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From page 327... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 327 8 Recommendations To make progress in the understanding and control of violent behavior, we call for a balanced program of efforts with short-term and long-term payoffs: (1) problem-solving initiatives of pragmatic, focused, methodologically sound collaborative efforts by policy makers, evaluation researchers, and basic researchers; (2) Read the entire page →
From page 328... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 328 of violence and for the design of more effective intervention programs. PROBLEM-SOLVING INITIATIVES Available evidence suggests an abundance of promising preventive strategies. Read the entire page →
From page 329... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 329 drug and firearm markets have the greatest violence reduction effects; (d) modifying the roles of commodities -- including firearms, alcohol, and other psychoactive drugs -- in inhibiting or promoting violent events or their consequences, with special attention to reducing weapon lethality through public education and technological strategies; ascertaining patterns of firearms acquisition and use by criminals and juveniles; ascertaining and modifying the pharmacological, developmental, and situational processes through which alcohol promotes violent behavior; pharmacologically managing aggressive behavior during opiate withdrawal; ascertaining whether smoking cocaine promotes violence through special pharmacological effects; and reducing drug market violence by reducing demand for illegal psychoactive drugs; (e) Read the entire page →
From page 330... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 330 interventions that stress the undesirability of aggression and teach nonviolent conflict resolution, and promotion of television programs that encourage prosocial, nonviolent behavior and that appeal to children of diverse cultural backgrounds? • Prevention of school failure: What are the comparative and cumulative effects of preschool educational enrichment and early-grade interventions, including tutoring by peers or trained high-school students, on early-grade school failure rates? Read the entire page →
From page 331... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 331 and how can they be effectively modified? By how much are situational risks of violent behavior and victimization increased by alcohol consumption? Read the entire page →
From page 332... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 332 Other Violence-Related Aspects of Commodities Beyond their roles in illegal markets, firearms and psychoactive drugs including alcohol influence the chances and consequences of violent events in other ways. Firearms Based on the discussion in Chapter 6, the diagnosis and evaluation components of problem-solving initiatives are important respectively in two relationships between firearms and violence. Read the entire page →
From page 333... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 333 to the use of alcohol or illegal psychoactive drugs, through arguments over debts and family arguments over money, time spent away from home, etc.? Because alcohol and other psychoactive drugs have somewhat different relationships to violence, certain problem-solving initiatives apply to only one or the other. Read the entire page →
From page 334... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 334 in illegal markets. Two recommended initiatives are concerned with reducing this violence by reducing demand for illegal drugs: • Develop pharmacological interventions for reducing users' craving for psychoactive drugs by blocking dopamine and norepinephrine receptor subtypes (Chapter 3) Read the entire page →
From page 335... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 335 Perhaps more important, there has been no systematic investigation of their comparative effectiveness or of how they might be used together -- in part because these interventions are offered by different public authorities and/or community-based organizations. This leads us to recommend a comprehensive initiative against spouse assault, with the following components: • risk assessment: better estimates in local surveys and the National Crime Survey of the incidence and prevalence of all types of family violence, including attention to cohabiting families; special attention to the incidence of spouse abuse, especially to repeat victimization; tabulations of more information on types of family violence within legal/statistical categories (e.g., disaggregating specific family relationships, capturing sexual assaults on minors) Read the entire page →
From page 336... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 336 Third, even if otherwise suitable data are available for social units such as geographic or jurisdictional areas, those units are often too large or heterogeneous to permit precise estimates of empirical relationships or intervention effects. Fourth, the information system categories often mask behavioral diversity: multiple reasons for a homicide, for example, or the chain of events that preceded a firearm injury. Read the entire page →
From page 337... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 337 RESEARCH IN NEGLECTED AREAS Seven research areas have been largely starved of resources for decades while applicable theory, measurement, and methodology have advanced. As a result, substantial and rapid progress can be expected from relatively small-scale research in the neglected areas. Read the entire page →
From page 338... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 338 police tactics in enforcing firearms regulations; sources of guns used in crimes; sources of guns illegally carried by minors; organization of the guns-for-drugs trade; the circumstances and frequency of firearm deployment for self-defense and the effect of deployment on victimization consequences; disaggregated measures of weapon availability, ownership patterns and motivation, legitimate uses, and acquisition patterns; and the roles in crime of automatic and semiautomatic rifles and handguns, especially by juveniles. Demographic, Situational, and Spatial Factors Many violent events arise from the intersection of demographic, situational, and spatial elements. Read the entire page →
From page 339... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 339 Biological Markers for Violent Behavior Although biological markers for an elevated propensity for violent behavior are currently lacking, findings point to several sites in the nervous system where they may eventually be discovered: • abnormal functioning of the limbic system and temporal lobe of the brain, especially the hypothalamus; • unusual neural discharge patterns in the temporal lobe; and • abnormal activity or metabolism of amines, steroids, or peptides that act as neurotransmitters or modulators, especially dopamine; norepinephrine; serotonin; gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) ; monoamine oxidase (MAO) Read the entire page →
From page 340... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 340 Preventive Pharmacological Interventions Neurobiologic research has already produced drugs that have proven useful as primary or adjunct therapies for managing certain violent human behaviors in specific populations. These include antiandrogen drugs, beta-blockers, and dopamine receptor antagonists. Read the entire page →
From page 341... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 341 practicable,2 to assess the effectiveness of these interventions in preventing the recurrence of sexually violent acts. Improved classification and measurement are essential for making progress on these issues, but they present special problems in the context of sexual violence. Read the entire page →
From page 342... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 342 cohort and a cohort of 8-year-olds. Here, we first explain more clearly the scientific and policy considerations that call for a longitudinal study of violent and aggressive behaviors. Read the entire page →
From page 343... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 343 (2) a multicommunity design to facilitate more extensive study of cultural and biosocial influences, both on developmental sequences and on intervention effects; (3) Read the entire page →
From page 344... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 344 reduce the portion of this group that grows up to commit violent acts. Some research has already been done along these lines. Read the entire page →
From page 345... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 345 of subjects in the National Youth Survey, not only did 36 percent report at least one serious violent offense, but also 87 percent reported general delinquency, 42 percent reported committing index offenses, 94 percent reported illicit alcohol use, 37 percent reported polydrug use, and 24 percent reported mental health problems. In short, even though this study would be the first with a primary focus on violent behavior, it should produce important spin-offs in related areas that are core concerns of agencies in the Office of Justice Programs (a unit of the Department of Justice) Read the entire page →
From page 346... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 346 of legitimate economic activity in communities afflicted with high violence levels, and adverse effects that chronic exposure to neighborhood violence might have on children's education and social development. Figure 8-1 Research expenditures per year of potential life lost for selected causes of death. Read the entire page →
From page 347... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 347 and fosters tremendous diversity in the topics supported. In all, 22 agencies or units of agencies sponsor more than 60 subcategories of violence research. Read the entire page →
From page 348... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 348 such as substance abuse are major sponsors of violence research, funding levels for violence research rise and fall with the tide of funding in the related areas. Were interest in those areas to decline during the 1990s, funding for violence research under the current structure could be expected to fall regardless of either the social costs of violence or the expected social and scientific payoffs. Read the entire page →
From page 349... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 349 for longitudinal studies of the development of potentials for crime, delinquency, and prosocial behavior surfaced during the 1980s, no single agency routinely committed sufficient resources for sufficiently long periods, and no agency was in a natural position to organize a consortium of sponsors. To its credit, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) Read the entire page →
From page 350... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 350 through fiscal 1990, which covered such topics as child abuse, partner assault, bias crimes, youth criminality and victimization, homicide and drugs, weapons, and psychiatric aspects of violence. A 1990 reorganization eliminated violence and most other stand-alone research programs, but violence is an announced program priority for fiscal 1992, and fiscal 1991 funds were awarded for research on such violence topics as police use of excessive force, serial rape, assaults on correctional officers, and less-than-lethal-force weapons. Read the entire page →
From page 351... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 351 psychological sciences. The hope has been expressed that, within the latter directorate, research on violent and nonviolent crime will have greater visibility (American Society of Criminology, 1991) Read the entire page →
From page 352... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 352 Stress Research Branch, and its annual budget was nearly doubled, to $15.1 million. The reorganized program is divided into four research areas, which relate to (1) Read the entire page →
From page 353... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 353 NOTES 1To avoid repetitiveness, we are here using the term violence as shorthand to refer to a set of measures, including rates of violent events, of injuries due to violence, and of deaths due to violence. 2 We are aware of only one randomized experimental evaluation of a treatment program for violent sex offenders that involves follow-up outside an institutional setting. Read the entire page →
From page 354... ... RECOMMENDATIONS 354 Farrington, David P., Lloyd E Ohlin, and James Q Read the entire page →

From page 327...

... RECOMMENDATIONS 327 8 Recommendations To make progress in the understanding and control of violent behavior, we call for a balanced program of efforts with short-term and long-term payoffs: (1) problem-solving initiatives of pragmatic, focused, methodologically sound collaborative efforts by policy makers, evaluation researchers, and basic researchers; (2)