simply reacting after the fact.

Another parent echoed the sentiment: “We don’t seem to be wanting to learn from them (previous incidents). I feel like we need to get into prevention.”

The pathway model offers a way of honoring that plea. It does not promise certainty. It does not always prevent tragedy. But it rejects the idea that these acts emerge from nowhere.

Prevention, at its core, involves acts of attention — and attention is something we can choose to practice before a crisis is forced upon us.