Youth Violence Prevention

Terrance Taylor

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138383883
• eBook ISBN: 9781317587361
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Youth violence is a pressing social concern and this book examines several elements of youth violence prevention. It offers state-of-the-art research on several different topics including: the relationship between bullying offending and victimization; the relationship between race and the code of the streets' explanation for violent offending; and how differences in methodology affect the validity of the multiple marginality theory of gang membership. It also examines an understudied population: gay gang members as well as providing an analysis of the degree to which risk factors for gang membership and violent offending are sex-specific. The critical component of this text is the melding of research with practical implications for youth violence prevention specialists. As such, the book should be useful to both academic and practitioner audiences.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Crime & Justice.

Introduction
Youth Violence Prevention

 

 

Youth violence continues to be a problem receiving a considerable amount of attention in contemporary American society. Although rates of youth violent crime have been declining since the early-to-mid 1990s (Cook and Laub 2002), media depictions of youth engaged in violent criminal activity continue to shape public perceptions that the problem is much more salient than it has been in the past. Additionally, as time progresses, new types of youth violence seem to emerge (e.g., the bullying outbreak) while others continue to fascinate the public (e.g., youth gangs).

The purpose of this special issue is to focus on some pressing problems shaping the nature of contemporary youth violence. The topics are eclectic, illustrating the considerable expanse of what is housed under the umbrella-topic ‘youth violence.’ What ties these articles together is an orientation focusing on theoretically driven, empirically supported, forward-looking approaches to combat youth violence. Authors have focused on tackling the questions of ‘What does the problem look like?’ ‘How do theoretically-derived risk factors shape the problem?’ and ‘How do we increase the likelihood that the problem can be reduced in the future?’ In short, each of the authors has provided another piece to the ‘evidence-based practices movement’ that I personally view as being essential to our discipline. Having said that, it is clear that not all criminologists place the same degree of emphasis on this approach, as illustrated by the recent series of exchanges published in the American Society of Criminology’s Criminologist, 2012.

I will be the first to admit that I drank (and continue to drink) the Kool-Aid: I believe science can change the world, and criminology is no exception. Additionally, I believe that many traditional, reactive criminal justice policies have not only been woefully ineffective, but in many ways harmful: They have simply intensified the problems they were initially intended to address or there were unintended consequences that raised new problems related to the old one. Theoretically driven, evidence-based prevention strategies are certainly not the only approach to developing effective policy, but I think the results are pretty clear by now that such approaches make programs and policies more likely than alternatives to be effective in actually affecting social problems like youth violence. Additionally, I think we can (and should) be proactive and focus on the paradigm of prevention, which often involves a multi-pronged approach. The public health approach, outlined so articulately by Mercy et al. (1993), has had a dramatic effect on the field of youth violence and is quite consistent with what I believe is the orientation that should lead our efforts. In that vein, the studies included in this special issue represent state of the art scientific studies of youth violence with a focus on how the specific findings can advance policy efforts.

Lovegrove and Cornell start us off with a study of bullying. Perhaps no youth violence-related topic has received as much attention as bullying among the general public during the past several years. Lovegrove and Cornell tackle this topic by rigorously examining the consequences of bullying among four groups: (1) youth not involved in bullying (as offenders or victims), (2) victims of bullying, (3) offenders who bully, and (3) youth who both experienced bullying victimization and who participated as bullying offenders. The results suggest that bullying, in general, has several adverse effects for youth, but these effects differ depending on which domain of bullying is examined. Lovegrove and Cornell present a number of important implications of their findings aimed at practitioners concerned about reducing bullying prevalence and the consequences that it has on youth. Their research is also firmly couched in the broader literature base, making a strong contribution to what we know about bullying, as well as employing a sophisticated modeling strategy allowing a more advanced understanding of the topic than many past studies were able to capture.

Carson takes a broader approach by examining violent offending more generally. Her work builds upon prior sociological and psychological literature to examine important questions related to the role that peer groups and individual attitudes shape youths’ involvement in violent crime. Her research is particularly salient because it tackles a topic that is quite contentious: racial differences in violent offending. This study is particularly relevant because it is able to capture individual orientations and broader peer relationships, as well as including a more racially/ethnically diverse sample than is available in many prior studies. While Carson devotes more attention to theoretical implications than policy implications, her results have at least two very important policy implications: (1) peer groups matter and (2) race/ethnicity matter. These findings suggest that strictly individual-change strategies of prevention may be missing an important piece of the puzzle unless they devote considerable attention to shaping individual involvement in peer groups. Additionally, they call into question the ‘one size fits all’ approach often found in prevention programs by suggesting that some forms of racial/ethnic-specific programming may be more effective at preventing youth violent offending.

Intravia, Wolff, Stewart, and Simons continue the examination of theoretical approaches used to explain racial/ethnic differences in violent offending by focusing on one approach that has gained considerable traction since its introduction near the peak of the ‘youth violence epidemic’: Elijah Anderson’s (1994) ‘code of the streets.’ The questions asked in this study are: (1) What role do perceptions of police discrimination play in youths’ acceptance of the values associated with the code of the streets? and (2) How is this relationship affected by different neighborhood characteristics? Their findings indicate that police can affect youths’ acceptance of attitudes conducive to violence and that the role of police is particularly salient in areas with high rates of violent crime. The policy implications raised by these findings are also clear: (1) more emphasis should be placed on developing community-level interventions and (2) one way to reduce youths’ involvement in violent crime is to improve relationships between police and the community.

Drake and Melde offer some important insights into the challenges of translating research into policy recommendations. They highlight a number of problems including the fact that reducing complex theoretical concepts to smaller (more digestible) tidbits inherently loses key meanings (potentially reducing the effectiveness of programs employing them) and that the confidence placed in key research findings is heavily dependent on the methodological strength of any particular study (potentially confounding cause and effect, making it difficult to sort through the risk and protective factors that should be targeted by programs, etc.). In short, they highlight the ‘problem of prediction;’—a factor which has often led to ineffective policies and frustration and division between academics and practitioners. Drake and Melde walk readers through the process of moving from theoretical approaches to analyses of empirical data to providing policy recommendations in a logical and detailed way that perfectly illustrates the points they raise. They also chose the perfect topical area to transition to one group often heavily involved in youth violence: youth gangs.

Panfil’s study is quite different. Her research presents a detailed depiction of the role of violence in the lives of an often neglected group: gay gang members. As with Lovegrove and Cornell, Panfil focuses on the effects of bullying on youth violence. Unlike Lovegrove and Cornell, Panfil relies on in-depth, detailed narratives collected from interviews with gang members. Despite the differences in approaches, the findings are somewhat congruent with each demonstrating the deleterious effects that bullying can have on youth perceptions and behaviors. One thing that is particularly interesting is that many of these gang members report engaging in violence as a response to displays of disrespect or as a way to develop a status intended to deter future transgressions – two of the key concepts involved in the code of the streets’ framework highlighted by Intravia and colleagues.

Next, we have the work of Hennigan, Maxson, Sloane, Kolnick, and Vindel. Their research is similar to that of Drake and Melde in that it highlights many of the challenges of trying to design and implement theoretically driven, evidence-based prevention efforts. Sharing their experiences in developing and implementing a risk assessment tool as part of a comprehensive gang-reduction initiative in Los Angeles, Hennigan and colleagues present information on the practical barriers they faced, the adjustments that were made, and the influence that the procedures had on the sample of youth recruited for participation in the program. By providing an overview of the context in which the program was developed, Hennigan and colleagues present in interesting case study that highlights a number of contextual barriers they faced when attempting to develop and use the approach advocated in this special issue when applied in a comprehensive anti-gang strategy setting.

Peterson and Morgan’s study ends this special issue. Using surveys collected from a multi-site study of middle- and high-school aged youth, the questions Peterson and Morgan ask are: (1) To what degree do risk factors for gang membership and other types of youth violence overlap? and (2) To what degree are these factors similar or different for males and females? Their findings reveal a pattern that while some risk factors are more predictive of general violence than gang membership, others are more predictive of gang membership than violent offending, and even more are predictive of both. These patterns were similar for both boys and girls in that there was considerable overlap in risk factors for gangs and violence, although there were others that predicted only one of the two outcomes. Peterson and Morgan couch their findings in the ongoing debate about the necessity of gender-specific programming (or whether more general prevention programs can be equally effective), concluding that there is a place for both. Specifically, they conclude that prevention programs developed to address youth gangs and other forms of youth violence can reasonably target a number of shared risk factors and be targeted at a population of both girls and boys. It should be recognized, however, that there may need to be some sex-specific content included, as well.

In conclusion, I hope that readers find the included studies informative in their efforts to understand, implement, and promote theoretically driven, evidence-based youth violence prevention programming. Several things should be clear from the studies included here. First, the phrase ‘youth violence’ includes a wide array of behaviors deemed problematic, and the precise form to be addressed must be clearly delineated before any prevention efforts should be designed. After all, not all behaviors are the same, and the risk and protective factors used to form programs may vary across behavioral domain. Second, concepts identified by empirically supported theoretical perspectives should play a key role in the identification of mechanisms of risk and protection used in prevention programming. This process, however, often is not as straightforward or smooth as we would like. Identifying important factors depends on the quality of the evidence-base, the groups and contexts that are targeted, and the ability to retain the complexity of relationships between theoretical concepts when they are reduced to more actionable items. In short, the relationship between science and practice is often much messier than many of us would like to admit. Finally, careful determinations must be made up-front concerning the clientele to be included, in terms of demographic characteristics like sex or race/ethnicity, whether individuals or groups are targeted, and in terms of the degree to which they are deemed ‘at risk’ of engaging in the problem behaviors we are trying to prevent. We must also accept the fact that even when the most sound strategies are employed, we are often woefully inadequate at predicting individual levels of risk. The point is, however, that the approaches advocated and illustrated here can help in these attempts. Taken as a whole, the issues raised by the collection of studies included in this special issue should be helpful in shaping future youth violence prevention efforts.

References

Anderson, E., 1994. The code of the streets. Atlantic Monthly, May.

Cook, P.J. and Laub, J.L., 2002. After the epidemic: recent trends in youth violence in the United States. Crime & justice, 29, 1–37.

Mercy, J.A., et al., 1993. Public health policy for preventing violence. Health Affairs, Winter 7–29.

Taylor Terrance J.

University of Missouri-St. Louis

Patterns of bullying and victimization associated with other problem behaviors among high school students: a conditional latent class approach

Peter J. Lovegrove and Dewey G. Cornell

University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

Though rates of bullying are commonly found to peak in middle schools, a non-negligible amount of bullying occurs among high schools too. More information regarding patterns of bullying involvement among high school students is needed, however, as well as greater insight into the relationship high school students’ bullying involvement has with other problem behaviors. This study used latent class analysis to construct typologies of bullying involvement among over 3500 high school students from Virginia. Covariates of latent class membership were also examined in an effort to better understand the association between bullying involvement and internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors. A latent class model containing four classes was constructed, composed of a non-involved class (65%), a bullies class (12%), a victims class (16%), and a bully-victims class (8%). Externalizing problem behaviors were significantly higher among students in the bullies and bully-victims classes, while internalizing problem behaviors were higher among victims and bully-victims. Implications for the literature and for practitioners are discussed, as well as limitations and future directions.

Introduction

Bullying is prevalent in most, if not all, schools (Wang et al. 2009), and bullying victimization has been linked to poorer adjustment in students. Meta-analyses of longitudinal studies conclude that bully victimization is associated with depression (Ttofi et al. 2011), internalizing problems (Reijntjes et al. 2010), and psychosomatic problems (Gini and Pozzoli 2009). Negative sequelae of bullying perpetration have also been demonstr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Introduction: Youth violence prevention
• 2. Patterns of bullying and victimization associated with other problem behaviors among high school students: a conditional latent class approach
• 3. The mediating effects of delinquent attitudes on race, race heterogeneity, and violent offending
• 4. Neighborhood-level differences in police discrimination and subcultural violence: a multilevel examination of adopting the code of the street
• 5. The problem of prediction: the efficacy of multiple marginality in cross-sectional versus prospective models
• 6. Gay gang- and crime-involved men’s experiences with homophobic bullying and harassment in schools
• 7. Identifying high-risk youth for secondary gang prevention
• 8. Sex differences and the overlap in youths’ risk factors for onset of violence and gang involvement
• Index