Note: it should be borne in mind that the author lives and works in Russia, so in this article, he considers the situation on the example of his country. Measures to ensure the safety of schools, other educational institutions and places with a mass stay of children that he proposes are developed by him for use in Russia, taking into account the existing law enforcement system and the situation there.
I am pleased to announce that I have finally completed
the main part of my work on the article «Ensuring Comprehensive Safety in
Schools, Other Educational Institutions, and Facilities and Locations
Frequented by Large Numbers of Children Against Threats of a Criminal,
Terrorist, and Other Nature».
All that remains are purely technical details:
combining the separate sections into a single whole, making corrections,
formatting it, and preparing it for publication on the portal’s main website. There
is no exact date yet, but tentatively - late May to early June of this year.
This article is of a practical nature. I am not
interested in discussing the problem or stirring up the atmosphere around
it—crime statistics in schools, kindergartens, colleges, and universities do
that much better. I am also not interested in the motives of criminals. I do
not believe, nor do I even entertain the thought, that the mass murder of
innocent people could have any justification whatsoever.
My interest lies in finding answers to other
questions: can this be stopped? And if so, how exactly can it be done?
I began searching for answers to these questions back
in 2018, when I was working on my first article about safety in schools and
other educational institutions. I started that work almost immediately after
the tragedy at the Kerch
Polytechnic College,
where 20 people were killed and another 67 were injured.
At the time, as I studied the timeline of that
tragedy, I tried to understand: why was it so easy for the perpetrator to
commit such a monstrous crime?
Here’s what I saw. A man armed with a gun, a large
amount of ammunition, and homemade explosive devices leaves his home, walks to
a public transportation stop, gets on a bus, rides to the right stop, walks to
the college building, goes inside, finds an open, isolated room, prepares his
weapon, arranges the ammunition for quick reloading, and sets the timers on the
bombs. Then he goes out, heads to the emergency exit, tries to block it, walks
toward the cafeteria, sets up an explosive device, goes back, grabs his weapon,
and starts killing.
An explosion, panic. The killer moves calmly and, most
importantly, unhindered through the college hallways, shooting at anyone who
crosses his path or comes into view. He throws homemade grenades. Then he goes
to the library, where he commits suicide.
It was all over before the first police car even
arrived on the scene. No one stopped the criminal. No one stopped him. He
killed himself when he considered his bloody mission accomplished. From start
to finish, he had the situation completely under control.
It would be one thing if this were the first tragedy
of its kind in Russia.
But before this, there were Beslan, Moscow,
Ivanteevka, Perm, Ulan-Ude,
Shadrinsk, Sterlitamak,
and Barabinsk. Wasn’t that enough to realize that the threat is real, and that
a tragedy on the scale of the Kerch
College attack is only a
matter of time?
However, even this crime did not serve as a catalyst
for recognizing the level of the threat and revising the entire security
system. As always, everything was limited to talk and formal measures that had
no real impact on the situation. Next came Kazan, Perm,
Izhevsk, Bryansk—and
these are only the largest crimes in terms of the number of victims. There were
others, and quite a few of them.
The situation in other countries also clearly shows
that there is no basis for optimistic forecasts. Statistics (link) clearly
demonstrate a trend toward an increase in the number of similar crimes
worldwide. The year 2025 set a kind of anti-record for their number. However,
the first five months of 2026 clearly indicate that this record will be broken
in the very near future.
All of this clearly demonstrates the complete
vulnerability of schools and other educational institutions to criminals and
terrorists. Every time there is another attack, meetings and discussions begin,
task forces and commissions convene, plans and decisions are formulated, and
high-profile statements are made to the media. However, very little time passes
before new attacks occur and new victims emerge.
At the same time, even the simplest analysis of the
chronology of these events shows that in most cases, the criminals exploited
the same vulnerabilities that have long been known to everyone.
I was unable to get started right away. Difficulties
arose, forcing me to postpone the work for nearly two years.
In the first area of research (the security situation
at educational institutions in Russia
and around the world), I encountered a lack of statistical data on crimes in
this category that had been collected and systematized in a single source. I
had to spend a tremendous amount of time and effort gathering information from
dozens of different sources and cross-checking it.
Without these statistics, it is impossible to:
- gain an objective picture of what is happening;
- conduct a thorough (comparative and cross-sectional)
analysis of the data;
- track developments over time;
- assess the true scale of the threat;
- explain ongoing criminological processes and
identify the factors influencing them;
- predict how events will unfold.
Furthermore, there is a lack of understanding
regarding the direction and specific characteristics of the threat’s
development, which makes it extremely difficult to devise effective
countermeasures. We see the result now, when, following yet another mass
shooting or terrorist attack at an educational institution, experts, political analysts,
law enforcement officials, educators, and journalists ask themselves: «Why
didn’t the measures developed and implemented as part of the security strategy
work?»
The answer is simple: they were developed based on
incomplete data. And in many cases, this data was not only incomplete but also
unreliable.
I myself have often come across statistics in media
reports that are far removed from reality. For example, when commenting on yet
another mass shooting at a school or university, the author would back up the
article with general statistics on incidents at educational institutions—even
though most of these incidents were not even indirectly related to mass
shootings or terrorism. For the most part, these are general criminal offenses:
committed due to personal animosity, or for financial gain (robberies, muggings,
extortion), often out of hooliganism or even unintentionally.
Therefore, it is extremely important not only to know
the statistics, but also to understand what lies behind these numbers. Proper
data categorization is equally important.
The principles I used during data collection:
All collected cases underwent cross-analysis and
comparison of information from various sources.
Preference was given to police press releases,
reports, and court transcripts—these contain more facts than speculation.
All incidents were divided into groups and subgroups
based on various criminological characteristics. This classification allows us
to clearly see the nature of the situation’s development over a specific time
period, both in comparison and in terms of trends.
Based on high-quality, systematically organized
statistical data, it is possible to create more accurate (than currently
available) criminological models and forecasts. Most importantly, these models
can be used to develop truly effective measures for preventing and combating
threats.
This requires reliable source data—verified,
organized, and compiled into a single repository. But such data did not exist.
It became clear that a unified information and
reference resource was needed, containing information on crimes in this
category and at least a brief (minimal) set of factual data about their
perpetrators and circumstances. Realizing this, I set out to create it.
As a format for presenting the data, I chose a format
similar to a police incident report: a brief summary of the circumstances
containing such information as the date, time, place, method, object,
perpetrator, victims, consequences, outcome, and other reliably established
facts.
In February 2024, the first edition of the Handbook
of Crimes and Terrorist Acts in Schools and Other Educational Institutions was
published on the «Public Order and Safety» portal, containing statistical data
spanning 24 years (from 2000 through 2023).
The information has since been updated and expanded. The
fifth edition is now available for download, containing data spanning 26 years.
One of the main objectives has been achieved: an informative, user-friendly,
and, most importantly, publicly accessible reference and analytical tool has
been created for researchers and specialists in school safety.
For me, the main outcome of working on the handbook
was that I was finally able to see a fairly objective picture regarding the
first area of research. And as it turned out, this picture is far from
optimistic. I won’t delve too deeply into the details—you can review the
statistics and analytics for yourselves. The most important thing is that the
year and a half spent on this was not wasted.
While studying materials on crimes in educational
institutions, I noticed that experts often use the term «safety level» in their
assessments, adding various adjectives to it: high, low, satisfactory,
unsatisfactory, adequate, minimal, and so on. This raised a question for me:
what exactly do they mean by this concept, and how do they define it?
After reviewing the information available in open
sources, I have concluded that there is currently no unified (or even widely
used) system in our country for assessing the safety levels of educational
institutions based on formal criteria. Most reports containing such assessments
are based on the personal opinions of the experts who compiled them.
An analysis of international experience also revealed
nothing concrete—the situation there appears to be similar.
This situation struck me as, to put it mildly, strange.
It is clear that there is a need for such a tool. Although I am not a proponent
of total standardization in safety matters, I consider this area an exception. Since
there was no evaluation system that could objectively calculate the safety
level of an educational facility based on formal criteria (with minimal human
influence), and I needed such a tool for my work, I decided to create it
myself.
The result is a table in which evaluations are based
on 64 criteria covering:
- characteristics of the educational facility’s
grounds and its location;
- characteristics of buildings and structures;
- the presence of physical security and its features;
- technical security measures and their capabilities;
- additional active and passive security measures.
Each item, if present and operational, is assigned a
number of points, which are then totaled. A final score is calculated. In
addition to the total score, there are factors that negatively impact the final
score.
Once completed, the table clearly shows:
- the level of security at the educational
institution;
- its capabilities;
and most importantly—obvious shortcomings and
vulnerabilities in the security system.
Based on the resulting assessment, measures and costs
can be planned to improve the facility’s security level. Using annual data on
such assessments of one or more facilities, it is easy to conduct comparative
and dynamic analyses, clearly assessing the situation in a specific school,
city, region, or even country over a given time period. You can compare both
overall assessments and individual indicators or sections.
The
result is a convenient and, most importantly, objective tool for monitoring the
situation, where even a one-point drop in the rating compared to the previous
period immediately indicates that the situation is deteriorating and action
must be taken.
Even
while collecting data for the handbook and developing the assessment table, I
increasingly came to the conclusion that the model of a comprehensive security
system for educational institutions that I had previously developed and
outlined in my first article was ineffective and unpromising.
Solving
the problem would require a completely different approach.
I
began work on this at the end of 2023. In May 2026, I finally managed to
complete it (though I assume it is not yet final).
In
my new development, I was guided by public demand, which is as follows:
schools, other educational institutions (including preschools), as well as
facilities where large numbers of children gather, must be reliably protected
from criminal, terrorist, and other threats, but at the same time, they must
not be turned into something resembling a prison or a military base.
Is
this realistic? I believe it is.
What
needs to be done to achieve this, why, and exactly how—I will address these
questions in the main article.
The
publication is scheduled for late May to early June of this year on the «Public Order and Safety» portal.
Author – Roman Grishin.
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