NCJ Number
172280
Date Published
1997
Length
36 pages
Annotation
The development of violence in urban youth is examined, with emphasis on how the child's learned patterns of thought mediate the child's responses to external experiences such as frustrations, provocations, conflicts, coercive encounters, victimization, witnessed violent events, and exposure to violent images in the media.
Abstract
Many factors at the society level, the community level, the interpersonal level, and the individual level contribute to a developing child's propensity to become involved in violence as an aggressor, a victim, or a bystander who supports violence. Individuals develop their own distinct and consistent patterns of response to the same external events. Each individual learns ways to elicit, perceive, make meaning from, justify, generate alternative responses to, and anticipate others' reactions to the external events. Learned psychological mediators for violence has been variously described as a code of the streets, cognitive scripts, and habits of thought. This analysis suggests the need to for resources to enable parents, educators, health professionals, and media professionals to teach children the skills, beliefs, and strategies by which to solve social problems safely, effectively, and nonviolently. 126 references