INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSES TO SCHOOL VIOLENCE

In order to prevent, attend to, mitigate, and punish school violence, diverse programs, actions, and laws have been created and implemented at the international, national, and state levels. Nevertheless, these have proven inefficient and ineffective since school violence is increasing and becoming worse in all school levels. Some factors that have made difficult the implementation of laws have been the deficiencies regarding how to attend to the cases instead of just punishing them: the lack of knowledge of the laws by the public officials and the general population; the functioning of the educational system, the little availability of monetary, organizational, and human resources; multiplicity and multidimensionality where school violence prevails, and which does not coincide with what is stated in the written law and everyday life.