Punishing violent students: accounting for self-defense
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JACPR-03-2015-0165 |
| Pages | 174-185 |
| Published date | 11 July 2016 |
| Date | 11 July 2016 |
| Author | Amos Fleischmann |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care,Criminology & forensic psychology,Aggression, conflict & peace |
Punishing violent students: accounting
for self-defense
Amos Fleischmann
Amos Fleischmann is a Senior
Lecturer at the Department of
Special Education, School
for Advance Degrees,
Achva Academic College,
Beer-Tuvia, Israel.
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to investigate the disciplinary measures that teachers apply to
student participants in violent altercations and how protestations of self-defense and a violent record affect
the measures taken.
Design/methodology/approach –Israeli teachers (326) were shown fictional vignettes that
recounted violent conflicts between students and were asked whether and how they would punish them.
The vignettes portrayed students in three roles: aggressor, confirmed self-defender, and unproven
self-defender.
Findings –Confirmed self-defenders are much more leniently disciplined than unproven self-defenders and
aggressors. Unproven self-defenders are disciplined almost as severely as aggressors. A violent record
results in much more severe punishment of unproven self-defenders and aggressors but has only a slight
upward effect on the disciplining of confirmed self-defenders.
Social implications –The study reveals a difficulty in complying with a zero-tolerance approach to school
violence because it collides with the right to self-defense. The intensity of discipline applied to self-defenders
appears to depend on their ability to “dig up”witnesses to prove their case. Therefore, socially isolated
self-defenders may be punished severely whereas social accepted ones would not.
Originality/value –The results may enhance the understanding of arbitrators’decisions in conflicts that defy
attempts to determine “who started it.”They break new ground by describing the disciplinary measures taken
against different role-players in fracases and are immensely important for understanding peacemaking
measures in school and the “real world.”
Keywords Punishment, Teacher, School violence, Self-defense, Violent record, Zero-tolerance
Paper type Research paper
Violent conflicts between students are among the most common manifestations of violence
in schools (Swahn et al., 2013). They may result in injury, if not death, to their protagonists
(King, 2014). To mitigate violence in schools, it is necessary to discipline students who take part
in fracases. Such is the policy in Israel: students who fight on school grounds face
severe punishment (Wininger, 2011). This, however, may be unjustified insofar as those
punished use violence in self-defense (Teske, 2011). Away from school, violent self-defense is
accepted as justified and legitimate. In criminal law, a valid claim of self-defense
protects individuals from conviction for battery and even for manslaughter (Nourse, 2001;
Segev, 2005). On school grounds, in contrast, self-defense is no defense (Fleischmann, 2015;
Teske, 2011).
When teachers encounter student violence, their response to the self-defense motive
may determine whether students will choose to respond to aggression violently or peaceably in
future altercations (Aceves et al., 2012). Although disciplining self-defending students is
very important in coping with school violence (Davis, 2006; Teske, 2011), research on how
self-defense influences the punitive measures brought against self-defenders has not yet
been done.
Received 1 March 2015
Revised 26 July 2015
22 October 2015
Accepted 17 November 2015
PAGE174
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JOURNAL OF AGGRESSION, CONFLICTAND PEACE RESEARCH
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VOL. 8 NO. 3 2016, pp.174-185, © Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1759-6599 DOI 10.1108/JACPR-03-2015-0165
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