# Presentation: 242096

## Youth Violence

- Presentation by
- Alan R. Brown, Ph.D.
- Principal Investigator
- Arizona Prevention Resource Center
- Arizona State University

- Source:  Youth Violence:  A Report of the Surgeon General, U.S. Public Health Service, Department of Health and Human Services

## Key Messages

***Caution*** -- The youth violence epidemic is not over
***Optimism*** -- Success in developing knowledge and tools to prevent serious violence gives grounds for hope and optimism
***The Major Challenge*** -- To direct - and redirect - resources toward effective research-based prevention strategies and programs

## Focus Areas

- Introductory Comments:
**Key Messages**
**Focus Areas**
**Major Research Findings and Conclusions**
**Myths About Youth Violence**
**The Magnitude of Youth Violence**
**Prevalence and Trends**

## Focus Areas (Continued)

**The Developmental Dynamics of Youth Violence**
**Onset Trajectories**
**Risk & Protective Factors for Youth Violence**
**Prevention and Intervention:  Strategies and Programs**
**Model, Promising, and Does Not Work**
**A Vision for the Future**

## Major Research Findings & Conclusions

-       Youth Violence Is Not An Intractable   	Problem
-       We Have Knowledge & Tools to 	Reduce/Prevent
-       Some Traditional/Innovative 	Approaches Have Failed To to Deliver
-       Must Use Research – Based 	Approaches & Correct Damaging 	Myths & Stereotypes That Interfere

## Myths About Youth Violence

- Myth:	The epidemic in the early 1990s is 			over.   Today, young people are much 		less likely to commit violent acts.
- Reality:	Violent acts are indeed less lethal and 		arrest rates for some violent acts have 		declined dramatically. However, self-		reported involvement in violence has 		_not_ declined and rates of arrest for 			aggravated assault remain 70% above 		pre-epidemic rates.

## Myths About Youth Violence

- Myth:	Most future violent offenders can be 		identified in early childhood.
- Reality:	Most violent offenders had no 				behavioral disorders or unusually high 		levels of aggression in early childhood.

## Myths About Youth Violence

- Myth:	Most children who are abused and/or 		neglected will become violent 				offenders.
- Reality:	Physical abuse and neglect are weak 		predictors of violent offending.

## Myths About Youth Violence

- Myth:	A higher proportion of African American 		and Hispanic youth than white youth 		become violent offenders.
- Reality:	There are no substantive differences in 		the self-reported prevalence of violent 		offending over the life course. There 		are large differences in arrest rates and 		some differences in career length.

## Myths About Youth Violence

- Myth:	A new breed of young super predators 		threatens the United States.
- Reality:	There is little evidence that young 			people today are more frequent, 			vicious, and remorseless offenders.

## Myths About Youth Violence

- Myth:	Getting tough with juvenile offenders by 		trying them in adult criminal courts and 		sending them to adult prisons reduces 		the likelihood of subsequent criminal 		behavior.
- Reality:	Youth sentenced to adult institutions 		have a higher rate of re-offending.

## Myths About Youth Violence

- Myth:	Nothing works with respect to 				preventing or treating violent offenders.
- Reality:	A number of prevention and 				intervention  programs have been 			demonstrated to work; often reducing 		rates of onset or offending by 50% or 		more.

## Myths About Youth Violence

- Myth:	Most violent youth will end up being 		arrested for a violent crime.
- Reality:	Most youth involved in violent behavior 		will never be arrested for a violent 			crime.

## Trends – Major Findings & Conclusions

## Trends – Major Findings & Conclusions

## Trends – Major Findings & Conclusions

## Trends – Major Findings & Conclusions

## Trends – Major Findings & Conclusions

**Young men--particularly those from minority groups--are disproportionately arrested for violent crimes. But self-reports indicate that differences between minority and majority populations and between young men and young women may not be as large as arrest records indicate or conventional wisdom holds. Race/ethnicity, considered in isolation from other life circumstances, sheds little light on a given child's or adolescent's propensity for engaging in violence.**** **
**Schools nationwide are relatively safe. Compared to homes and neighborhoods, schools have fewer homicides and nonfatal injuries. Youths at greatest risk of being killed in school-associated violence are those from a racial or ethnic minority, senior high schools, and urban school districts. **

## Pathways – Major Findings & Conclusions

**There are two general onset trajectories for youth violence--an early one, in which violence begins before puberty, and a late one, in which violence begins in adolescence. Youths who become violent before about age 13 generally commit more crimes, and more serious crimes, for a longer time. These young people exhibit a pattern of escalating violence through childhood, and they sometimes continue their violence into adulthood. **
**Most youth violence begins in adolescence and ends with the transition into adulthood. **
**Most highly aggressive children or children with behavioral disorders do not become serious violent offenders. **

## Pathways – Major Findings & Conclusions

**Surveys consistently find that about 30 to 40 percent of male youths and 15 to 30 percent of female youths report having committed a serious violent offense by age 17. **
**Serious violence is part of a lifestyle that includes drugs, guns, precocious sex, and other risky behaviors. Youths involved in serious violence often commit many other types of crimes and exhibit other problem behaviors, presenting a serious challenge to intervention efforts. Successful interventions must confront not only the violent behavior of these young people, but also their lifestyles, which are teeming with risk. **

## Pathways – Major Findings & Conclusions

**The differences in patterns of serious violence by age of onset and the relatively constant rates of individual offending have important implications for prevention and intervention programs. Early childhood programs that target at-risk children and families are critical for preventing the onset of a chronic violent career, but programs must also be developed to combat late-onset violence. **
**The importance of late-onset violence prevention is not widely recognized or well understood. Substantial numbers of serious violent offenders emerge in adolescence without warning signs in childhood. A comprehensive community prevention strategy must address both onset patterns and ferret out their causes and risk factors.**

## Pathways – Major Findings & Conclusions

## Pathways – Major Findings & Conclusions

## Risk & Protective Factors – Major Findings & Conclusions

**Risk and protective factors exist in every area of life--individual, family, school, peer group, and community. Individual characteristics interact in complex ways with people and conditions in the environment to produce violent behavior. **
**Risk and protective factors vary in predictive power depending on when in the course of development they occur. As children move from infancy to early adulthood, some risk factors will become more important and others less important. Substance use, for example, is a much stronger risk factor at age 9 than it is at age 14.**** **

## Risk & Protective Factors – Major Findings & Conclusions

**The strongest risk factors during childhood are involvement in serious but not necessarily violent criminal behavior, substance use, being male, physical aggression, low family socioeconomic status or poverty and antisocial parents--all individual or family attributes or conditions. **
**During adolescence, the influence of family is largely supplanted by peer influences. The strongest risk factors are weak ties to conventional peers, ties to antisocial or delinquent peers, belonging to a gang, and involvement in other criminal acts. **

## Risk & Protective Factors – Major Findings & Conclusions

**Risk factors do not operate in isolation--the more risk factors a child or young person is exposed to, the greater the likelihood that he or she will become violent. Risk factors can be buffered by protective factors, however. An adolescent with an intolerant attitude toward deviance, for example, is unlikely to seek or be sought out by delinquent peers, a strong risk factor for violence at that age. **
**Given the strong evidence that risk factors predict the likelihood of future violence, they are useful for identifying vulnerable populations that may benefit from intervention efforts. Risk markers such as race or ethnicity are frequently confused with risk factors; risk markers have no causal relation to violence. **

## Risk & Protective Factors – Major Findings & Conclusions

**No single risk factor or combination of factors can predict violence with unerring accuracy. Most young people exposed to a single risk factor will not become involved in violent behavior; similarly, many young people exposed to multiple risks will not become violent. By the same token, protective factors cannot guarantee that a child exposed to risk will not become violent. **

## Risk & Protective Factors – Major Findings & Conclusions

## Risk & Protective Factors – Major Findings & Conclusions

**Lipsey and Derzon’s Classes of Risk Factors**

| Personal Characteristics
Gender    Male gender
Ethnicity    Minority race
IQ    Learning problems    Low IQ    Low IQ, nonverbal    Low IQ, verbal    Low language ability
Medical/physical    Developmental history    Medical conditions    Medical examinations    Physical development
 | 
School attitude/performance    Dropped out from school    Low interest in education    Low school achievement    Poor-quality school    Truancy
Psychological condition    Behavior characteristics    High activity level    High daring    Impulsiveness    Poor eating habits    Psychopathology    Short attention span
 |
| --- | --- |

## Risk & Protective Factors – Major Findings & Conclusions

| Family Characteristics
Antisocial parents    Criminal parent    Parent psychopathology    Parent violent
Abusive parents    Child emotional abuse    Maltreated as child    Neglected as child    Physically abused as child    Sexually abused as child
Broken home    Broken home    Separated from parents
Parent-child relations    Discipline, mixed    Discipline, punitive    Low parent involvement    Low supervision    Low warmth    Negative attitude 
    Poor parent-child relations    to child     |     
    Poor parental practices    Severity in child training
Socioeconomic status    Low SES, family    Low SES, juvenile    Low-quality neighborhood    Low-status job, parents    Not employed, juvenile
Other family characteristics    Parent background    High family stress    Large family size    Marital discord    Social
Social ties    Few social activities    Low popularity
Antisocial peers    Antisocial peers    Peer criminality    Peer normlessness
 |
| --- | --- |

**Lipsey and Derzon’s Classes of Risk Factors**

## Media EffectsSerious Violence

**Experimental studies find a small but statistically significant effect of exposure to media violence on short-term serious violence (*****r *****= .13)**
**Evidence for long-term effects on serious violence is mixed; the effect sizes are small (*****r***** = .00 -.22) and there is little evidence for any consistent long-term effect.**
**There is little research to date on the effects of exposure to violence in the other media -- video games, music videos, and internet**

## Media EffectsSerious Violence

**Experimental studies find a strong relationship (*****r***** = .32) between exposure to television and film violence and short-term aggression.**
**Longitudinal studies find mixed evidence for long-term effects.  When statistically significant effects were found, they were typically small.**
**There is little research on the effects of exposure to violence in the other media.  A recent meta-analysis on exposure to violent video games found a small influence on physical aggression (*****r *****< .20)**

## Preventing Youth Violence – Major Findings & Conclusions

**A number of youth violence intervention and prevention programs have demonstrated that they are effective; assertions that "nothing works" are false. **
**Most highly effective programs combine components that address both individual risks and environmental conditions, particularly building individual skills and competencies, parent effectiveness training, improving the social climate of the school, and changes in type and level of involvement in peer groups. **
**Rigorous evaluation of programs is critical. While hundreds of prevention programs are being used in schools and communities throughout the country, little is known about the effects of most of them.**

## Preventing Youth Violence – Major Findings & Conclusions

**At the time this report was prepared, nearly half of the most thoroughly evaluated strategies for preventing violence had been shown to be ineffective--and a few were known to harm participants. **
**In schools, interventions that target change in the social context appear to be more effective, on average, than those that attempt to change individual attitudes, skills, and risk behaviors. **
**Involvement with delinquent peers and gang membership are two of the most powerful predictors of violence, yet few effective interventions have been developed to address these problems. **

## Preventing Youth Violence – Major Findings & Conclusions

**Program effectiveness depends as much on the quality of implementation as on the type of intervention. Many programs are ineffective not because their strategy is misguided, but because the quality of implementation is poor****. **

## Preventing Youth Violence – Major Findings & Conclusions

**Several major reviews of youth violence prevention and intervention programs have been published in the past decade. **
***Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn’t, What’s Promising.***** *****A Report to the United States Congress *****(Sherman et al., 1997) **
**The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s *****A Sourcebook: Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offenders***** (Howell et al., 1995) **
**The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s *****Guide for Implementing the Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offenders***** (Howell, 1995) **
**The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s *****Best Practices of Youth Violence Prevention: A Sourcebook for Community Action***** (Thornton et al., 2000) **
**The American Youth Policy Forum’s *****Less Hype, More Help: Reducing Juvenile Crime, What Works—And What Doesn’t***** (Mendel, 2000) **
**The Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence’s *****Blueprints for Violence Prevention *****(Elliott & Tolan, 1999) **
**"School-Based Crime Prevention" (Gottfredson et al., in press) **

## Scientific Criteria:  Programs

*Model*
- Rigorous experimental/quasi-experimental design
- Significant deterrent effects on:
- Level 1:  violence or serious delinquency
- Level 2:  strong risk factors (effect size >0.3)
- Replication with demonstrated effects
- Long-term sustainability (1 year)

## Preventing Youth Violence – Major Findings & Conclusions

**Ineffective Strategies**
***Primary Prevention: Universal***
- Peer counseling, peer mediation, peer leaders
- Nonpromotion to succeeding grades
***Secondary Prevention: Selected***
- Gun buyback programs
- Firearm training
- Mandatory gun ownership
- Redirecting youth behavior
- Shifting peer group norms
***Tertiary Prevention: Indicated***
- Boot camps
- Residential programs
- Milieu treatment
- Behavioral token programs
- Waivers to adult court
- Social casework
- Individual counseling

## Programs That Work

- Seattle Social Development Project
- Prenatal and Infancy Home Visitation by Nurses
- Functional Family Therapy
- Multisystemic Therapy
- Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care

- Life Skills Training
- The Midwestern Prevention Project

## Programs That Work

**PATHS:  Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies**
**I Can Problem Solve**
**Iowa Strengthening Families Program**
**Preparing for the Drug-Free Years**
**LIFT:  Linking the Interests of Families and Teachers**
**The Incredible Years Series**

**Bullying Prevention Program**
**Good Behavior Game**
**Parent Child Development Center Programs**
**Parent-Child Interaction Training**
**Yale Child Welfare Project**
**FAST:  Families and Schools Together**
**Preventive Intervention**
**The Quantum Opportunities Program**

## A Vision for the Future

- Continue to build the science base
- Accelerate the decline in gun use by youth
- Facilitate entry of youth into effective intervention programs rather than incarcerating them
- Disseminate model programs with incentives for fidelity

## A Vision for the Future (Cont’d)

- Provide training and certification programs for intervention personnel
- Improve public awareness of effective interventions
- Convene youth and families, researchers, and private and public organizations for a youth violence summit
- Improve federal, state, and local strategies for reporting crime and violent death information

## About Suicide

_**Be Aware of the Warning Signs**_
- Talks about committing suicide
- Has trouble eating or sleeping
- Experiences drastic changes in behavior
- Withdraws from friends and/or social activities
- Loses interest in hobbies, work, school, etc.
- Prepares for death by making out a will and final arrangements
- Gives away prized possessions
- Has attempted suicide before
- Takes unnecessary risks
- Has had recent severe losses
- Is preoccupied with death and dying
- Loses interest in their personal appearance
- Increases their use of alcohol or drugs

## About Suicide

_**What to Do**_
- Be direct. Talk openly and matter-of-factly about suicide.
- Be willing to listen.  Allow expressions of feelings. Accept the feelings.
- Be non-judgmental.  Don’t debate whether suicide is right or wrong, or feelings are good or bad.  Don’t lecture on the value of life.
- Get involved.  Become available.  Show interest and support.
- Don’t dare him or her to do it.
- Don’t act shocked.  This will put distance between you.
- Don’t be sworn to secrecy.  Seek support.
- Offer hope that alternatives are available but do not offer glib    reassurance.
- Take action.  Remove means, such as guns or stockpiled pills.
- Get help from persons or agencies specializing in crisis intervention and suicide prevention.

## About Suicide

_**Be Aware of Feelings**_
- Can’t stop the pain
- Can’t think clearly
- Can’t make decisions
- Can’t see any way out
- Can’t sleep, eat or work
- Can’t get out of depression
- Can’t make the sadness go away
- Can’t see a future without pain
- Can’t see themselves as worthwhile
- Can’t get someone’s attention
- Can’t seem to get control