In the most recent Arizona Youth Survey from 2022, 9.7% of high schoolers in Arizona said they had been threatened or injured with a knife, gun or other weapon at school in the past year.
“Associating or hanging out with other delinquent peers is going to increase the odds you will also engage with this,” said Arizona State Criminology Professor Jesenia Pizarro. Pizarro has studied firearm violence, homicides other topics for years, including work on juvenile firearm and gang research.
In Arizona, 15.3% of high schoolers say they’ve been in a physical fight in the last year and 6.7% say they attacked someone to hurt them. Both of those numbers are down from where they were in 2018.
“Particularly the teenage years are hard,” Pizarro said. “You want to fit in, you want to be with the cool crowd in school and that can get you in trouble.”
There are also risk factors that are present at home.
“Having parents that are not involved, if there is no consistent discipline in the home, or homes where there is no feeling of support, those are risk factors,” Pizarro told ABC15.
The survey classifies 30.6% of high schoolers as high-risk, meaning they have eight or more risk factors. However, 60.4% of students were found to have four or more protective factors, like being involved in extracurriculars or having a strong family attachment.
“Kids who, and teenagers who hang out with other kids and teenagers who are goal-oriented, who are into school, who don't get in trouble, who are into pro-social activities are less likely to get in trouble,” Pizarro said. “At a minimum, what the research would suggest is that we need to at least be attentive to what are our kids doing on a day-to-day basis and who they’re frequenting and how they’re doing in school.”
