Reducing Violent Crimes and Intentional Injuries.


Series: NIJ Research in Action
Published: October 1995
23 pages
49,892 bytes

Reducing Violent Crimes and Intentional
Injuries
by Jeffrey A. Roth and Mark H. Moore


Jeffrey A. Roth, Ph.D., served as study director
for the Panel on the Understanding and Control of
Violent Behavior. Currently he is a principal
research associate at the Urban Institute,
Washington, D.C. Mark H. Moore, Ph.D., is a
professor at the Kennedy School of Government,
Harvard University.

The authors give special thanks to Patricia Kelly,
principal author of Violence in Cornet City: A
Problem-Solving Exercise, and to the three seminar
participants--Chief Sylvester Daughtry, Beverly
Coleman-Miller, M.D., and James K. "Chips" Stewart-
-whose ideas they tried to capture here. 

Highlights

Concerns about urban violence around the Nation
have led to questions about accepted approaches to
addressing violence. Traditional responses to
criminal violence--fixing the root causes of crime,
lengthening the period of incarceration, and
rehabilitating offenders--are being subjected to
greater scrutiny. Statistics such as the following
have led to the search for new strategies: 

o  Since the mid-1980's, rates of violent crime
increased significantly.

o  Between 1975 and 1989, the number of serious
violent crimes failed to decrease, even though the
average amount of prison time per violent crime
tripled.

o  Costs to victims and to the criminal justice
system are estimated at more than $60 billion
annually.

Consideration is being given to preventing some
violence through a problem-solving approach.
Increasingly, two professions are advocating this
approach: public health and criminal justice.
Public health professionals are applying to
violence prevention the same principles of
epidemiology that they have used to reduce
unintentional injuries. Criminal justice
professionals are developing strategies variously
called community policing and problem-
oriented policing.

Although still evolving, the violence
problem-solving approach has distinct
characteristics. It emphasizes
police and community cooperation in identifying
specific local problems that give rise to repeated
acts of violence and devising solutions to these
problems, using such strategies as:

o  Analyzing individual acts of violence--spouse
assaults, driveby shootings, or convenience store
robbery-murders--to suggest common underlying links
that might otherwise be overlooked.

o  Finding and testing ways to change physical or
social environments, for example, by making drug
market customers more conspicuous to law-abiding
neighbors.

o  Revising tactics in light of evaluation findings
and changes in local conditions.

The results of a simulated problem-solving exercise
illustrate issues that may arise when real
jurisdictions seek to solve their violence
problems. An effort by public health and criminal
justice professionals to plan a response to
violence in a fictional city suggested that
real-world planning efforts may benefit from the
following insights:

o Plans for responding to violence need to address
both the reality and the perception of the problem.

o "Off-the-shelf" responses are
often inadequate in solving local violence
problems.

o An immediate "crisis" response to violence needs
to be converted into broad, sustained problem-
solving.

o Violence problem solving expands information
needs.
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Since the mid-1980's, the rise in serious urban
violence has had at least two
effects. First, it has threatened the lives of
urban residents, especially youths, and the social
and economic fabric of the communities in which
they live. Second, it has aggravated public doubts
about the ability of government to maintain the
quality of urban life. More specifically, these
doubts have raised questions about traditional
responses to violence such as reducing poverty and
other suspected root causes of violence,
imprisoning perpetrators, and rehabilitating
criminal offenders.

Recently, an alternative problem-solving approach
has been gaining adherents. This approach is based
on the notion that some violence can be averted by
crafting simple, low-cost, common-sense solutions
to specific local problems that give rise to
repeated incidents of violence. This strategy
emphasizes that surprisingly simple tactics can
sometimes reduce violence more cost-effectively
than filling more prison cells, generate more
immediate results with less political opposition
than trying to fix poorly understood root causes,
and offer greater prospects for success than
interventions to rehabilitate violent offenders.
Elements of the problem-solving approach can be
seen in two movements that are gaining public
prominence. The first is the adoption--or revival--
of policing styles that are variously called
community policing, problem-oriented policing, or
fixing "hot spots" of violence. The second movement
is called treatment of violence as a public health
problem. Although both movements are still evolving
and their adherents emphasize somewhat different
priorities and tactics, the problem-solving
elements of modern policing and public health
resemble and complement each other in many ways.1

Violence prevention through problem solving seems
likely to become an increasingly important
component of the Nation's response to urban
violence--out of dissatisfaction with the
alternatives, if for no other reason. Therefore, it
seems useful to develop a more precise
understanding of how violence problem solving draws
from both modern policing and public health
perspectives. This Research in Action first
describes how violence problem solving is evolving
within those two fields. Then the results of a
simulated problem-solving exercise are used to
suggest some insight into issues that may arise as
jurisdictions across the country try to solve their
all-too-real violence problems.

Traditional responses to violence

For decades, three approaches to violence have
commonly been proposed. One is a tough criminal
justice response to violent crime, sometimes
labeled "lock `em up." Another is repairing
presumed social causes of violence, sometimes
described as "fixing the root causes." The third is
rehabilitating violent offenders to alter their
future behavior.

Violence and the criminal justice system. Society
has traditionally looked to the criminal justice
system to enforce criminal laws by arresting and
punishing the perpetrators of violence. To a
degree, this law enforcement perspective reflects
moral indignation: When violence seems deliberate
or premeditated, severe punishment seems consistent
with the demands of justice. Yet society also
expects the punishment to produce a practical
result: In theory, imprisoning violent criminals
should prevent future violence through at least the
mechanisms of incapacitation (because a criminal in
prison cannot commit crimes in the community) and
deterrence (because fear of punishment should
discourage future violent crimes).

Unfortunately, recent experience raises doubts
about the ability of the criminal justice system
either to deliver justice or to reduce violence on
a consistent basis. Although criminal sentencing
for violent crimes grew substantially harsher
between 1975 and 1989, recent calls to lengthen
sentences and abolish parole suggest that in some
eyes, justice is not yet being served.

Experts believe that harsher sentences prevented an
estimated 10 to 15 percent of potential crimes
through incapacitation and probably prevented
additional crimes through deterrence. Apparently,
however, the violent crimes prevented by greater
use of prison were offset by increases in the
number of violent crimes committed by new or
unapprehended offenders in communities, including
youths, whose violence rates have increased
substantially since the mid-1980's. Therefore, the
number of serious violent crimes has failed to
decrease, even though the average amount of time
served per violent crime has tripled.2

Violence and root causes. The limits of the
criminal justice response to violence point to a
different idea about how society should respond. In
this alternative view, the causes of crime lie more
in social conditions that promote violence than in
offenders' deliberate intentions to do harm.
Therefore, the practical and fair response is not
to punish individual offenders more harshly but to
fix the presumed root causes of crime--to reduce
unemployment, lessen racial discrimination, improve
the quality of education, and help poor families
raise their children to be responsible citizens,
for example. The implication is that the most
effective policies for controlling crime and
violence lie beyond criminal justice and in the
wider embrace of broad social forces and policies.
This view has stimulated a long search for
effective ways to eliminate the root causes of
crime. Hopes for the success of this approach in
dealing with violent crime have been tempered by
the Nation's experience with the Great Society
programs of the sixties and by the lack of
scientific or public consensus on just what the
root causes are. Yet this approach retains
substantial appeal in some sectors.3

Rehabilitating violent offenders. A third approach
has focused on restoring violent offenders to
useful roles in society. To advocates of
rehabilitation, it seems wasteful and potentially
unjust to do nothing more than confine those who
commit crimes. After all, without some kind of
effective intervention, criminal offenders are a
continuing social liability. In prison, they remain
expensive wards of the State. After completing
their sentences, they victimize society with more
crimes. Therefore, intervening in offenders' lives-
-by teaching them to think differently about their
roles in society, increasing their marketable
skills, and treating their addictions to drugs or
alcohol, for example--to make them less of a burden
to society over the long run seems both sensible
and humane. The goal of rehabilitation seems
especially attractive for young offenders, who may
be seen as less morally accountable for their
crimes and more responsive to interventions.

This goal prompted development of therapeutic
prison programs and provided some of the
justification for a separate juvenile justice
system with special procedures and dispositions
designed--at least in part--to steer delinquent
youths away from adult crime. Yet evidence remains
scarce that juvenile or adult justice systems can
routinely mount effective rehabilitation programs
that match an offen-der's specific needs.4 As doubts
have grown about the effectiveness of both the
adult and juvenile justice systems, increasing
numbers of States are statutorily lowering the age
at which youths accused of violent acts can or must
be tried and sentenced as adults.

Violence prevention

Increasingly, violence problem solving is being
advocated by two professions that feel responsible
for dealing with violence and frustrated with
traditional approaches. In the early 1980's, police
executives and their agencies charged with reducing
crime began testing new strategies variously called
community policing or problem-oriented policing.
More recently, public health professionals, who
view violence as a public health problem, have
begun to apply methods that they used successfully
in the past to reduce such threats as typhoid
fever, injuries and deaths from motor vehicle
crashes, and deaths from cigarette smoking.

Community and problem-solving policing. Although
the strategies and tactics of community policing
and problem-solving policing are still evolving,
certain core principles distinguish these
approaches from those of traditional law
enforcement.5 In theory at least, community policing
programs adhere to the following three principles:
l The local community is a crucially important
partner--perhaps even the first line of defense--in
responding to violence and disorder. Relationships
among friends and neighbors can bind people to one
another, help to limit opportunities for
victimization, and teach youngsters noncriminal
pathways to success. In important ways, the police
play backstop to the community in discouraging
violence.

o Police take their cues from the community about
what problems are important. To help establish
effective working partnerships with local
communities, officers learn about the problems
through face-to-face contact with individual
citizens and through community meetings--not just
from emergency calls to 911.

o Arrest is only one of the tools available to the
police in responding to incidents or problems. For
example, they can offer informal mediation, use
administrative procedures, refer people to
services, or mobilize other local government
agencies to fix specific problems.
Problem-oriented policing, which tends to be
implemented as a central component of community
policing, is motivated by the following additional
idea:

o Behind the incidents reported to police lie
problems waiting to be solved. Therefore, the best
police response to the incidents lies in
understanding and repairing the underlying problem
rather than mechanistically responding to the
incidents as if they were unrelated. If existing
causal problems can be discovered and solved,
future violent incidents may be prevented.

Public health approaches to violence. Violence has
attracted public health practitioners' interest for
at least three reasons. First, epidemiologists
noticed that injury--along with disease--posed a
major threat to the Nation's health, especially as
measured in years of potential life lost. Moreover,
the public health community had succeeded in
reducing unintentional injuries through preventive
measures such as laws mandating seat belts in
automobiles, requirements that consumer products be
made safer, and public information campaigns to
educate the public about safe behavior. As success
in preventing unintentional injuries increased, it
seemed just a short step to imagine that
intentional injuries might also yield to preventive
public health strategies. 

Second, when epidemiologists looked closely, they
noticed an important piece of the intentional
injury problem that did not seem to be handled very
well by the criminal justice system: Violence that
occurred among intimates and family members often
was not reported to the police. This included
domestic assault, child abuse, and an emerging
problem of elder abuse.

Third, it seemed to public health practitioners
that their commitment to epidemiological methods
and models for identifying problems and searching
for promising preventive interventions could be an
important complement to existing criminal justice
approaches.

As with community policing, the public health
perspective on violence is still evolving. Even
leaders in the public health community find it
difficult to define this particular approach to
reducing deaths from disease and injury. Yet the
writings of public health practitioners on reducing
violence are frequently distinguished by the
following basic themes:

o Violence is a threat to a community's health as
well as to its social order.

o Public health and medical personnel are often in
a good position to see violence that goes
unreported to criminal justice agencies.

o Preventing violence and reducing its damaging
effects require attention to victims and witnesses
of violence--not just to violent offenders.

o Epidemiological methods can be useful both in
measuring overall levels and patterns of violence
and in identifying factors that are correlated with
the risk of violence.

o In seeking to reduce violence and its
consequences, the emphasis should be on prevention
rather than amelioration. Primary prevention--
measures that prevent violent events from happening
in the first place and do so across a large portion
of the population--should be the primary focus.
Secondary prevention--the early identification and
improvement of situations that could lead to
violence if not addressed immediately--should be
the secondary priority. Tertiary prevention--
responses that repair the damage associated with
violence that has already occurred--should be only
the last resort.

o Many opportunities to prevent violence do not
depend on controlling or redeeming perpetrators.
Just as traffic deaths can be reduced by making
cars and roads safer as well as by arresting
careless or drunk drivers, some violence may be
preventable by making vulnerable convenience stores
harder to rob, by teaching nonviolent ways to solve
disputes, by deglamorizing violence in the media,
or by modifying trigger mechanisms on guns.

o In seeking to prevent violence, it is usually
important to involve the community that is
afflicted by the violence. Community residents can
give legitimacy to government actions, provide
information about where the problems are and what
the points of intervention might be, develop
political consensus for legislation needed to
achieve preventive measures, and place informal
pressures on other residents to take
action to reduce violence.12

Commonalities and differences. Clearly, the modern
policing and public health responses to violence
have much in common. They both emphasize preventing
the occurrence of violence over  responding after
violence occurs. They emphasize community
involvement in identifying violence problems,
setting priorities among them, and devising
solutions. Both approaches suggest the possibility
that carving up the general violence problem into
component parts may reveal solutions that would
otherwise remain concealed; just as skin cancer and
lung cancer call for different preventive
strategies, so might driveby shootings, convenience
store robberies, and spouse assaults.

Both approaches recognize that violence or its
consequences may be preventable not only by
changing individuals' behavior but by changing
their physical or social environments--for example,
by isolating illegal firearms, alcohol, drug
markets, or lone employees who handle cash from
places where unemployed young men congregate.
Finally, both approaches begin with the notion that
a community's violence level may be reducible in
either of two ways: through a relatively sweeping
intervention, such as reducing media violence, or
by accumulating small reductions in violence, each
achieved by finding and solving some specific
problem that underlies a cluster of violent events
occurring at one location, involving one set of
perpetrators and victims, or arising from one kind
of situation. In short, both approaches seek
significant reductions in overall violence by
solving one underlying problem at a time.

Agreement on these shared principles by no means
ensures that practitioners of public health and law
enforcement will approach a concrete urban violence
problem in the same way. Comparative analyses have
suggested that some subtle differences in
priorities may have important operational
implications.13 For example, the criminal justice
models, both traditional and new, retain a
commitment to punishing perpetrators of violence--
as both a matter of justice and a means of
demonstrating to children and youths that society
condemns violence. In contrast, the writings of
public health practitioners rarely discuss the
moral implications of intentionally injuring
another person. Public health practitioners tend to
view victims of violence primarily as persons in
potential need of psychological and other services,
whereas law enforcement practitioners often think
first of victims' roles as witnesses. Both
approaches view communities as important players in
violence prevention. However, community policing
practitioners tend to view officers as problem
solvers on behalf of a community, whereas public
health professionals stress empowering communities
to solve their own problems, with or without police
help.

Planning a response to violence

Recent Federal legislation encourages local
planning of preventive programs that treat violence
as both a crime and a health problem.14 Therefore,
it seems useful to investigate possible ways in
which these different approaches may complement--or
confound--one another in planning and mobilizing
local community responses to violence.

The problem: Violence in Cornet City. To preview
the planning of a response to urban violence, a
problem-solving exercise was prepared, based on the
actual experiences of a real city.15 The premise of
the exercise is that in the wake of community
outcry following a weekend of six unrelated
murders, "Cornet City's" mayor hastily creates a
mayoral task force to plan a response. Although the
case takes a few fictional liberties, it presents a
fairly realistic picture of the violence problem in
one community, public perceptions of the problem,
perspectives of local officials speaking at a town
meeting on violence, the adequacy of previous
responses by the city government and residents of a
particular neighborhood, and the information that
might be available to a mayoral task force convened
on short notice.

The case problem was presented to three
distinguished practitioners chosen to represent
different perspectives to controlling and
preventing violence.16 Each practitioner was asked
to prepare a short memorandum diagnosing Cornet
City's violence problem and offering ideas about
solutions. They then convened for a daylong seminar
to define the problem, evaluate the Cornet City
mayor's response to date, and recommend next
steps.17

Although seminar participants did not produce
specific recommendations for responding to violence
in Cornet City, the discussion was valuable
nevertheless because of the insights that emerged
about the planning process itself. Similar issues
may arise when real jurisdictions develop their own
responses to local violence, especially those
involving both criminal justice and public health
agencies and other segments of the community.
Awareness of these issues will be useful in the
management of real-life, antiviolence planning
efforts.

Plans for responding to violence need to address
both the reality and the perception of a local
violence problem. Despite their varied backgrounds,
the three seminar participants quickly agreed that
the problem was not just violence but also the
perception that the crisis was overwhelming the
broader community of Cornet City, especially its
Southwood neighborhood where most of the violence
seemed to be occurring. In fact, the sense of
crisis seemed to be one of the worst consequences
of violence.

It contributed to fear, to loss of community
identity and pride, and to a widening gulf between
Southwood and the rest of the city. Such reactions
could intensify the problem by aggravating
mistrust, reinforcing negative stereotypes, and
causing law-abiding citizens to withdraw from
community life. Yet these same reactions had the
potential to become an important asset in
responding to violence. If these concerns could
mobilize individuals and agencies to take action
against the problem, then a flow of volunteer
resources, residents' knowledge, and
information about specific incidents would be
available to supplement official responses.

Planners may find general, "off-the-shelf"
responses inadequate for specific local violence
problems. As background material, the Cornet City
exercise included recent policy recommendations
from two organizations concerned with violence:
former Attorney General William Barr's Task Force
on Violent Crime18 and the Eisenhower Foundation.19 
The Barr report was chosen as an example of the
traditional law enforcement approach, whereas the
Eisenhower Foundation reflected the root causes
perspective.

By declining to debate the merits of the Barr and
Eisenhower recommendations, seminar participants
seemed to reject implicitly either group's faith in
any general solution to Cornet City's problem.
Instead they began searching for smaller scale
trial solutions to specific pieces of the larger
problem. Their approach consisted of the following
elements:

o Dividing the general problem of
violence into smaller pieces that had different
levels of urgency and significance for the
community and that seemed to require different
kinds of solutions.

o Finding ways to reach out to local communities to
engage their efforts in reducing the violence.

o Thinking of common-sense operational solutions to
the most important pieces of the problem.

Initial governmental responses to out-of-control
violence may need to be converted into small-scale
but sustained problem-solving enterprises.
Superficially, Cornet City's mayoral task force
seemed likely to be a useful response to the
deepening crisis: it highlighted the violence
problem, it set the stage for cooperative
interagency responses, and it had the potential of
mobilizing both volunteers and local government
agencies. 

Yet the participants recognized three ways in which
a high-level task force with short-term goals might
actually make the problem worse. First, agency
representatives might treat the deliberations
merely as a chance to advance their bureaucratic
interests. Second, unless the effort included
program-level agency staff who understood
operational details, simple promising procedural
changes might be overlooked. Third, the task force
could lose momentum if the crisis atmosphere
dissipated as new issues appeared on the public
agenda. Failure for any of these reasons would
deepen the anger and despair that already gripped
the community--perhaps leaving the violence problem
less solvable than ever.

What seemed necessary was a departure from business
as usual. To be effective, the violence crisis and
the mayoral task force would need to be seized as
an opportunity to create a sustained enterprise
that would reorient the community's entire approach
to violence. The enterprise would need to focus on
specific pieces of the problem, perhaps selected to
maximize the chances of some early, if small,
successes that might generate momentum. It would
need both members authorized to set agency policy
and members with detailed operational knowl- edge
of agency procedures. It would need to share
information and ideas to a degree that government
agencies often find difficult. And it would need to
continue working until the community was satisfied
that the most important violence problems had been
solved.

Violence problem solving may expand information
needs. To simulate information that might be
available to a mayoral antiviolence task force
convened on short notice, the case problem included
21 statistical tables and figures typically
compiled by municipal agencies. These data
described patterns and trends in violence levels,
in responses such as arrest clearance rates, and in
related factors such as drug offenses and
low-birthweight rates. Although participants did
not ignore the information, they referred to it
infrequently as they discussed a response to Cornet
City's violence problem. They seemed to find the
data helpful only as "score cards" for violence,
warning signals, or confirmation of Cornet City
officials' impressions.

What seemed to be needed to plan a response was
another basic departure from business as usual.
Instead of monthly statistics, solving violence
problems would require incident-based information
about events that superficially seemed unrelated.
Problem solvers in the field might discover hidden
connections between seemingly unrelated violent
events only by linking detailed information about
them. As in detective work, linking and sifting
such details might reveal that the same person
committed a series of violent crimes. However,
other relationships may be more useful in violence
prevention through problem solving. Perhaps a pair
of estranged lovers or a pair of rival gangs was
retaliating against each other for past deeds.
Perhaps some location was conducive to a certain
type of violence. Perhaps certain routines of
offenders, such as driving around at night while
drinking, set up encounters that escalated to
violence. Perhaps potential victims' routines, such
as regularly carrying cash to the same convenient
bank, presented robbery opportunities.

Within the limits of human memory, people can
retain and reorder the information needed to
discover such links that might underlie a cluster
of violent events. However, new technologies such
as integration of multiple record systems into a
single relational data base, neural network
software, and pattern recognition programs allow
searches for connections that transcend the limits
of human memory. Connections based on relationships
between people, places, locations, or telephone
numbers, for example, can be discovered, even
though no single person has personal knowledge of
all the relevant data: fingerprints, DNA analyses,
paint chips, or bullets and casings. Alternatively,
searches and analyses of multiple agency records
may reveal violent events or deaths that might have
been prevented if certain persons or cases hadn't
fallen through procedural cracks.20

Community residents can play many roles in violence
problem solving. Community residents are often in
the best position to point out opportunities to
prevent violence--by cleaning up a vacant lot or
demolishing an abandoned house, for example--or to
warn architects of building features that may be
conducive to violence. The discussion produced many
ideas about ways that the community could enhance
law enforcement responses to violence. Families of
murder victims might contribute lists of events
such as late-night beeper calls or unusual
activities in the days or minutes before the
murder. Analyzing these lists might yield warning
signals for other families to heed before they,
too, lost loved ones. Neighbors and other witnesses
might offer information to police about "cold
cases" after their fears had subsided. Other
suggested community-based tactics included
organizing neighborhood patrols, disrupting
street-level drug markets, serving as role models
and as extended family for children and youths on
the street, and running informal programs to occupy
youths' time and raise their self-esteem. The day's
discussion also suggested tactics for Cornet City's
residents to deal with local youth gangs and drug
distributors: threatening greater action from the
community and police unless they reduced their
levels of violence (or bargaining for less violence
in exchange for less harassment), drawing away
potential recruits by establishing programs for
gang "wannabes," and sponsoring nonviolent
competitions between gangs, such as rap contests or
street dancing.

Tactics aside, the discussion offered few solutions
to the more basic problem of how to mobilize
reluctant communities against violence. Methods are
needed to overcome the fear and inertia that
stifles community initiative in neighborhoods that
suffer especially high violence levels.

Value conflicts may divert or impede violence
problem solving temporarily, but those difficulties
may be avoidable by explicitly recognizing,
acknowledging, and airing them. Several
conversations about Cornet City demonstrated that
value differences may occasionally divert the
discussion in surprising ways. However, short,
candid, clarifying conversations seemed to make it
easy for the group to move past these issues and
return to operational matters.

One early discussion made clear that if oversight,
prejudice, or cynicism affected the composition of
an antiviolence task force, the exclusion of those
closest to violence might reduce its chance of
success. This could occur in part because the
violence problem was being experienced in different
ways in different parts of the city. Southwood,
long the site of much of Cornet City's violence,
was suffering its consequences most directly.
Residents in the rest of the city may have been
frightened by spillover violence, embarrassed over
having tolerated such conditions in a neighborhood
that lacked clout at city hall, or genuinely
disturbed over the loss of Cornet's young citizens.
In any event, the rest of Cornet City experienced
the violence much less personally than Southwood.

The three participants viewed the mayor's
recognition of Southwood's violence as a wake-up
call to be a mixed blessing for the neighborhood.
The good news was that Southwood would finally
receive the resources it needed to combat violence.
The bad news was that relations between Southwood
and the rest of the city might become strained if
Southwood's residents became cynical about the
city's sudden interest in its problem or if its
problem fed negative stereotypes of the Southwood
community.

It was suggested that the absence of Southwood
residents, especially youths, from the task force
might arouse Southwood's cynicism and create a
presumption that the task force intended to contain
the violence problem in that neighborhood instead
of solving it. Once the reasoning behind the call
for broader participation was explained, all three
participants concurred that unless Southwood
residents were better represented on the task force
and violence was defined as a citywide problem
instead of a neighborhood problem, difficulties
could arise later in implementing the task force's
recommendations. Not only would Southwood's
citizens become further alienated, but their
potentially important contributions to violence
problem solving would be lost.

The discussion was diverted again later over a
reference to youth violence as "children killing
children." It became clear that although some
intend that phrase to intensify the sense of
urgency, others may hear an unintended tone of
excusing murders by 16- to 18-year-olds. Because
society treats people in this age group as
responsible adults in work settings and as
automobile drivers, it may seem somehow unjust to
use a term that would legally protect them against
criminal conviction and substantial prison
sentences.

The give-and-take over that phrase while discussing
Cornet City made clear that the term children was
not intended to absolve individuals from
respon-sibility for their past behavior but to
encourage society to share some of the
responsibility for changing their future behavior.
The discussion made clear, however, that such
sharing had operational as well as ideological
implications because it broadened the range of
potential points of intervention from
individuals to families, schools, and the community
as a whole.

Failure to air these points might well have made it
harder for participants to agree on any further
principles. However, the explicit and candid
discussion of values opened the way to constructive
discussion of actions with minimal disruption.

Conclusion

The attempt to plan a response to violence in
fictional Cornet City yielded several ideas that
may be useful to real jurisdictions as they plan
responses to their violence problems. To begin,
cities plagued by violence may find it useful to
adopt an approach seminar participants called the
violence problem-solving enterprise. Such
enterprises clearly differ from traditional
approaches including both "locking `em up and
throwing away the key," or alternatively,
eliminating "root causes" of violence. Instead,
they draw on new developments in law enforcement
and public health approaches to violence. They
require new ways of thinking about violent events
as well as offenders, violence-ridden communities,
local governments, and information.

Planning these enterprises will be shaped by
political realities and personal values, and such
efforts will risk small-scale failures as promising
responses to the tenacious urban violence problem
are tested. Whether violence problem solving can,
over time, reduce both urban violence and the sense
of despair it produces remains to be seen.

-------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------
Violence: A Crime Problem and a Health Problem

Violence is at the center of the Nation's crime
problem. Since the mid-1980's, rates of violent
crime reported to police in the Nation's cities
have increased significantly.6 Most seriously,
annual murder counts in recent years have hovered
around 24,000, an unprecedented number.7 In
addition, some 2.9 million serious nonfatal violent
crimes per year are being reported to the National
Crime Victimization Survey.8

Perhaps more surprisingly, violent intentional
injury is also emerging as a central threat to the
Nation's health, particularly among minorities and
young people. Homicide is the 12th leading cause of
death in the United States, and because murder
victims tend to die at younger ages than do the
victims of disease, homicide is the 4th leading
contributor to years of potential life lost. For
babies born in the United States in 1989, the
estimated lifetime probability of becoming a
homicide victim ranged from 1 in 496 for a white
female baby to 1 in 27 for a black male baby.9
Violent injuries impose costs on victims for
medical treatment, physical and psychological
rehabilitation, and lost productivity; these costs,
plus the criminal justice response, have been
estimated at $60 billion annually. In Detroit, an
estimated 40 percent of all traumatic spinal cord
injuries result from gunshot wounds, and hospital
emergency departments in cities across the country
report strained resources in the aftermath of
violent attacks on victims.10 Perhaps most
tragically, national mortality statistics indicate
that violence has become the leading cause of death
among young black men.11
----------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------
Violence Problem Solving 

A more recent development is the
notion that some violence might be prevented
through a problem-solving approach with less
sweeping goals than eliminating the root causes of
violence or reclaiming criminal offenders. In this
view, prevention opportunities lie in responding to
the particular problems that seem to underlie
clusters of violent events. Depending on
circumstances, violence problem solving might
involve reducing the number of patrons who carry
weapons in a local bar where fights routinely break
out, mobilizing and helping law-abiding
citizens to take back control of a street corner
occupied nightly by drug dealers, or moving a
convenience store cash register to make robberies
in progress more visible to passers-by. The hope is
that a series of small problem-solving successes
might add up to a significant reduction in overall
violence in a community.

----------------------------------

Notes

1. Moore, M.H., "Violence Prevention: Criminal
Justice or Public Health?" Health Affairs
12(4)(1993):34-45. See also Moore, M.H., D.
Prothrow-Stith, B. Guyer, and H. Spivak, "Violence
and Intentional Injuries: Criminal Justice and
Public Health Perspectives on an Urgent National
Problem." In A.J. Reiss, Jr., and J.A. Roth, eds.,
Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4,
Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1994:167-
216.

2. Cohen, J., and J.A. Canela-Cacho, "Incarceration
and Violent Crime." In A.J. Reiss, Jr., and J.A.
Roth, eds., Understanding and Preventing Violence,
Volume 4, Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press,
1994:296-388.

3. Eisenhower Foundation, Youth Investment and
Community Reconstruction: Street Lessons on Drugs
and Crime for the Nineties, Washington, D.C.:
Eisenhower Foundation, 1992.

4. For an exchange of views on this matter, see
Whitehead, J.T., and S.P. Lab, "A Meta-Analysis of
Juvenile Correctional Treatment," Journal of
Research in Crime and Delinquency 26(1989):276-295;
Andrews, D.A., et al., "Does Correctional Treatment
Work? A Clinically Relevant and Psychologically
Informed Meta-Analysis," Criminology 28(1990):369-
404; and an exchange of replies following the
Andrews article.

5. For example, see Goldstein, H., "Improving
Policing: A Problem-Oriented Approach," Crime and
Delinquency 25(1979):236-258; Eck, J., and W.
Spelman, Problem Solving: Problem-Oriented Policing
in Newport News, Washington, D.C.: Police Executive
Research Forum (n.d.); and Moore, M.H., and R.C.
Trojanowicz, "Corporate Strategies for Policing,"
Perspectives on Policing 6, Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Justice, National Institute of
Justice, and Kennedy School of Government, November
1988.

6. Reiss, A.J., Jr., and J.A. Roth, eds.,
Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 1,
Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1994:81.

7. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the
United States, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of
Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, annual,
table 1.

8. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Criminal
Victimization in the United States, Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice
Statistics, annual, table 1.

9. Rosenberg, M.L., and M.A. Fenley, eds., Violence
in America: A Public Health Approach, New York:
Oxford University Press, 1991.

10. Rosenberg and Fenley, Violence in America, p.
5.

11. Fingerhut, L.A., "Firearm Mortality Among
Children, Youth, and Young Adults 1-34 Years of
Age, Trends and Current States: United States,
1985-1990." Advance Data from Vital and Health
Statistics, No. 231, Hyattsville, Maryland:
National Center for Health Statistics, 1993.

12. Rosenberg and Fenley, Violence in America;
Mercy, J.A., et al., "Public Health Policy for
Preventing Violence," Health Affairs 12(4)(1993):7-
26 

13. Moore, M.H., "Violence Prevention: Criminal
Justice or Public Health?" Health Affairs
12(4)(1993): 34-45. See also Moore, M.H., D.
Prothrow-Stith, B. Guyer, and H. Spivak, "Violence
and Intentional Injuries: Criminal Justice and
Public Health Perspectives on an Urgent National
Problem." In A.J. Reiss, Jr., and J.A. Roth, eds.,
Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4,
Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1994;
Mercy, J.A., M.L. Rosenberg, K.E. Powell, C.V.
Broome, and W.L. Roper "Public Health Policy for
Preventing Violence," Health Affairs 12(4)(1993):7-
26.

14. Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act
of 1994, P.L. 103-322, September 13, 1994.

15. The simulation, Violence in Cornet City: A
Problem-Solving Exercise, by Patricia Kelly, Mark
H. Moore, and Jeffrey A. Roth, was published as a
teaching tool by the U.S. Department of Justice,
National Institute of Justice, in 1994.

16. James K. "Chips" Stewart, former chief of
detectives for the city of Oakland and now a
criminal justice consul-tant for Booz, Allen, and
Hamilton, was selected to represent the potential
that professional police work, aided by modern
technology, held for the effective control of
violence. Sylvester Daughtry, currently chief of
police in Greensboro, North Carolina, and president
of the International Association of Chiefs of
Police, was selected to represent the
potential that community policing and
problem-solving policing held for
reducing violence. Beverly Coleman-Miller, M.D.,
former special assistant for medical affairs to the
Washington, D.C., Commissioner of Public Health,
responsible for liaison to the medical examiner and
the Emergency Ambulance Bureau, was chosen to
represent the public health perspective on
diagnosing and preventing violence.

17. Kelly, Patricia, Mark H. Moore, and Jeffrey A.
Roth, Responding to Violence in Cornet City: The
Problem-Solving Enterprise, Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Justice, National Institute of
Justice, April 1995. Copies are available from the
National Institute of Justice Reference Service.
Ask for NCJ 154258.

18. Combating Violent Crime: Twenty-Four
Recommendations To Strengthen Criminal Justice,
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, 1992.

19. Eisenhower Foundation, Youth Investment and
Community Reconstruction.

20. Several actual examples are discussed in Moore,
Roth, and Kelly, Responding to Violence in Cornet
City.
----------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------
Selected Recent NIJ Publications and Products
Listed below are some selected NIJ
publications and products that may be of interest
to readers of this Research in Action.  These
items may be obtained free, except where
indicated, from the National Criminal Justice
Reference Service (NCJRS): telephone 800-851-3420,
e-mail askncjrs@ncjrs.aspensys.com, or write to
NCJRS P.O. Box 6000, Rockville, MD 20849-6000.

Please refer to the NCJ, TBO, or FS number at the
end of each citation when placing your order. To
order any fee-for-service items, please send your
payment in dollars drawn from a U.S. bank. For
costs for foreign countries, please call NCJRS. 
Please note that when free publications are out of
stock, they are available as photocopies for a
minimal fee or through interlibrary loan. They are
also usually available on the NCJRS Bulletin Board
System or on the U.S. Department of Justice
Internet site for downloading. Call NCJRS for more
information.

Criminal Justice and Health

Cowles, Ernest L., Ph.D., Thomas C. Castellano,
Ph.D., and Laura A. Gransky, M.S., "Boot Camp"
Drug Treatment and Aftercare Interventions: An
Evaluation Review, Research in Brief, July 1995,
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Inciardi, James, Ph.D., A Corrections-Based
Continuum of Effective Drug Abuse Treatment, VHS
60-minute video, January 1995, NCJ 152692, $19.00,
includes postage and handling.

Kellerman, Arthur L., M.D., M.P.H., Understanding
and Preventing Violence: A Public Health
Perspective, Research in Progress Seminar, VHS
60-minute videotape, December 1994, NCJ 152238,
$19.00, includes postage and handling.

McDonald, Douglas C., and Michelle Teitelbaum,
Managing Mentally Ill Offenders in the Community:
Milwaukee's Community Support Program, NIJ Program
Focus, March 1994, NCJ 145330.                 

McDonald, Douglas C., Managing Prison Health Care
and Cost, NIJ Issues and Practices, March 1994,
NCJ 152678.

National Institute of Justice, National Institute
of Justice Journal, #228, December 1994, JR000228.
(This issue features articles on health and
justice.)

Witwer, Martha B., M.P.H., and Cheryl A. Crawford,
M.P.A., J.D., A Coordinated Approach to Reducing
Family Violence, a report produced by the American
Medical Association and the National Institute of
Justice, September 1995, NCJ 155184.

Violence Prevention

Earls, Felton, J., M.D., and Albert J. Reiss, Jr.,
Ph.D., Breaking the Cycle: Predicting and
Preventing Crime, December 1992, NCJ 140541.

Harrell, Adele, Ph.D., Intervening with High-Risk
Youth: Preliminary Findings from the
Children-at-Risk Program, VHS 60-minute videotape,
February 1995, NCJ 153270, $19.00, includes
postage and handling.

Solving Youth Violence: Partnerships That Work:
National Conference Proceedings, Washington D.C.,
August 15-17, 1994, June 1995, NCJ 154134.

Violent Behavior and Criminal Behavior

Blumstein, Alfred, Ph.D., Youth Violence, Guns,
and Illicit Drug Markets, VHS 60-minute video,
September 1994, NCJ 152235, $19.00, includes
postage and handling.

Kelly, Patricia, M.P.P., Mark H. Moore, Ph.D., and
Jeffrey A. Roth, Ph.D., Violence in Cornet City: A
Problem-Solving Exercise, April 1995, NCJ 154258. 

Smith, Barbara E., Prosecuting Child Physical
Abuse Cases: A Case Study in San Diego, Research
in Brief, June 1995, NCJ 152978.

Victim Assistance Programs: Whom They Service,
What They Offer, NIJ Update, May 1995, FS000840H.

Widom, Cathy Spatz, The Cycle of Violence
Revisited Six Years Later, VHS 60-minute video,
April 1995, NCJ 153272, $19.00, includes postage
and handling.

Widom, Cathy Spatz, Victims of Childhood Sexual
Abuse--Later Criminal Consequences, Research in
Brief, March 1995, NCJ 151525.

PAVNET (Partnership Against Violence Network)

Offers help to States and local communities.
Consists of approximately 1,000 anti-violence
programs, information resources, technical
assistance programs, and Federal and private
foundation funding sources.

PAVNET, Promising Programs, Volume 1, NCJ 150044,
$17.00, includes postage and handling.

PAVNET, Information Resources, Technical
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PAVNET on WordPerfect Disk, NCJ 154202, $16.00,
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PAVNET on ASCII Disk, NCJ 152403, $16.00, includes
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------------------------------------------------
Findings and conclusions of the research reported
here are those of the authors and do not
necessarily reflect the official position or
policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

The National Institute of Justice is a component of
the Office of Justice Programs, which also includes
the Bureau of Justice Assistance, Bureau of Justice
Statistics, Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention, and the Office for Victims
of Crime.