Understanding and Preventing Violence Volume 1 (1993) / Chapter Skim
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SUMMARY
SUMMARY
Pages 1-28
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From page 1... ...
Violent deaths and incidents that result in lesser injuries are sources of chronic fear and a high level of concern with the seeming inability of public authorities to prevent them. In 1988 the National Academy of Sciences was asked by a consortium of federal agencies -- the National Institute of Justice, the National Science Foundation, and the Centers for Disease Control -- to assess the understanding of violence, the implications of that understanding for preventive interventions, and the most important research and evaluation needed to improve understanding and control of violence.
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While murders are counted rather accurately, counts of nonfatal violent crimes are incomplete. Gaps and discrepancies occur because victimizations may not be recognized as crimes, because embarrassment or psychological stigma inhibits reporting, because victims are sometimes reluctant to involve authorities, because their consequences may not be thought worth reporting as crimes, and because of discretion in classifying and counting violent events.
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Homicide rates in the United States far exceed those in any other industrialized nation. For other violent crimes, rates in the United States are among the world's highest and substantially exceed rates in Canada, our nearest neighbor in terms of geography, culture, and crime reporting.
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What Are the Consequences of Violent Crimes? Although the public naturally focuses on death or injury as the outcome of violent crime, injury occurs in only about one-third of violent crimes.
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No. While a few individuals commit violent crimes frequently, they account for a small share of total violence in the United States.
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While average prison time served per violent crime roughly tripled between 1975 and 1989, reported levels of serious violent crime varied around the level of about 2.9 million per year. Estimates of the crime control effects of incarceration -- by isolating violent offenders from potential victims in the community and by deterring others from committing violent crimes -- are necessarily imprecise.
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However, of young children who display aggressive behavior patterns, little is known about why a few become violent adults while most do not. The distinguishing factors may be related to socioeconomic status because adult violent behavior is so much more concentrated than aggressive childhood behavior in lower-income neighborhoods.
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Psychosocial preventive interventions will be more successful if implementation involves parents, teachers, and significant others in the community. Sexual Violence Many psychosocial, biological, and cultural phenomena have been suggested as potential causes of sexual violence, by which we mean the threat or use of physical force either to coerce another person to submit to sexual behavior or to produce sexual excitement or release in the perpetrator.
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Although some surveys report that disturbingly high proportions of males as young as junior high school age subscribe to various justifications for forcible rape, the causal implications are unclear because there is no available evidence on whether men who engage in violent sexual behavior hold these attitudes more widely than men who do not. Promising strategies for reducing the level and harms of sexual violence against acquaintances include socializing males about nonviolent, fulfilling sex roles and responsibilities toward women,
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Women are the most frequent victims of simple assaults, with divorced, separated, and cohabiting women at greatest risk. Intrafamily violence accounted for at least 18 percent of all homicides in 1990 (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1991:13)
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Systematic evaluations of preventive interventions for intrafamily violence have begun to occur. Visiting nurse programs appear to have some potential to reduce the prevalence of child abuse and should be tested further.
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First, specific neurobiologic "markers" for an elevated violence potential may eventually be discovered, most likely in neurological responses to external stimuli. Second, preventable neurobiologic abnormalities -- due to inadequate prenatal care, childhood head injuries, and exposure to neurotoxins such as lead -- may increase the risk of school failure and of poor peer and other interpersonal relationships that are empirically linked to subsequent aggressive behavior.
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Although not normally thought of as violence prevention programs, efforts to reduce these risks could have significant long-term payoffs in reducing future violent behaviors. Alcohol, Other Psychoactive Drugs, and Violence Potentials Long-term heavy alcohol use is a predisposing factor for violent behavior at least for adults who showed both chronic aggressive behavior and alcohol abuse in childhood or early adolescence.
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. In addition, some individual-level risk factors for violent crimes point to possible community-level causes.
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Single parents who work have less time for such activities and constant family turnover in large multidwelling housing units makes them more difficult to carry out. Many "old heads" -- community elders who took responsibility for local youth -- have left urban communities, and the status of those who remain is diminished by contrast with the rise of successful young entrepreneurs in illegal markets.
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Fifth, when law-abiding members of a community lose faith that public authorities can or will maintain order, many feel compelled to arm themselves for self-protection. The best tests of these hypotheses would involve interventions that reduce the size and centrality of illegal markets in urban economies, that restore or enhance the social status of traditional community leaders, that increase the salience of social status symbols other than material goods attained through criminal activity, and that enhance the ability of public authorities and community-based institutions to cope with community problems and maintain order.
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The incidence of violent events varies widely in space -- by city, neighborhood, and specific address. The greatest variation is found across locations within cities; for example, although 97.8 percent of all Minneapolis addresses generated zero robbery calls to police in 1986, 8 generated more than 20 calls each.
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Firearms and Violent Events Mortality rates from firearm violence are high in the United States compared with other countries and rising, especially among young black males. The nature of the causal relationship between the availability of firearms and mortality rates from firearm violence, especially involving handguns and so-called assault weapons, is a matter of intense public interest and often emotional debate.
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A STRATEGY FOR IMPROVING THE UNDERSTANDING AND CONTROL OF VIOLENCE Multiple factors, including those summarized in Table S-1, have been found to correlate with the probability of violent events. The correlations are low by conventional standards, inconsistent across settings, and usually specific to particular types of violent events.
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(3) programs of research projects in areas that have been largely neglected by federal violence research sponsors.
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, with special attention to commercial robberies, high-risk situations for sexual violence, and violent events in prisons and schools; (c) maximizing the violence reduction effects of police interventions in illegal markets (Chapters 4 and 6)
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These include but are not limited to intrafamily violence; personal victimizations in commercial and organizational robberies; violent bias crimes; and violent events in schools, jails, and prisons; (b) more comprehensive recording of sexual violence, including incidents involving intimates, incidents of homicide and wounding in which the sexual component may be masked, and more complete descriptions of recorded events; (c)
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; (b) integrated studies of demographic, situational, and spatial risk factors for violent events and violent deaths (Chapter 3)
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oversampling of high-risk categories and special efforts to minimize attrition by study subjects in those categories; and (7) cross-validation of official record and self-report versions of violent events.
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provides the majority of federal violence research support, yet a large number of agencies contribute significant funds. The structure offers support for diverse approaches, but it also creates difficulties.
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From page 27... ...
Government Printing Office. Federal Bureau of Investigation 1991 Uniform Crime Reports for the United States: 1990.
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