Preventing Violence In America

What can be done to address the problem of violence in society? The contributors to this volume, both scholars and practitioners, examine this question by exploring the history of violence together with theoretical explanations. The book discusses such issues as: the disproportionate presence of violence within North American minority populations; the concept of psychological resiliency; how spirituality may serve as a protective factor; and the role of television in promoting violence. The contributors also address prevention and intervention strategies among gangs of young people, and the implementation of special programmes in schools.

Examines the complex problem of school violence using qualitative & ethnographic data from observations, individual interviews, & focus groups, as well as published data. Analyzes violence preventions programs & assesses their effectiveness.

Violence against women and children is a serious public health concern, with costs at multiple levels of society. Although violence is a threat to everyone, women and children are particularly susceptible to victimization because they often have fewer rights or lack appropriate means of protection. In some societies certain types of violence are deemed socially or legally acceptable, thereby contributing further to the risk to women and children. In the past decade research has documented the growing magnitude of such violence, but gaps in the data still remain. Victims of violence of any type fear stigmatization or societal condemnation and thus often hesitate to report crimes. The issue is compounded by the fact that for women and children the perpetrators are often people they know and because some countries lack laws or regulations protecting victims. Some of the data that have been collected suggest that rates of violence against women range from 15 to 71 percent in some countries and that rates of violence against children top 80 percent. These data demonstrate that violence poses a high burden on global health and that violence against women and children is common and universal. Preventing Violence Against Women and Children focuses on these elements of the cycle as they relate to interrupting this transmission of violence. Intervention strategies include preventing violence before it starts as well as preventing recurrence, preventing adverse effects (such as trauma or the consequences of trauma), and preventing the spread of violence to the next generation or social level. Successful strategies consider the context of the violence, such as family, school, community, national, or regional settings, in order to determine the best programs.

Annotation Schewe (researcher, U. of Illinois at Chicago) presents 10 contributions by psychologists describing interventions for use in preventing violence in intimate relationships and in families. Theory, research, and practice have been melded in discussion of school-based child sexual abuse prevention, child sexual abuse as a public health concern, children victimized by peers, dating violence education, self-protection strategies for rape avoidance, men's responsibility for preventing sexual assault, prevention of domestic violence, violence and the elderly population, and evaluating prevention programs. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

A thorough overview of violence and crime in America's schools explores which solutions work and which don't, providing a framework for prevention at every level. Although it is major incidents like Columbine or Virginia Tech that grab the headlines, everyday occurrences of bullying, harassment, and physical intimidation in schools impact entire communities, driving kids out of public schools and destroying faith in public education. Preventing Violence and Crime in America's Schools: From Put-Downs to Lock-Downs provides educators, parents, law enforcement officials, and other youth-serving professionals with a unique perspective on the topic of school violence. More important, it offers solutions to the problems facing all schools when it comes to violence and safety. Two expert authors examine specifics relating to school violence, opportunities to prevent and intervene, and the importance of planning for a crisis. Most other books about school violence either highlight the research or highlight practitioner viewpoints. This revealing book presents both, balancing insights gained through real-world experiences with research on best practices. The result is a fuller understanding of the problem—understanding that will enable solutions.

By conservative estimates, more than 16,000 violent crimes are committed or attempted every day in the United States. Violence involves many factors and spurs many viewpoints, and this diversity impedes our efforts to make the nation safer. Now a landmark volume from the National Research Council presents the first comprehensive, readable synthesis of America's experience of violence-offering a fresh, interdisciplinary approach to understanding and preventing interpersonal violence and its consequences. Understanding and Preventing Violence provides the most complete, up-to-date responses available to these fundamental questions: How much violence occurs in America? How do different processes-biological, psychosocial, situational, and social-interact to determine violence levels? What preventive strategies are suggested by our current knowledge of violence? What are the most critical research needs? Understanding and Preventing Violence explores the complexity of violent behavior in our society and puts forth a new framework for analyzing risk factors for violent events. From this framework the authors identify a number of "triggering" events, situational elements, and predisposing factors to violence-as well as many promising approaches to intervention. Leading authorities explore such diverse but related topics as crime statistics; biological influences on violent behavior; the prison population explosion; developmental and public health perspectives on violence; violence in families; and the relationship between violence and race, ethnicity, poverty, guns, alcohol, and drugs. Using four case studies, the volume reports on the role of evaluation in violence prevention policy. It also assesses current federal support for violence research and offers specific science policy recommendations. This breakthrough book will be a key resource for policymakers in criminal and juvenile justice, law enforcement authorities, criminologists, psychologists, sociologists, public health professionals, researchers, faculty, students, and anyone interested in understanding and preventing violence.

'Oxford Textbook Violence Prevention' brings together an international team of experts to provide an extensive global account of the global mortality and morbidity burden caused by violence through examining the causes of violence, and what can be done to prevent and reduce violence.

In this controversial and compassionate book, the distinguished psychiatrist James Gilligan proposes a radically new way of thinking about violence and how to prevent it. Violence is most often addressed in moral and legal terms: "How evil is this action, and how much punishment does it deserve?" Unfortunately, this way of thinking, the basis for our legal and political institutions, does nothing to shed light on the causes of violence. Violent criminals have been Gilligan's teachers, and he has been their student. Prisons are microcosms of the societies in which they exist, and by examining them in detail, we can learn about society as a whole. Gilligan suggests treating violence as a public health problem. He advocates initiating radical social and economic change to attack the root causes of violence, focusing on those at increased risk of becoming violent, and dealing with those who are already violent as if they were in quarantine rather than in constraint for their punishment and for society's revenge. The twentieth century was steeped in violence. If we attempt to understand the violence of individuals, we may come to prevent the collective violence that threatens our future far more than all the individual crimes put together.