The Context Of Youth Violence

Leading scholars summarize the current research on risk, protection, and resilience in the context of youth violence and its implications for practice with children and families. It describes an emerging framework for understanding social and health problems and for developing more effective programs for interventions. This book describes resilient children by examining risk factors for violence and explores the factors that lead some children to resist or adapt to risk. The concept of resilience has been applied to family, school, neighborhood, and organizational contexts. Educational, family, and community resilience are used as the framework to describe social systems that possess risk factors. By understanding why some systems with risk factors are adaptable, information for assessment can be applied to service plans, that will be more effective in treating children at risk of antisocial, aggressive behavior.

This book places youth violence within a Routine Activity Ecological Framework. Youth violence, specifically youth exposure to community violence and youth perpetration of violent behaviors, occur within various contexts. Ahlin and Antunes situate their discussion of youth violence within an ecological framework, identifying how it is nested within four mesosystem layers: community, family, peers and schools, and youth characteristics. Contextualized using an ecological framework, the Routine Activity Theory and Lifestyles perspective (RAT/LS) are well suited to guide an examination of youth violence risk and protective factors across the four layers. Drawing on scholarship that explores predictors and consequences of youth violence, the authors apply RAT/LS theory to explain how community, family, peers, schools, and youth characteristics influence youth behavior. Each layer of the ecological framework unfolds to reveal the latest scholarship and contextualizes how concepts of RAT/LS, specifically the motivated offender, target suitability, and guardianship, can be applied at each level. This book also highlights the mechanisms and processes that contribute to youth exposure to and involvement in violence by exploring factors examined in the literature as protective and risk factors of youth violence. Youth violence occurs in context, and, as such, the understanding of multilevel predictors and preventive measures against it can be situated within an RAT/LS ecological framework. This work links theory to extant research. Ahlin and Antunes demonstrate how knowledge of youth violence can be used to develop a robust theoretical foundation that can inform policy to improve neighborhoods and youth experiences within their communities, families, and peers and within their schools while acknowledging the importance of individual characteristics. This monograph is essential reading for those interested in youth violence, juvenile delinquency, and juvenile justice research and anyone dedicated to preventing crime among youths.

This book places youth violence within a Routine Activity Ecological Framework. Youth violence, specifically youth exposure to community violence and youth perpetration of violent behaviors, occur within various contexts. Ahlin and Antunes situate their discussion of youth violence within an ecological framework, identifying how it is nested within four mesosystem layers: community, family, peers and schools, and youth characteristics. Contextualized using an ecological framework, the Routine Activity Theory and Lifestyles perspective (RAT/LS) are well suited to guide an examination of youth violence risk and protective factors across the four layers. Drawing on scholarship that explores predictors and consequences of youth violence, the authors apply RAT/LS theory to explain how community, family, peers, schools, and youth characteristics influence youth behavior. Each layer of the ecological framework unfolds to reveal the latest scholarship and contextualizes how concepts of RAT/LS, specifically the motivated offender, target suitability, and guardianship, can be applied at each level. This book also highlights the mechanisms and processes that contribute to youth exposure to and involvement in violence by exploring factors examined in the literature as protective and risk factors of youth violence. Youth violence occurs in context, and, as such, the understanding of multilevel predictors and preventive measures against it can be situated within an RAT/LS ecological framework. This work links theory to extant research. Ahlin and Antunes demonstrate how knowledge of youth violence can be used to develop a robust theoretical foundation that can inform policy to improve neighborhoods and youth experiences within their communities, families, and peers and within their schools while acknowledging the importance of individual characteristics. This monograph is essential reading for those interested in youth violence, juvenile delinquency, and juvenile justice research and anyone dedicated to preventing crime among youths.

Youth violence dominates headlines and politicians’ attention and many organisations invest considerable resources in an attempt to reduce it. This book examines how inequality and social harms drive such violence and highlights key future goals for policymakers, researchers and practitioners.

Every time a young person is harmed by violence, our nation's future strength and growth are jeopardised. We are losing our next generation of young people -- our future community builders and leaders -- to homicide at an alarming rate. Beyond premature death, youth violence causes emotional, academic, and physical scars that limit young people's potential independence, growth, and success. When the opportunities of our young people are curtailed by youth violence, we all suffer the negative and long-lasting consequences. Preventing Youth Violence: Opportunities for Action by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is designed to help communities use what is known about youth violence and put in place prevention approaches that work. The information provided in this book will help communities learn more about the causes and impact of youth violence and identify actions each of us can take to stop youth violence.

This is a resource for dealing with both perpetrators and victims of violence and understanding the risk factors facing youth. Presenting an assessment of effects of exposure to violence and the continuity of aggression from early childhood to adulthood, it outlines an integration strategy for public policy towards prevention and treatment.

Edited by four leading violence researchers, this book takes a systemic view, offering a critical appraisal of research and theory that focuses on violence in youth, families, and communities.

How and why do young people become perpetrators and victims of violence? This volume examines violent behavior and addresses these questions in an international context. In youth violence, what roles are played by public spaces, the institutional context, socialization processes, religion and other kinds of ideologies, and, more generally, the experience of social disintegration? Are there global commonalities with regard to programs for preventing and intervening in youth crime? A look at the global trends of youth crime and violence and the development of social conditions for young people worldwide shows the importance of finding answers to these critical questions. The theoretical framework for articles in this volume is the theory of disintegration. The article authors examine whether the disintegration approach, which suggests that social disintegration encourages the development of social harmful attitudes and behavior, offers explanations for the forms of youth violence under examination and for the experience of violence. The analysis are deliberately very different from each other and show that there are many forms of youth violence that cannot be explained in terms of a single cause. The selection of topics reflects a comprehensive and committed approach to international social conditions and problems, as well as national differences, including minority and majority perspectives, which evade simplistic comparison. The volume concludes with a discussion of similarities and differences in youth violence prevention and intervention programs, with a view to establishing a basis for international collaborations. This is the 119th volume of New Directions for Youth Development, the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series dedicated to bringing together everyone concerned with helping young people, including scholars, practitioners, and people from different disciplines and professions. The result is a unique resource presenting thoughtful, multi-faceted approaches to helping our youth develop into responsible, stable, well-rounded citizens.