YOUTH VIOLENCE

Youth Violence

Youth Violence

This paper is based on the topic of youth violence. Youth violence can be defined as the intentional use of physical force or power (threatened or actual) exerted either by or against youth that likely or actually causes psychological or physical harm. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that this widespread violence in the United States disproportionately impacts youth ages 10 to 29 years old. These youth are affected as victims, perpetrators, and/or bystanders in these violent incidents. Youth violence can occur within peer or adult relationships, in homes, schools, and communities and can be quite varied in its appearance and forms. Prominent violent behaviors include verbal abuse, bullying, hitting, slapping, and the use of weapons (e.g., stabbing, shooting).

Moreover, youth violence includes serious violent and delinquent acts such as aggravated assault, robbery, rape, and homicide. Youth violence is marked by this wide variation in form, and therefore prevalence rates for some forms are quite common while others are quite rare (Loeber, R., & Farrington, D. 1998). Thus, violence touches most youth, but the most serious forms are unusual. This result has led to a great deal of attention to youth violence and has led to often confusing or complex statements about its patterns, impact, and needed responses.

Youth violence as a public health and youth development problem often includes verbal and nonverbal actions that imply and employ the coercive use of physical aggression, abuse, and mistreatment against another person including family members as well as peers and adults in home, school, community, and institutional settings. This type of youth violence involves problems and patterns that have clearly harmful and serious effects on the victim as well as involves forms that are problematic because they are violations of prevailing social norms for appropriate behavior.

Research differentiates four ...