Why do New Zealand high school students carry weapons?
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865811419057 |
| Published date | 01 December 2011 |
| Date | 01 December 2011 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Australian & New Zealand
Journal of Criminology
44(3) 425–439
Why do New Zealand high
! The Author(s) 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/0004865811419057
Louise Marsh
anj.sagepub.com
University of Otago, New Zealand
Rob McGee
University of Otago, New Zealand
Sheila Williams
University of Otago, New Zealand
Abstract
This study examined weapon carrying, including both the type of weapons being carried and
reasons for carrying, in a sample of New Zealand high school students. A self-report online
survey was administered to 1169 secondary students in the Otago region of New Zealand.
Overall, 17 per cent had carried a weapon in the past year at school, and 24 per cent had carried
outside school. The most common type of weapon was a pocket knife or knife, and the most
common reason for carrying it at school was because it was in their bag or on their key ring, and
for hunting or self-defence outside school. When psychological intention was taken into account,
9 per cent reported carrying for potential use as a weapon in the past year and 6 per cent in the
past month. These students were also more likely to have been in a fight, to have missed school
due to feeling unsafe, to have felt lonely, been bullied, bullied others and have few self-perceived
competencies. In estimating the prevalence of weapon carrying, it is important to understand
the psychological context of these behaviours.
Keywords
adolescents, physical aggression, school, violence, weapon
Introduction
The consequences of violence among young people affect individuals and communities
in many ways. There are the social and psychological costs, including higher levels of
depression, low self-esteem, anxiety (Gilmartin, 1987), lowered quality of life, and the
disruption of social services (Krug et al., 2002). There are academic costs (Gilmartin,
1987). These acts also lead to significant economic burdens, including increased medical
Corresponding author:
Dr Louise Marsh, Research Fellow, Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, Dunedin School of Medicine,
University of Otago, PO Box 913, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Email: louise.marsh@otago.ac.nz
426
Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 44(3)
costs, criminal costs such as police and court costs, professional costs such as social
workers, mental health costs (Eisenbraun, 2007), lost productivity, and decreased
property values (Krug et al., 2002).
Official statistics suggest that violent offending among young people is increasing in
New Zealand. According to Ministry of Justice statistics, there was a 39 per cent increase
in the number of 14–16 year olds apprehended for violent offences from 2690 in 1995
to 3743 in 2006, and a 9 per cent increase over the period 2005 to 2006 (Chong, 2007).
One out of every seven police apprehensions involved individuals in this age group.
Ministry of Education figures also indicate that while stand downs (formal removal of
a student from school for a specified period), suspensions and exclusions from school have
shown some decrease over the last decade, an increasing proportion are due to physical
assaults on other students and staff (Ministry of Education, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c).
One indicator of risk for serious violence in a community is the level of weapon
carrying, and recent comments by New Zealand’s Principal Youth Court Judge suggest
that teenage knife crime is on the rise, with assaults with a weapon for 14–16 year olds
having increased from 74 in 1995, to 207 in 2008 (The New Zealand Herald, 2009).
As Barlas and Egan (2006) point out, weapon carrying is an illegal activity, it increases
the likelihood of use in a fight, and it is associated with other aggressive behaviours. In the
New Zealand context, there has been little published research on the prevalence of weapon
carrying among adolescents. The earliest published paper, based on a community sample,
came from the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study cohort
(DMHDS: Moffit and Silva, 1988). At age 13 years, 6 per cent of the sample reported
‘carrying a weapon in case it is needed in a fight’ and 3 per cent reported ‘using any kind of
weapon in a fight’. Unpublished data from this study collected in 1987 showed that at age
15 years, 9 per cent had carried a weapon in case it was needed and 3 per cent had used a
weapon in a fight, with boys outnumbering girls both in carrying and using a weapon by
about 5:1. Coggan, Disley, Patterson and Norton (1997) found that 15 per cent of senior
high school boys aged 16 years and over, and 6 per cent of senior girls at two high schools
reported carrying a weapon. The most recent published findings from a 2001 web-based
survey of 652 15-year-old students in Dunedin, indicated that 42 per cent of the boys and
13 per cent of girls reported ever having ‘carried a weapon such as a knife, gun or club’; 30
per cent of boys and 9 per cent of girls had carried a weapon in the previous 30 days
(McGee et al., 2005). These latter figures were comparable to rates of weapon carrying in
the US (Brener et al., 1999; Grunbaum et al., 2002), and other overseas countries (Astor
et al., 2004; Cao et al., 2008). However, the rates of weapon carrying in the 2001 Dunedin
survey were considerably higher than previous rates reported in the earlier Dunedin
Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study and that of Coggan et al. (1997).
While the questions in the 2001 study came from the well-validated US Youth Risk
Behaviour Survey (YRBS: Brener et al., 1999), McGee et al. (2005) noted that students
may have misinterpreted the meaning of the word weapon, and included instances where
the intended use was not as a weapon. For example, does carrying a rifle for hunting
constitute carrying a weapon? The YRBS questions assess weapon carrying in the context
of violence-related behaviours, and provide examples of weapons such as a gun, knife or
club. However, the questions do not include an intentional component to identify carrying
a weapon for self-protection or use in a fight. Similarly, many surveys of weapon carrying
have not asked about types of weapon being carried, and do not discriminate between
Marsh et al.
427
possession of a weapon for activities such as hunting and camping, and possession for
interpersonal violence (Astor et al., 2004; Cao et al., 2008; Furlong et al., 2004).
The impetus for the present study came from the paradox that although New Zealand
adolescents were reporting very high rates of weapon carrying in 2001, the findings were
generally greeted with considerable disbelief by school principals and the police
(Woodham, 2005). To further examine how New Zealand adolescents interpreted the
word weapon, Marsh, McGee, Nada-Raja and Currey (2007) used focus group discussions
with adolescents in the Otago region. These participants also thought the prevalence
of weapon carrying in the 2001 survey was too high and not in accord with their own
experiences, and they proposed that whether an item should be considered a weapon or
not, depended on its intended use. More recently, a national survey of New Zealand high
school principals and counsellors suggested that weapon carrying was not regarded as an
especially major problem in New Zealand schools, although a quarter of principals and
a third of counsellors reported that students at their schools had been caught carrying a
variety of weapons (Marsh et al., 2008).
It was our view that more in-depth questioning was needed to explore the context of
weapon carrying both at school and outside school grounds, to examine whether estimates
based on standard assessment scales might be unreasonably high. The present study aimed
to identify the types of weapons being carried and the reasons for carrying them, to
provide an estimate of the prevalence of intentional and non-intentional weapon carrying
among students attending Otago secondary schools.
A secondary aim of this study was to examine behavioural correlates of weapon
carrying in this New Zealand sample. Previous research has suggested a number of
behavioural factors which might be correlated with weapon carrying. For example,
DuRant and colleagues (1997) found that students carrying weapons on school property
were 1.6 times more likely to have been in a fight on school property. New Zealand
students who reported carrying weapons were nearly four times more likely to have
been in a fight in the past year (McGee et al., 2005). Both being bullied and bullying
others at school and away from school have been associated with increased risk of weapon
carrying (Nansel et al., 2003, 2004). The associations were stronger when the bullying
occurred away from school, and for those bullying others, rather than being bullied. In the
US, bully-victims were nearly nine times more likely to carry a weapon.
Missing school out of fears for one’s safety has been found to be associated with
carrying a weapon on school property (DuRant et al., 1997) and with carrying a gun
(Hayes, 1999), although feeling unsafe at school may not be significantly related to
weapon carrying off school property (Simon et al., 1999). Similarly, feeling lonely
(Smith and Thomas, 2000) and feelings of alienation from school (Laufer and Harel,
2003) have been shown to be associated with violent behaviour, including weapon
carrying. Again, not all research has shown this association, with Smith-Khuri and
colleagues (2004) reporting that feeling lonely at school was only correlated with fighting
for one of...
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