The New York City Youth Violence Study (NYCYVS)

Link to the final report: http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/227781.pdf

The original study from which this New York City Youth Violence Study (NYCYVS) project evolved was known as the Columbia University Gun Study. Dr. Jeffrey Fagan was the Principal Investigator and Deanna Wilkinson was the Project Director/Co-Investigator. The data were collected from 1995 to 1998. Interviews were conducted with a targeted sample of 416 active violent offenders from two New York City neighborhoods. The primary field methods were in-depth interviews and biographical methods focusing on the social and symbolic construction of violent events (Cornish, 1993; 1994; Oliver, 1994). The interviews were quite detailed, and in addition to the violent events of primary interest, they covered a wide range of topics including neighborhood characteristics, family experiences, school, employment, friendships, youth and street culture, attitudes toward violence, criminal activity, perceptions of the criminal justice system, guns, drug use, and future goals. Respondents were asked to reconstruct 3-4 violent events: one where guns were present and used; one where guns were present and not used; and one where guns were not present. Data were collected on at least one violent event per person, with an average of 2.27 events per individual. Events included both completed and non-completed (near) violent situations; the latter group included events where violence was avoided in a variety of situational and social contexts. “Peer” interviewers were used to increase interviewer-respondent rapport and enhance data collection efforts. Proximate age, race/ethnicity, and gender matches between the interviewer and interviewee were deemed necessary for the study’s success.

The NYCYVS dataset is a great resource for gaining a deeper understanding of the social worlds of youth whose lives are enmeshed in violence. It was designed with great emphasis on trying to understanding youths’ experiences across life domains (family, neighborhood, peers, school, employment, relationships, and the criminal justice system) and developmental stages (reflections on childhood, adolescence and emerging adulthood). This executive summary provides an overview of our final report to the NIJ which will be released in 2009. The NYCYVS dataset will be made available to scholars through the ICPRS national archive.

The sampling design targeted males between the ages of 16 and 24 from three pools of subjects:

• Individuals convicted of illegal handgun possession or a violent offense (the criminal justice sample, n= 150 or 36%),
• Individuals injured in a violent transaction (the hospital sample, n=62 or 15%), and
• Individuals identified by screening as having been actively involved in violence in the previous six months (the neighborhood samples, n= 204 or 49%).

Current or previous residency in one of the study neighborhoods was an eligibility criterion. The criminal justice sample includes recently released individuals (n=127) and incarcerated individuals (n=23). The young men in the jail sample were interviewed at Rikers Island in a private office ordinarily used for psychological counseling. Participants in the hospital sample were recruited at Lincoln hospital and Kings County hospital by researchers working with hospital staff to identify violently injured youth. Most hospitalized youth were interviewed in their hospital rooms or in private offices in the hospital. The neighborhood samples were generated using chain referral or snowball sampling techniques. Study procedures were approved by institutional review boards at Rutgers, State University of New Jersey and Columbia University, and the data were protected by a Federal Certificate of Confidentiality issued by the National Institutes of Health. The full details of the original study methodology are described elsewhere (Wilkinson, 2003). The current secondary data analysis project was reviewed and approved by the IRB at The Ohio State University.

The study sample included an array of respondents and incidences that qualitatively reflect what are thought to be the characteristics of both violent offenders and violent events. The sample consists of individuals who have completed a period of criminal incarceration for a violence-related offense and those recruited from the study neighborhoods.

Key Findings

From the event narratives, we are able to identify characteristics of violence as social interactions fits nicely into symbolic interactionists framework (Anderson, 1999; Felson, 1993; Goffman, 1963, 1967, 1983; Heise, 1991; Oliver, 1994; Strauss, 1958). Particularly, we can identify how actors move through settings and scenes, read contextual cues, develop action frames, evaluate the potential of other actors, and play roles across a broad range of youth violence incidents. The configurations across these event structures provide insights into the qualitative differences between violent situations of varying levels of seriousness and how actors respond to them. From these findings we have developed an emergent situational and transactional theory of urban youth violence. We hit the high points of that complex theory here but recommend that readers consult the full report for greater understanding of the study. The key findings of our study are summarized below:

• The event sample includes a diverse set of violent and near-violent events that can help in understanding the differences across levels of severity of events. The analysis revealed six categories of event outcome severity: near- violence, violence but no injury, violence with minor injuries, violence with missing information on injury status, violence with serious injuries, and violence that resulted in one or more deaths. Near-violent events in which there was conflict – but no escalation to physical violence or weapon use – are included to provide additional perspective on factors distinguishing one type from another.
• Although there are numerous triggers or “sparks” to violent events among young urban males, by far the most common involve challenges to masculine identity or status. We classified 26 event sparks or issues. The most common spark was an identity threat or challenge to one’s personal status, masculinity or respect. What is deemed offensive behavior that is “worthy” of serious violence is determined partly by prior knowledge of similar situations. We have no specific way of proving that violent scripts exist other than looking at how actors react in similar situations. Considering the consistency with which we see youth in this study reacting to disrespectful behavior with first a request for restoration and then an escalation in conflict, it is apparent that youth care more about being disrespected when others are watching. They consider whether their planned course of action will be successfully achieve their moment-specific goals. Young men also used violence when competing for females, as part of the drug business, in robbery situations, to exact revenge, in the defense of others, in cheating or unfair play situations, in self-defense, over money or unpaid debts, over neighborhood or nondrug-related territorial disputes, over misunderstandings, in response to gossip (he said, she said), out of jealousy, when rebuked for action, and a variety of other less frequent sparks. In the majority of events, youth point to a spark or reason for the conflict. Spark type is important, particularly as it relates to the perceived seriousness of the potential conflict. Seriousness relates to the amount of harm or damage the grievance represents to the actors. The issue that sparks a conflict can impact reputation/identity, group memberships, access to resources, health and safety for self and others, and territorial rights. The greater the likelihood of harm across these categories; the greater the need to use violence.
• The use of violence in disputes between young urban males is often motivated by a desire for dominance, control, and personal safety in situations that are perceived as threatening. We found that youth make a variety of presumptions about the hostile intentions of potential opponents they encounter as they go about their daily lives. Youth read unknown situations as extremely dangerous requiring the highest levels of vigilance and preemptive violence, if necessary. The young men in the study were very sensitive to overt and symbolic attacks on their social standing and identity. They often read cues in social situations in order to establish the credibility of potential threats as well as to figure out how to gain control (the upperhand) in the situation. They expected to be treated with respect despite disrespecting others. The youth in this study were primarily concerned about their safety and establishing/maintaining their social identities.
• From youths’ perspective, the status risks associated with backing down from a conflict frequently outweigh the physical risks to self associated with violent behavior. Youth are particularly concerned about their reputation and status among peers, seeking justice, and the risks to their personal safety. Youth on both sides of the conflict process information on the spark characteristics combined with information on the identity/status of the actors involved in the conflict. Often the assessment of harm/risk is conducted in a split-second after the spark occurs. Their calculations about what observers will think of their response to a provocation toward violence rarely include any type of validation.
• Youth exhibit evidence of territoriality concerns and classic “in-group” “out-group” conflict. Youth move through neighborhood spaces with varying degrees of territorial claim and perceived safety. Physical location or context is most likely to spawn violence when the routine activities of physical spaces promote the mixing of youth from different geographic areas and social networks, and when there is greater social distance between youth. Some type of social exchange is typically necessary for conflict to erupt to violence. In some cases one side can dominate while the other side remains relatively unengaged.
• Young males who victimize others in violent conflict most often blame their opponents for the conflict and feel justified in their actions. Peers tend to reinforce this view. Violent behaviors are typically justified by transferring blame or responsibility to the actions of the opponent. The retelling of the conflict story during the aftermath stages often includes conversation among peers in which others neutralize or glorify the violent actions responsible for a “win” for the in-group. This is particularly true in the events that sparked from the drug business where social order is regulated through violence. Markets are stable when one crew has dominance over a particular territory or drug. Trouble starts when the market pressures get tight and dealers have to compete for business with other nearby competitors. Interlopers and those groups who attempt to gain market share through violence often take up battle with competing drug dealers from adjacent or nearby housing locations.
• The vast majority of violent and near-violent events are observed by third parties. The escalation or de-escalation of these events is influenced in critical ways by the presence, identity, and reactions of these observers/bystanders. Third parties (of all types) were present during nearly 95% of the violent and near-violent events reported by the sample. Social ties between the sides influence the perceived opportunity for violence with close ties decreasing the likelihood of using serious violence; whereas, distant ties increase the likelihood of violence. The opposing sides come together in physical and relational space. The social relationships between actors or social ties are important for determining how conflict unfolds. Dimensions of social ties in this study include: the type of relationships between youth involved in conflict, knowledge or information about others, insider vs. outsider status, and any prior history of conflict between the specific sides. The social ties between third parties or bystanders who may witness the event with each of side of the conflict could also play a role in how the event unfolds. Most important among 3rd party characteristics is partisanship, stake in the conflict, capability (for violence), and risk of harm to self. The principal actors in the conflict size-up each other as well as the bystanders. This assessment happens rapidly as youth read social cues in the situation to determine what others are likely to do. Youths’ perceptions of “the other(s)” and how their own behavior and status will be perceived by people in the scene are significant in shaping context-specific action.
• In conflict situations, youths’ perceptions of how observers will view their actions and status are significant in shaping their responses. Across the large event sample, we identified key factors about the focal participants that were important in order to develop a theory that fits the data. Specifically, reputation (with regard to violence), group membership, presence, and involvement at the scene of conflict, capability in terms of being armed with a weapon, weapon type, being experienced in violence, age, physical size and strength, and arousal (intoxication, premeditation, and emotional state). Youth on both sides of the conflict make assessments of the situation based on their own characteristics as well as those of their opponent(s). When group members or associates are present at the scene of conflicts, their violence potential or capability is factored into the youths’ assessments about event’s outcome.
• The presence of weapons and/or alcohol or drugs significantly increases the outcome severity of violent encounters. Youth reported extremely easy access to guns among their peers in the neighborhood. Assessing the weapon-related capability of an opponent was an important strategy for the young men in the study particularly when their perception was that anyone could get a gun but only some would have the nerve to use it. Having a gun in a moment of angry arousal increased the likelihood that a conflict would advance to some type of shooting. Drug and alcohol affects were evident in decision making, intensified emotional states, exaggerated affect, diminished capacity for self-regulation, deviance disavowal, and other cognitive processes. For example, respondents indicated that language was more provocative when actors were intoxicated and that language often “amped up”? otherwise minor disputes into violent encounters. Some said they tended to take bystanders’ urgings to fight more seriously when under the influence. While cognitive impairment was evident for some, others noted that their decisions while drinking reflected complex strategic judgments about the interactions that often precede the decision to fight or withdraw.
• Most violent events take place in public places that are poorly monitored by adults. In these settings, peer observers who have close ties to the opponent tend to escalate and even join in the fray. Our analysis reveals that it is not only the what that matters but also the how, who, when and where that are important. How a grievance is expressed is vital. In many ways the how partially defines the what of conflict. The scenes/settings of youth violence can be divided along two major dimensions: (a) private vs. public and (b) controlled vs. uncontrolled spaces. The types of activities that define a physical space and the configurations of the people who frequent the location are also important. For example, the majority of these events occur in social venues which attract crowds and are difficult to monitor, regulate, and control. These venues are generally ambiguous in terms of territorial rights and may be illegal to start with, often facilitating other types of illegal activities such as underage drinking or illegal drug use/sale. The actors in these violent events include the antagonist, the protagonist, the co-offending antagonists, the co-offending protagonists, the allied audience, the neutral audience, the vicarious audience, and the agent(s) of social control. There are several facilitating “props” that are important in understanding how conflict unfolds such as the music genre, the presence of desired females, the reputation of the spot, use of controlled substances, the presence of male and female audience members, available weapons, and other objects in the space.

• Compared to violent events, near-violent events tend to be characterized by a provocation or “spark” that is perceived as relatively minor, by a respectful mode of expression, by close social ties between the combatants, by the lack of guns, and by the intervention of third party bystanders or observers. Perhaps even more important than the seriousness is the mode of expression or the way in which youth’ confront each other with a grievance. Youth are also influenced by potential alternative explanations, redirection, and exits. Youth are much more likely to seek alternatives when the opponent is a friend or acquaintance rather than a stranger.
• The decisions that actors make during the course of violent disputes are frequently numerous and complex, much more so than has been suggested by prior researchers. The theoretical model gleaned from the event data illustrates that youth are making numerous decisions before, during, and after violent or near-violent events. Decision-making is both individualized and collective. Information is processed rapidly and youth ultimately make decisions based on incomplete, often inaccurate information. The calculus of costs and benefits includes factors beyond legal consequences, which are often only considered well after youth have engaged in violence. Because violence is a form of exchange between two or more parties, our model starts with the most critical characteristics of the identity/status of the major participants/actors. The conflict itself can be viewed as a form of communication and coercion. Actors project a certain image from the onset of conflict that includes rejecting stigma, disrespect, and other types of degrading action that may occur in the course of social interaction.
• Youth are continuously integrating information about place, people, alliances and obligations, violence potential, harm potential, strategic movement to gain advantage, options for exit, and emotional arousal. Youth make assessments of the costs/benefits/risk/harm from the social cues they read from actors at the scene. If youth find themselves at a capability disadvantage or they are disinterested in pursuing violence, they will attempt to create ways to avoid violence. Alternatively, youth will capitalize on situations in which their side is clearly advantaged by moving the conflict forward toward violence. This is not to say that all aspects of violent events are calculated or that youth are fully informed of the costs/benefits/harm/risks when conflicts escalate to violence. They are not.
• The opening move of conflict is most often an action or inaction that sparks the two sides toward engagement in social interaction. The interaction is defined as conflict particularly when one side makes demands, insults, threatens, accuses, or otherwise provokes a response from the other. The issue or spark may be minor or extremely serious and the participants may agree on the definition of the spark’s seriousness or they may disagree completely. Conflict can escalate to violence in either circumstance depending on how actors express their grievances, who is present, who might join the conflict if one of the main combatants starts to lose and a host of other contingencies. Contextual or situational cues include: verbal versus nonverbal cues, threat of physical harm (including concrete facts such as size differentials, being outnumbered, being off, being out armed), the lethality of the threat (gun vs. non-gun, knife vs. no weapon), the threat of reputational damage, threat of relationship status damage (fear of rejection by peer group, losing the girl), victim vulnerability and relative weakness, and victim blameworthiness.
• Violent events unfold across a variety of stages and periods. We have identified the following sequential stages: anticipatory stage (reading cues, interpreting action/non-action as problematic); opening moves (threats, attacks, accusations, insults, degrading behavior, inconsiderate behavior); counter moves (accounts, resistance, denial, attack, threat escalation, issuing warnings); escalation/ intensification stage; brewing period; casting stage; persistence stage; early violence stage (actual violence); stewing period (if a pause in action); intensified violence stage; closing moves (resolution, disruption, stalling tactics, fleeing the scene, additional threats); outcomes (injury, injury treatment, arrest); assessment stage (harm done -physical, emotional, status, and material); aftermaths (fear, avoidance behaviors, acute stress response, enhanced self-protection, gossip, reputational status shifts, revenge planning, self-medications with drugs/alcohol, and celebration with drugs/alcohol); retaliatory planning stage (additional act of violence linked to a previous event); and anticipatory stage. The “full”? sequential model represents how the most complex violence events unfold and over 100 events fit this complex type. Other events move through an average of 4-5 of the stages. What we captured here suggests that the violence process can vary along a continuum of complexity which depends partly on whether weapons are used, whether injuries are sustained, and the group nature of the event.
• In many instances youth prefer self-help rather than going to the police in violent incidents. Respondents indicate that self-help or self-reliance was preferred over bringing the criminal justice system into dispute resolution processes. There is a profound lack of faith in law enforcement or complete mistrust/disdain for police officers. The youth believe that the criminal justice system does not recognize their grievances, thus, if the criminal justice system is called, there is a significant likelihood that the facts of the case will not be investigated adequately and the wrong parties could be taken into custody. Additionally, many of the youth admit that their social status within their peer group may be challenged if they opted for calling the police rather than using self-help. We also find strong evidence for a lack of reliance on other authority figures to resolve disputes or other criminal acts (see Wilkinson, Beaty, & Lurry, 2009).

Examining Youth Violence from a Situational Crime Prevention Perspective

The five domains of Situational Crime Prevention (SCP) must be considered in terms of what these categories would mean to youth at risk for violence. Removing access to weapons (particularly guns) would increase the effort required of youth to seriously harm their opponent. Similarly, controlling place entry and exits would also increase the effort required to commit violence. In terms of increasing the risk of committing violence, most of the SCP relates to the risks of getting caught rather than the risks of the event itself. The reality is that youth take numerous risks in order to engage in violence: including potential death, serious injury, exclusion from groups or places, reputational risk, social group member risks, arrest, and potentially incarceration. Increased surveillance capability would be useful but only effective if it lead to increased use of formal social control mechanisms or it translated into informal third party interventions that deescalated conflict and promoted peaceful resolutions. Tense relations between the police and residents in many urban communities make effective surveillance difficult, but improved police-community relations and increased community capacity to exert informal social control are critical elements in increasing the risks of committing youth violence. These strategies move beyond SCP but certainly are in line with the same goals.

The next category is reducing the rewards of committing the crime. The rewards of violence could include social standing or identity status, gaining material goods, gaining illicit market positioning, gaining relationship positioning, eliminating a rival, domination, biochemical arousal/pleasure reactions to the act of using violence, relieving fear of victimization, victory, and so on. Many of these issues are rewards that are experienced as internalized affective responses by the participants in violent events. Most of the rewards we have identified would be “distributed” by youths’ social group. The more isolated youth are from other potential reference groups the less likely it would be to reduce the rewards. In order to reduce the provocations for violence, we must pay attention to how youth make sense of the verbal and non-verbal actions of their opponent(s). Young marginalized urban minority males face increased stress and frustration as a result of the cumulative impact of family instability, joblessness, discrimination, substance abuse and other mental health problems, chronic poverty, disenfranchisement from institutions, mass incarceration, and other structural conditions (Anderson, 2008). In terms of provocation, it is important to consider what people bring to situations (cumulative disadvantage) and what transpires when people engage in social interaction that potentially leads to conflict. The examples provided by Clarke and Cornish (2003) under this category do not easily fit to urban youth violence events. We will come back to this point later in our discussion of what goals youth are pursuing when they use violence against each other. The final category of the SCP framework is to remove excuses for violence. Under this global category Clarke and Cornish (2003) suggest that rule setting, posting instructions, alerting conscience, assisting compliance, and controlling drugs/alcohol would be important situational crime prevention techniques.

A focus on the “places” of youth violence is one obvious area in which situational crime prevention techniques will be relevant. Disputes erupt during the course of everyday activities and particular types of disputes (those that escalate, involve guns, involve multiple participants) are more likely to occur in largely unregulated public spaces. Although street corners, sidewalks, and stoops are generally open to the observation of many people in a densely populated urban neighborhood, they are also ambiguous spaces in terms of social control. Within schools, jails, parks, bars, apartment buildings, and other “closed’ settings violence is likely to cluster in spaces with less surveillance, ambiguous definitions of who is in charge, and expectations about what types of behaviors would be tolerated in the space.

We identified seven central themes that are gleaned from an understanding of events as they unfold that complicate applying SCP to urban youth violence. They include:

• Co-offending -collective decision making
• Audience matters for calculation of costs & rewards (during and after the event)
• Prediction problems -configurations across situational factors may inform the constellation of “necessary” conditions for conflict to escalate to violence
• Population most in need of guardianship is least likely to get it
• Youth specifically avoid places with surveillance
• Assessing rewards and risk need to reflect adolescent thinking and (not thinking)
• Conflict moves across spaces

It is clear that in order to implement several of the SCP techniques the social order of violence-prone settings would also need to change. Part of that social order is the co-offending structure of conflict.

Adult withdrawal from public spaces makes those spaces more likely to attract crime and ultimately become youth-dominated spaces (Wilkinson, 2007). The question becomes what would it take for authorities or community residents to reclaim public spaces that have been ambiguous, neglected, or otherwise abandoned? Those places attract motivated offenders. Part of the reason there are hotspots of youth violence is that particular physical and social settings provide cues to youth who enter those settings that violence is common, perhaps necessary, and certainly expected in that setting. Setting rules and posting notices of those rules in unregulated places does not make a lot of sense unless those places will become regulated and rules will be enforced. In terms of alerting conscience it seems reasonable to educate youth that fighting and other forms of violence are criminal acts with real consequences. Whether posting such notices would have an impact on youth is an empirical question. Youth often reported feeling justified in their use of violence. They also provided a list of excuses for why handling conflict with violence was appropriate from their perspective. Our data suggests that youth are not thinking about lower levels of violence and aggression as criminal behavior. Fighting is perceived as something males do.

SCP calls for understanding the crime triangle and the perspectives of each potential participant in a crime event. Perhaps the most useful role of the NYCYVS data is to provide insights into what offenders are thinking before, during, and after violent and near-violent events. The data also provide insights into what victims are thinking as respondents also reported events in which they were victimized. The rational choice model underlying SCP makes assumptions about how individuals evaluate costs and benefits. It assumes particular types of values/goals and time perspective that did not match up with what youth in our sample thought about costs and benefits at the time of the crime. Without making moral judgments on the perspectives of violent youth, we can better understand how violent youth come to justify their actions in the contexts in which violence unfolds. What did the young men in the NYCYVS value? This question is extremely important in terms of figuring out how to reduce youth violence but it is not easily answered.

We were able to identify some of the key aspects of youths’ goals/values including: self-worth, respect (worth or value within a social group), autonomy, freedom, acceptance, social standing, protection/security, economic viability, survival, excitement, and social relationships. None of the items on this list is outside the range of healthy adolescent development. The problematic part of achieving these goals is that most youth in our study did not have adequate family, community, or societal supports to reach some or all of the values/goals. Youth were challenged to overcome multiple layers of disadvantage in order to get their basic needs met. Youths’ global values and goals may not necessarily match with the more proximal goals during potential conflict situations as their actions are more likely to reflect the immediate need for survival, preservation of social standing, preservation of rights, and avoiding consequences directly related to that moment in time. Values/goals are only a small part of the explanation of the social geometry of violence. Other aspects that are critically important are youth evaluations of the danger inherent in the environment and their expectations about how others will behave in that environment. The ways in which youths integrate a violent experience into their self-perception can only be understood within the context of knowing how others responded, how emotions were managed, and whether violence was condoned or condemned by members of the social network. Our theoretical model proposes that involvement in violent incidents can be a pivotal moment for youth if there are alternatives in place.

Policy Implications and Recommendations for Violence Prevention and Intervention

In Figure 1, an event-based intervention heuristic model is presented. Research has found that people are more receptive to change in times of crisis or when life events somehow alter the potential future directions. Involvement in a violent dispute may be an opportunity for a “teachable moment” in the youths’ life. The moment will be lost if youth are socially isolated from caring adults or others who could provide resources for transforming a difficult situation into a turning point. Youth may be relatively more reflective and malleable right after something dramatic happens to them –particularly in cases in which they or one of their friends is seriously injured or worse. It makes sense to think that a violent injury serious enough to require hospital care would cause an individual to pause and search for meaning. It also makes sense to think that an arrest and potential of serving time for a violent felony would similarly cause a person to pause. While these assumptions seem logical they are untested. We have described at least two barriers that complicate breaking the cycle of violence in disadvantaged high violence neighborhoods. First, supportive relationships between youth involved in violence and adults are rare. Second, youth seek and get violence-reinforcing messages and general social support from their near same-age peers.

A serious violent event affects many parts of the larger systems that organize society. The tasks associated with handling violent conflict are differentiated in such way that one part may impede the ability of another to intervene effectively. For example, in most jurisdictions, legal statutes require that medical staff notify law enforcement in all case of firearm injury. Studies in Philadelphia found that compliance with the law was infrequent. The needs of the medical and justice system work at odds with each other. Because patient confidentiality and trust is important in providing quality medical care and in establishing creditability with patients in order to affect change, cooperating with police investigations may interfere with patient care. This same type of tension can exist between law enforcement, schools, community agencies, and parents who interact closely with young people.

There are currently no coordinated strategies across systems. The question becomes, what is the best way to “reach” a young person who has learned to resolve conflicts with violence? What is the best way to intervene to change the effects that high rates of exposure to violence in particular neighborhoods have on young people as they are growing? We know that adequate social supports are not available for many youth. We also know that individuals are resilient and develop coping strategies including using violence to deal with prior victimization experiences. One major way that youth without adequate support process their involvement in violent events is through repeated social interactions with the peer network. Coordinated efforts would make the most sense; the group process needs to be integrated into our strategies for addressing the urban youth violence problem across every system. Establishing protocols for information sharing, collective decision making, and getting the buy-in from agencies with diverse views of the problem and the offender will likely be a great challenge. We feel it is important to start with offenders’ networks and use the information that is gathered during investigations, community responses, medical treatment, and court proceedings to prevent future violent crimes. In order to have an impact on violence reduction at the community level it is important to plot the social organization of delinquent youth groups across geographic space and to maintain data on which groups are aligned, at war or non-conflicting, and experiencing internal strife. When a violent incident happens between groups of youth it is important to understand the relationships between co-offenders and combatants. When charges are filed for a violent crime involving multiple co-offenders what happens to those records as they move through the juvenile or criminal justice system? For example, are co-offenders charged the same? Do they see the same judge? If they are sentenced to detention, do they go to the same facility? Are they assigned to the same probation or parole officer? If yes, is that working? If no, is information shared about what is learned from interactions with co-offenders that might be relevant for affecting change?

Violence, especially serious violence, is traumatic for all people who are present when it occurs. Youth who engage in violence are negatively affected by violence in a variety of ways even if there is no serious injury. As we described in Wilkinson and Carr (2008), over their limited life course, the youth in the NYCYVS sample have been highly exposed to violent conflict. Despite documented high rates of community violence in many American cities, very few services are available to assess or treat associated mental health and social/emotional development problems among youth navigating those dangerous spaces. Second, even given neighborhood conditions that foster violence, events often only occur or are prevented because of a confluence of circumstances, such as the role of peers and bystanders in isolation from effective social control. Increasing the opportunities for prosocial interactions or somehow underscoring the positive interventions of peers can be instrumental in reducing violent events. More specifically, since many conflicts resemble contests of character among primary actors, attention should be paid to identify ways to deescalate conflict in ways that allow both sides to save face.

At a community level, developing and testing informal mechanisms to mediate conflict and assist youth in making sense of the violent event is a worthwhile strategy. Variations of this approach have been tried in gang mediation programs and other community-based strategies that attempt to break into the isolated youth groups to negotiate peace no matter how short lived. These efforts are labor intensive and require the employment of powerful leaders who are respected by youth in the community. Evidence from the CeaseFire Chicago model validates these recommendations and provides a blueprint for the types of strategies identified here (Skogan, Harnett, Bump & DuBois, 2008; Slutkin, 2008). Prior to the initial writing of this report, we had not reviewed any empirical studies on the effectiveness of these strategies or the challenges to implementation. Our recommendations come from our findings. The Chicago model emphasizes the important role of credible messengers to reach high risk youth who are already involved in gun violence and gangs. The findings highlighted here provide powerful evidence of how violence spreads among youth who are highly exposed to violence and isolated away from mainstream activities.

We believe that caring adults who want to make a difference in breaking the cycle of violence among youth and young adults should read the interview data closely. In doing so they may find additional insights on how to best influence youth and promote healthy development. The event narratives illustrate how youth are caught up in a vicious cycle that perpetuates pain, suffering, and hopelessness. Youth and their families have to be a major part of the solution if we are going to end this cycle. In at least half of the violent events described in this study, there was prior conflict between youth and their opponent(s). Offender thinking about violence could be used to tailor prevention and intervention strategies. The situational patterns of violent events provide clues to law enforcement and service providers about how to improve security in the spaces youth occupy and often control.

Replication studies are needed to further validate the Chicago model and continue to experiment with a coordinated approach to addressing the urban youth violence problem. The efforts need to start in the community with parents, neighbors, community leaders, and agency professionals who interact routinely with neighborhood youth. Alternative conflict resolution strategies need to be developed and practiced consistently by adults as an important tool in teaching nonviolence. In our current approach, we teach youth to appeal to authority and the legal system for resolving conflict. Youth in the NYCYVS do not have faith in the system to handle their grievances so they use the tools they know-violence. They need different tools! Community leaders and justice practitioners need more effective tools too.

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