Either way, violence has come to define the culture of urban youth. And either way, violence has its consequences. In addition to any fear or socio-economic disturbance that youth violence may cause, the direct result is that homicide is now the leading cause of death among African-American youth, and the second-leading cause of death for youth in general. Because of this, the Surgeon General and other public health experts have begun to approach youth violence as a medical epidemic, a matter of public health, and to act against it just as they would against an infectious disease. 

 

In this context, "urban" refers to the densely-populated central districts of a large metropolitan area. Though it technically denotes only a particular geographic area, the term implicitly refers to a certain defining culture of American cities. Specifically, that culture is generally considered to be ethnically non-white, to have low economic and academic opportunity, and to have a strong presence of youth violence—all features that are minimally present in many rural and most suburban areas. 

 

 

"Violence" here refers to the use or threat of use of potentially lethal weapons with the intent of inflicting serious injury. The US justice system distinguishes four types of crimes that entail such violence: armed robbery, aggravated assault, rape and homicide. 

 

 

Studies of youth violence have investigated how every possible influence on a youth's life could be a violent influence. Given the huge variance of such influences, there is necessarily a huge variance in the theorized causes of youth violence. Most can be grouped into two categories: risk factors and situational factors. Situational factors are the events preceding a violent action that directly caused the action. For example, if a youth were to get into an argument with a friend, feel insulted and then shoot at him, the original dispute that started the argumentand the words of the insult would both be situational causes. These causes can stretch even further into the past: if the youth was particularly stressed that day because he had failed a class, or if he only owned a gun in the first place because he bought one from a friend, these would also be situational causes. 

 

 

 

 

 

Most of the literature on urban youth violence examines intentional programs that can be designed, funded and evaluated by a formal study. The most effective ones work directly with youth and their families, providing training in conflict resolution, parenting tactics and other life skills. Mentoring programs also fall into this category. The least effective methods are those that expose youth to greater degrees of stress and violence, such as boot camps, "scared straight" programs, grade non-promotion and trial in adult courts. Longer sentences have been shown to reduce crime rates, but they also reduce the likelihood that the youth being sentenced will learn to change their behavior. 

 

Our analysis here will move toward seeing community development as the ultimate goal in preventing urban youth violence. Such a conclusion grows from the general picture presented in the compilation of studies. Their conclusions point to the need for violent youth needing to be exposed to peaceful and productive lifestyles by any means possible. Anything that can put youth into non-violent surroundings tends to be effective, and anything that puts them into violent surroundings tends to cause more violence. 

 

 QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION & DISCUSSION 

 

1. What role, if any, do you feel there is for violence in modern society? 
2. What sorts of methods for preventing youth violence have you heard in your own experience to be effective? Do you know of any that are counterproductive?
3. Why do you think youth engage in violent behavior? Did reading this article change that perspective in any way? What further stories and studies do you need? 
4. Do you agree with the account here of the differences between urban youth violence and youth violence in other situations? If not, how would you describe the urban situation? 

 

  IMPLICATIONS

1. Youth violence is one of the most important problems facing urban youth.
2. All parts of society that have influence on youth are responsible for the culture of violence, in proportion to their influence. 
3. Youth violence is not an intractable problem: there are a variety of programs that have been empirically found to be both effective and replicable in other contexts. 

 

  Peter Bass cCYS

 

Dean Borgman, “Urban Violence,” Ch. 11 in Hear My Story: Understanding the Cries of Urban Youth, Hendrickson Publishers, 2003; pp. 205-228.

OVERVIEW

Dean Borgman dedicates a section of his book on the needs of youth to various types of youth violence, from child soldiers in war zones around the world to school shooters in the suburbs to suicide.  His chapter on urban violence is therefore intended both as an explanation of that particular type of violence and as a contrast with the other types.

He begins by contrasting the urban setting—where resources are  strained with other needs—to the suburbs where a greater proportion of the community's resources can be dedicated to youth.  The fact that America's patterns of income inequality often break down along these urban/suburban lines lends a particular character to the violence in urban areas. 

The model of violence in suburban areas is for a particularly isolated and disrespected individuals to lash out in pent-up anger.  In urban areas this disrespect is spread throughout the community by the lack of economic opportunities, institutional racism and other disadvantages.  Borgman describes the different ways that urban and suburban people view each other, and gives an account of the details of life in urban areas.  He explains how the dearth of resources such as banks, jobs and recreational leagues creates a community-wide shortage of status and respect, and youth then fight over what status they can get their hands on. 

Borgman illustrates this system by explaining the various cultural symbols and motifs of urban youth culture, as well as the role of crucial factors like the prison system's relation to urban violence.  He tries to make the account as personal and humanizing as possible, dedicating about as much space to real-life examples and stories as to explanation.

 

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. In which of the two worlds described in the beginning of the chapter do you live?

2. Do all urban people live in the same kind of community? Are only a small minority of urban youth’s prone to violence?

3.  Can urban dwellers be unaware of all that goes on in the ghetto and on the streets? Must all urban youth be familiar with the code of the streets and how to handle violent threats?

4.  How willing are the human race, your country, and you to deal with the radical divide between the haves and have-nots?  With racism and ethnic divisions?

 

 

IMPLICATIONS

1.  The well-being of inner cities is in the interest of all, from urban to suburban to rural, and from poor to very rich.

2.  Gross disparities between child care, early education, and community opportunities must be closed in the interest of national human resources and the cost of the criminal justice system, prisons and welfare.

3.  We must both understand and try to change toxic social conditions that produce youthful violence, and hold individuals and communities responsible. The polarizing and paralyzing gap between liberal and conservative perspectives on social problems must be bridged for the good of all.

4.  While attending to systemic change, we must encourage those who work with high risk youth and support their work.

 

Peter Bass   cCYS

 

 John Rich (2009) Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 

OVERVIEW 

The express purpose of this book is to provide a human face to the discussion of youth violence. The author, John Rich, was a primary-care doctor at Boston City Hospital who repeatedly saw young black men brought into the emergency room with gunshot wounds. If you follow the local Boston news, whenever a shooting is reported in the papers it is invariably mentioned that the victim was taken to Boston City Hospital. Rich was unnerved, first of all by the steady flow of shooting victims to his workplace, and secondly, by the reactions of his coworkers to these victims. The more cynical of them insisted that all of these young men were gangsters, though of course they would claim to be innocent victims as soon as they enter the hospital. No one ever just "gets shot", it was said: these kids got themselves shot. The more charitable observers allowed some youth are probably victims while some are serious criminals, but maintained no mental model for anything in between these extremes. Rich decided to start interviewing as many young shooting victims as he could, in the hopes of finding a reality to fill in the gap in his coworkers' viewpoints.

Kari 

Kari, age 18, was shot when a kid in his neighborhood tried to rob him of a gold chain. The mugger was on a bicycle when he made his demand; Kari pushed him down and ran. He was shot in the back as he ran, and once he had fallen down the thief walked up to him and removed his chain, but did not kill him. The police arrived and told him, "Don't do nothing stupid, like die," and told everyone else not to touch him. Kari said that the shooting was a wake-up call to him, as he had a son and he was worried that he might not be around for him. In the past he had spent little time with his son, and he realized how it affected him that his own father never spent much time with him. Kari cooperated with the police and the shooter was caught—the shooter had previously been arrested for armed robbery, but was allowed out on bail in order to take care of his disabled mother—and Kari took a lot of criticism in his neighborhood for not handling the situation on his own. He says he partly blames himself for what happened, as he should've just given the man the chain—now, he doesn't even wear any jewelry anymore. Kari is hoping to find work in the music industry; he graduated from high school but says he has no desire to go to college, as he doesn't think he would be able to handle the stress.

David 

David was shot when he his cousin Antoine were mistaken for someone else. David received only minor injuries, but his cousin, who was his best friend, was killed. Now he finds he has very little capacity for emotion anymore; that he can relate to his friends, family and his girlfriend on an intellectual level, but has trouble feeling anything for them. He is extremely angry at the people who shot him, but he has no intentions of pursuing them: he knows what sort of people they are, and hopes they will get what they deserve soon enough. Still, he asks why they weren't more careful when looking for their targets, why they didn't make sure they shot the right people. He says he's convinced they didn't care; they just wanted to kill somebody.

Baron 

Baron received four stab wounds in a knife fight. He has the opposite problem from David: he is so full of emotions he can't sleep, so he smokes marijuana in order to make his nightmares go away. 

Mark

Mark was shot after getting into a fight during a basketball game. He was alone, and as the fight escalated, he was attacked by several people at once. He was released from the hospital with his leg in a cast and no real means of support; he lives alone in a dilapidated apartment with a broken front door, with no income, subsisting off of meals that his father brings once a day. He feels extremely unsafe in his vulnerable position—once, his car windows were smashed and he was in too poor a condition to leave the apartment. He has no means of taking care of his two sons. Mark says he's been borderline-homeless since he was fifteen, so he's used to taking care of himself. He admits he used to sell drugs and carry a gun, but he left all of that behind long ago. He only did it in the first place to earn a living until he could find a job. 

 

Roy 

Roy was an A-student in grade school and went to high school at Lincoln-Sudbury through the Metco program. His parents began having children as teenagers and taught all their kids how to fight. Even though Roy was small, he had no qualms about carrying a brick for self-defense, and putting it to use. He believes there’s no fair way to physically harm another person, so there’s no such thing as a fair fight. Roy's real trouble began when some old friends of his robbed his uncle. Roy demanded they return the stolen goods. When they did not, he went over to their house, "and by the time the night was over, nine people were shot."

 

He was arrested but expected his victims would not cooperate with the police: "because these were tough guys, not cowards." Instead, his victims pressed charges under assumed names. Even though Roy thought he could probably beat such a dubious trial, he decided to plead guilty and received three to five years, in order to avoid the risk of a much longer sentence. He was not too concerned about being in jail, given it kept him out of the dangers of being at home. Roy's favorite drink was Heineken on ice. He had strong opinions and would argue passionately whenever he got a chance.

 

In pre-release Roy worked with a local non-profit, who recognized his intelligence and managed to find him an internship in Senator John Kerry's office. Even so, his past continued to haunt him. He was offered a full-time job in the Senator's office, but instead of taking it he vanished. 

 

Author Dr. John Rich eventually learned Roy had left in order to clean up the lose ends of his previous life; some of his old enemies were looking for him again. A year later Roy resurfaced, saying he had solved the situation and had done so without violence and without breaking the law. For several years he worked as an underling in the Senator's office, after which he took a job with the Health Commission, counseling young men who had recently been released from the hospital for violent injuries. 

 

Even so, Roy’s troubles weren't over. After his long-term girlfriend left him, with whom he had three kids, Roy went on a tour of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country, from L.A. to Chicago to New York to D.C., caring little whether he put himself in danger. He told of walking into a public place, wearing neutral colors, pulling out a joint, and when the local gangsters asked him who he was and what he was doing there, replying that he was from Boston and had heard so much about the neighborhood he wanted to see it for himself.

Jimmy

Jimmy was a short, heavy-set 17-year-old with a nasal voice. He was shot by a former associate from his gang; his theory is that an enemy of his had paid the fellow to shoot him. Jimmy says his family watches out for each other; if one of them gets shot then the whole family will come after the shooter. He argues that among his generation, youth engage in violence because they want to make a reputation for themselves, to be known, to be somebody, and the only way to do that is to be successfully violent. He says it's possible to make a reputation doing "good" things, like getting good grades at school, but getting a reputation for being bad has the added benefit that people are scared of you and won't mess with you. Kids want to be somebody, and reputations don't come for free: they have to be earned. It used to be only older kids had this mentality, he said, but now everyone is concerned about being perceived as weak. When asked how he thought such violence could end, Jimmy gave it some serious thought and replied… it probably won't end. Everyone has some friend or relative who's been shot or killed, and they're going to seek revenge until eventually there's no one left on the streets. When asked about his own safety, Jimmy replied he wasn't afraid to die, as he had already been shot. He believes in God, and admits he’s not on very good terms with Him right now. He hopes someday to be so, but has no idea when that might be. 

 

  Roy’s Explanation

 

Rich found Jimmy's rationale to be oddly coherent. He wasn't sure what to make of it, so he asked Roy about it. Roy replied that kids in poor neighborhoods are used to being treated like they don't exist. They don't know anyone with jobs or legitimate potential in life, so they feel like society ignores them. A person in such a situation would be desperate for any way to get noticed, and violence is an obvious solution: even if the world is smarter and richer and more successful, the violent person is stronger than such people, more dangerous than they. 

 

Roy then asked what Jimmy looked like, under the assumption that only someone without any other talents would resort to gang violence: he was probably not tall enough to be a good basketball player, probably not handsome enough to attract girls, and probably not smart enough to succeed in school. Roy said if a kid can't be famous, he'll settle for being infamous; at least that way he's known and isn't a nobody. He said Jimmy's pursuit of violence was just like Rich's pursuit of the medical profession: Rich wanted to be the best doctor he could be, Roy said, to impress his coworkers, to make a name for himself and feel good about himself. Similarly, Jimmy was trying to make a name for himself through violence. Roy asked Rich, "What would you be if you weren't a doctor? Think about yourself right now, could you see yourself being satisfied with your existence if you flipped burgers for a living?"

Conclusion 

 For the most part, these stories are presented as transcripts of Rich's dialogues with each youth. There is very little commentary: Rich gives his own emotional reactions to each story as he tells it, and offers a short narrative of how he found each interview, but other than that the stories are left to stand on their own. He is a capable observer; he has the advantage of being a primary care doctor; he's used to asking people personal questions and expecting them to answer confidentially. The result in this book is a better grass-roots description and explanation of urban youth violence than most people, even some in leadership, ministry or policy positions really have. 

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION 

1. Do you think most victims of urban youth violence are themselves involved in violence? How would you characterize the spectrum of innocence among victims? Are most of them towards the innocent end, or most about as guilty as their assailants? How should this affect our judicial policy? 

2. How do you think most people form opinions on youth violence—what influences them to take a cynical view or a charitable view, a simplistic view or a nuanced view? What sorts of people tend to form each class of opinion? 

 

 IMPLICATIONS 

  1. Our understanding of an issue as culturally volatile as the culpability of the victims of youth violence must be more nuanced than simply “innocent” or “guilty”.

2. Violence affects society at every level; it’s very difficult to separate people into “innocent” and “guilty” camps. Everyone from the hardened criminal to the youth worker has a positive and negative influences on the system, and all stand to benefit from peace. 

 

Peter Bass,   cCYS

 

Lawrence Harmon, “True toll of violence in Boston,” The Boston Globe, 19Jun’10, A13.

OVERVIEW

Because five children under the age of 15 were shot and killed in Boston within a few weeks of spring, 2010, it’s understandable that the murder of Jefferson Cory Johnson, during that same period, was largely overlooked. He was a 27-year-old African American man, after all, killed in an area of Boston where such deaths are not totally unexpected.

But 600 persons did not overlook this death and turned out to honor this well-liked, person of faith and church member, a community-minded civic servant, a good husband and father of two young daughters, 6 and 4.

One of the persons remembering Cory Johnson was Frank Sullivan, a Boston Fire Department dispatcher. He was a mentor in a tutoring program Cory Johnson attended on his way through St. Gregory’s School in Dorchester and Boston Latin Academy. Sullivan well understands shooting victims targeted for no good reason.

In 1979, then 24, Sullivan was shot twice in the head after a late night meal in Chinatown. Sullivan’s offense that night had been asking some unruly diners who were tossing food around the restaurant to control themselves….

The shooting robbed him of some of his sight, but it gave him incredible insight into the challenging lives of the city’s young people. For a while, Sullivan contemplated the priesthood. He settled instead on devoting his Saturdays during the 1980s and 1990s to tutoring boys who wanted to live the right way even if they lived in the wrong neighborhood.

These two connected lives cause us to ponder the many ways dynamic inner-city neighborhoods are deprived of their fathers and positive male role models, how a growing number of helping hands are trying to make a difference, and how our cities need to regret such losses and make urban development, along with the best possible crime prevention, their high priority.

 

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. Name all you can who suffered any kind of loss in the death of Cory Johnson.

2. What different ways (attitudes and behavior/actions) could Frank Sullivan’s life have taken after he was shot twice in the head for doing the right thing?

3. Would you be willing, are you willing, (as Spike Lee put it) to do the right thing no matter what it might cost you? Why or why not?

4. What happens to a community when most people say, “I won’t get involved if the cost is too much.”

5. How would you urge young fathers in high risk neighborhoods to stay on the streets, provide us a positive role model, and be a faithful husband and good father to your kids?

IMPLICATIONS

1. We refuse to say that Cory Johnson’s life was wasted and his death meaningless.

2. Falsehoods, anger, revenge and violence are powerful, but truth, love and forgiveness can overcome… if given a chance.

3. Chaotic violence and disregard for life are not new; they’ve been present throughout human history. Only their cultural and situational styles have changed.

4. People of good will and people of faith have not always provided the antidote and alternative to ruthless violence. That is to our shame. But crises often stir the good to action.

5. Purposeful discussion, rigorous study, creative and innovative policy changes, and broad collaborations can make a difference. The alternative is complaints and apathy.

 

Dean Borgman cCYS

 

URBAN YOUTH VIOLENCE RESOURCES

ORGANIZATIONS & WEBSITES

Safehorizon.org Creating effective and inventive services to help children, teens and young adult address violence and abuse. Reaching youth with programs in schools, on the streets, and in their communities.

 

Tkf.org The Tariq Khamisa Foundation is dedicated to breaking the cycle of youth violence by Empowering Kids, Saving Lives, Teaching Peace. Works with elementary, middle and high school kids with school-based nonviolence programs and curriculum.

 

CeaseFire A Non-profit educational research project that provides dispute resolution services, research and training, which improves the capacity of people and organizations to resolve disputes. 

Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, University of Chicago  A resource for information on how to build a successful violence prevention program.

 

Homicide stats and information in Boston, from the Globe, dating back to 2008:http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2010_murders_in_boston/

 

Annual national youth violence stats from the FBI: http://ojjdp.ncjrs.gov/ojstatbb/default.asp

 

Annual national youth violence stats from the Bureau of Justice Statistics: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm

 

Some user-friendly factsheets from the CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/youthviolence/index.html

 

BOOKS and Articles

General Resources

Borgman, Dean. (2003) Hear My Story: Understanding the Cries of Troubled Youth, Ch. 11, “Urban Violence,” Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 418pp. Here urban violence is distinguished from school shootings of the 1990s (Chs. 9-10) and analyzed in the context of street culture.

 

Blumstein, Alfred, and Joel Wallman. (2005).  “The Crime Drop and Beyond.”Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 125-146. Uses statistical data to argue that the national crime drop of the 1990s was due to a combination of several factors: a stronger economy, higher incarceration rates, the legalization of abortion, and the relative rejection of crack cocaine by a new generation of youth. 

 

Braga, Anthony A, David Hureau and Christopher Winship. (2008) "Losing Faith? Police, Black Churches, and the Resurgence of Youth Violence in Boston." Ohio State Law Journal, 141-172. An update to the previous article, explaining why Operation Ceasefire had unraveled and what is being done to learn from these mistakes.

 

Canada, Geoffrey (1995) Fist, stick, knife, gun: a personal history of violence in America, Boston: Beacon Press, 179pp. A personal history of his growing up and his neighborhood from the successful leader of Harlem’s Children Zone. A stunning explanation of childhood violence in a violent society.

 

Engel, Len. (May 2008) “Promoting Public Safety Through Successful Community Tansition.” Crime and Justice Institute. This is a very good discussion of the problems facing the Massachusetts state prison system.  It argues that substance-abuse treatment and re-entry programs would save taxpayers $7 for every $1 invested, and that these programs are currently neglected.

 

Garbarino, James. (1999) Lost Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violenct and How We Can Save Them, NY: Free Press, 274pp. An early pioneer and expert in youthful violence explores both internal and external factors. “These boys fall victim to an unfortunate synchronicity between the demons inhabiting their own internal world and the corrupting influences of modern American culture.”

 

Hamilton, S.F., and M.A. Hamilton, editors. (2004) The Handbook of Youth Development: Coming of Age in American Communities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. A thorough presentation of the positive youth development approach.

 

Prothrow-Stith, Deborah (1991) Deadly Consequences: How Violence Is Destroying Our Teenage Population and a Plan to Begin Solving the Problem, NY: HarperCollins, 269pp. The author was one of the early voices calling for urban violence to be made a public health issue. Here she deals with the cultures of poverty, violence and guns—explaining how a public health approach can work to reduce violence.

 

Wilson, Amos N. (1991) Understanding Black Adolescent Male Violence: Its Remediation and Prevention, NYL Afrikan World Infosystems, 92pp. This book from the Black community itself explains how contemporary American society creates and sustains Black-on’Black adolescent criminality, asserting that Black-on-Black adolescent violence is rooted in historical and contemporary White-on-Black violence. Offers positive remedial and preventive measures.

 

Winship, Christopher and Jenny Berrien. (1999) "Boston Cops and Black Churches." Public Interest, 52-68. The story of Operation Ceasefire in Boston: how it worked and why.

 

Stories and Ethnographic Studies

Anderson, Elijah. (1999) "Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City." New York: Norton.  Uses real-world stories to illustrate social mores of respect and honor among violent youth in Philadelphia.

 

Bourgois, Philippe. (2003) "In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio." 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  The author spent years doing fieldwork and gaining the trust of drug dealers in East Harlem.

 

Jones, LeAlan and Lloyd Newman with David Isay. (1997) "Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago." New York: Simon and Schuster, Pocket Books. Two black teenagers share their observations of life in Chicago’s Ida B. Wells Housing Project. "Where we live is a second America where the laws of the land don't apply and the laws of the street do. You must learn Our America as we must learn your America, so that maybe, someday we can become one."

 

Kotlowitz, Alex. (1991) "There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America." New York: Random House, Anchor Books. The author chronicles the lives of two brothers as they grow up in a Chicago housing project.

 

Macleod, Jay. (2008) "Ain’t No Makin It: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income Neighborhood." 3rd ed. Boulder Colorado: Westview Press. This ethnographic study follows the lives two groups of young men living in public housing projects.  It reveals some of the social and cultural barriers that both groups face in succeeding in life

 

Studies of Boston

Braga, Anthony A.m and Christopher Winship. (September 26, 2005) "Creating an Effective Foundation to Prevent Youth Violence: Lessons Learned from Boston in the 1990s." Rappaport Institute Policy Brief PB-2005-5.

 

Braga, Anthony A., Anne M. Piehl, and David M. Kennedy. (November 2009) "Youth Homicide in Boston: An Assessment of Supplementary Homicide Report Data." Homicide Studies 3, no. 4.

 

Johnson, Renee M., Deborah Azrael, Mary Vriniotis, and David Hemenway. (June 2008) "Reducing Youth Violence: Lessons from the Boston Youth Survey. Rapport Institute Policy Brief."  Available online from the Harvard Kennedy School: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/rappaport/downloads/policybriefs/boston_youthviolence.pdf

 

McDevitt, Jack, Anthony A. Braga, Dana M. Nurge, and Michael Buerger. (2003) "Boston's Youth Violence Prevention Program: A Comprehensive Community-Wide Approach." In Policing Gangs and Youth Violence, edited by Scott H. Decker. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company. 

 

Surveys of Risk Factors 

Jenson, Jeffrey M. and Matthew O. Howard (1999) Youth Violence: Current Research and Recent Practice Innovations. Washington, D.C.: National Association of Social Workers. Looks at factors on the individual, situational and macro levels.

 

Valois, Robert F., John M Macdonald, Lena Bretous, Megan A Fischer and J. Wanzer Drane (2002) “Risk Factors and Behaviors Associated With Adolescent Violence and Aggression.” American Journal of Health Behavior. 454-465. Looks at factors at the personal, medical, psychological, family, peer and community levels.