Adolescent Violence: A View From the Street

Typically, studies on violence have focused on propensity, that is, on who is or is not likely to become violent. But propensity models do not account for the transactional, contingent nature of violence or for within-person variability over time or place. Further, they cannot explain the occurrence or nonoccurrence of a violent event—that mixture of motivation, context, and facilitation that channels arousal or other actions into actual violence or the failure of an event to escalate to violence despite the presence of the dynamic factors that would make it likely.

Researchers at Columbia University's Center for Violence Research and Prevention are conducting a qualitative, multistage study on adolescent violence that draws strategically from theories of cognitive and developmental psychology to construct a situational framework for understanding violent behavior. Cosponsors of this research include the
National Institute of Justice (NIJ), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.

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http://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/fs000189.txt