The implementation of effective accountability-based school safety and discipline programs that hold students to established and clearly articulated standards of behavior should result in the following benefits:

• Reduced juvenile crime and misconduct.

• Reduced levels of fear in students, parents, and school personnel.

• Reduced workload for juvenile justice and law enforcement officers.

• Improved learning environments in schools.

• Increased student focus on academic endeavors.

• Increased job satisfaction for teachers and other school employees.

• Increased participation of parents, children, and the community in school activities.

• Increased credibility of the schools in the eyes of the community.

These benefits will occur only if schools are able to deal with disciplinary problems internally, where appropriate, through measured and sensible responses. Schools must resist the temptation to rely on suspensions and expulsions because, as a recent National Center on Violence Research (1998) report notes, simply “ejecting” problem students from school escalates problems in the community and fails to resolve the underlying causes. Reliance on suspensions and expulsions could have the unintended effect of diverting “marginal” youth into street crime and involvement in the juvenile justice system. Overly punitive responses also may increase students’ fear of victimization by giving them an exaggerated sense of the extent of school crime and violence.