violence in today's society essay

We Live in a Culture of Violence

Violence is a social and political problem, as well as a personal one..

Posted January 31, 2018 | Reviewed by Devon Frye

It’s hard to believe the idea that every time another mass shooting happens, nothing could've been done to prevent it. Tragically, it seems that mass shootings will continue to occur, be it a result of international terrorism or through the hands of a neighbor. Although the aggressor or aggressors may feel anger toward a specific group of people, their victims often include those outside that particular group.

An Everytown for Gun Safety analysis of data from 2009 to 2016, collected from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Vital Statistics System, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)’s Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR), reveals many disturbing facts.

It found that in mass shootings—in which “mass shooting” is defined as a situation in which at least four people are killed with guns— 54 percent were committed by intimate partners or family. In other words, domestic violence plays a pivotal role in over half of the cases.

The United States is the country with the most arms per capita. Four out of seven people live in a home with a gun. Approximately 97,820 people are wounded yearly as a result of a firearm—268 a day. It was also found that, between 2012 and 2016, there were around 35,000 gun-related deaths: 21,600 were suicides and 12,800 were homicides.

This data, however, does not elucidate the causes of violence. It does not answer questions regarding the mental health of those who attack others, or how access to firearms in a society that has enculturated violence may have played a part.

Many people in the U.S. feel that guns are necessary for security. Yet some countries, such as Japan, have adopted many very strict gun-control laws without consequence. In Japan, citizens are only allowed to purchase shotguns and air rifles after attending an all-day class, taking a written examination, and passing a shooting-range test with a mark of at least 95 percent. A background check—which includes mental health screenings, drug use history, and interviews of relatives and/or colleagues—is also completed. Guns are inspected once a year. After three years, those seeking to renew their gun licenses undergo the same rigorous process. In Japan, fatalities are approximately 10 for a population of 128 million. Australia was also able to reduce its gun violence problem by 40 percent when it implemented a program against the use of firearms in 1996.

Why is it that the United States cannot do something similar, especially given that it’s confirmed that in countries in which there are more gun-control laws, there are fewer gun-related fatalities? It’s a complex problem.

For starters, the gun industry generates billions of dollars of overseas revenue for the country. In addition, the United States has a history of military activity throughout the world. Many researchers and scholars argue that we live in a culture of violence, where weapons are a symbol of power.

Guns without users are harmless. It is easy to say that it is not the gun that commits the crime , but the person who pulls the trigger. Many believe, then, that gun violence is a question of mental health.

There is also the question of gender . Why do men engage in gun violence more often than women? Some believe it may be due to early socialization and education . Perhaps we could institute school-based educational plans that teach kids how to resolve conflicts.

If we add in the fact that we live in a society that tends to value and glamorize violence, in which many children and youth are exposed to violence on a daily basis via television, social media , and video games, some would argue that we can’t expect much to change. By the time a child becomes an adult, most of them will have already witnessed hundreds or even thousands of acts of violence on television. It's possible that early exposure to media violence numbs children to it or legitimizes it as a means to solve problems, though researchers are divided on this front. It's possible, though, that some children may imitate what they see on television or identify with characters who commit (or are victims of) violence.

As with all other problems of a complex society, the answer to mass shootings is not an easy one. The U.S. does offer many beneficial treatment programs, but navigating through them is sometimes difficult. A person who suffers from a mental illness does not always have the necessary resources to maintain a healthier lifestyle. In many cases, outside actors cannot intervene in their care unless they give consent.

The most common profile of those who commit mass violence seems to be a reclusive white male, who often struggles with relationship problems or lacks familial support. When someone like this feels alienated and has access to a firearm, the risk of finding "power" with violence is present. This is not only a mental health issue but a social and political problem, too.

Ana Nogales, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and well-known media personality, columnist, speaker, and advocate for victims of domestic violence.

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A New Era of Conflict and Violence

The nature of conflict and violence has transformed substantially since the UN was founded 75 years ago. Conflicts now tend to be less deadly and often waged between domestic groups rather than states. Homicides are becoming more frequent in some parts of the world, while gender-based attacks are increasing globally. The long-term impact on development of inter-personal violence, including violence against children, is also more widely recognized.

Separately, technological advances have raised concerns about lethal autonomous weapons and cyberattacks, the weaponization of bots and drones, and the livestreaming of extremist attacks. There has also been a rise in criminal activity involving data hacks and ransomware, for example. Meanwhile, international cooperation is under strain, diminishing global potential for the prevention and resolution of conflict and violence in all forms.

ENTRENCHED CONFLICT

Globally, the absolute number of war deaths has been declining since 1946. And yet, conflict and violence are currently on the rise , with many conflicts today waged between non-state actors such as political militias, criminal, and international terrorist groups. Unresolved regional tensions, a breakdown in the rule of law, absent or co-opted state institutions, illicit economic gain, and the scarcity of resources exacerbated by climate change , have become dominant drivers of conflict.

In 2016, more countries experienced violent conflict than at any point in almost 30 years. At the same time, conflicts are becoming more fragmented. For example, the number of armed groups involved in the Syrian civil war has¬ mushroomed from eight to several thousand since the outbreak of the conflict. Furthermore, the regionalisation of conflict, which interlinks political, socio-economic and military issues across borders, has seen many conflicts become longer, more protracted, and less responsive to traditional forms of resolution.

ORGANISED CRIME, URBAN AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Today, crime kills far more people than armed conflicts. In 2017, almost half a million people across the world were killed in homicides, far surpassing the 89,000 killed in active armed conflicts and the 19,000 killed in terrorist attacks . If homicide rates keep climbing at the current rate of 4 per cent, then Sustainable Development Goals 16 – which includes a target ‘to significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere’ – will not be met by 2030. 

Organised crime and gang violence vary widely across regions. Countries in the Americas have the worst homicide rates by a wide margin, accounting for 37 per cent of the global total in a region that accounts for only 13 per cent of the world’s population. Political instability engenders organised crime, including targeted attacks against police, women, journalists, and migrants. Meanwhile political violence no longer affects only low-income states. In the past 15 years, more than half of the world’s population has lived in direct contact or proximity to significant political violence. 

For women and girls, the home remains the most dangerous place. Some 58 per cent of female homicides were carried out by intimate partners or family members in 2017, up from 47 per cent in 2012. Women bear the heaviest burden of lethal victimisation, often as a result of misogynistic beliefs, inequality, and dependency, which persist globally, especially in low-in-come countries.

VIOLENT EXTREMISM

While terrorism remains widespread, its impact has been waning in recent years. Globally, the number of deaths attributed to terrorism dropped for a third consecutive year in 2018, to under 19,000. Attacks have become less lethal as governments step up counter-terrorism efforts, regional and international coordination, and programmes to prevent and counter violent extremism. In 2017, a fifth of terrorist attacks were unsuccessful , compared with just over 12 per cent in 2014. 

Conflict remains the primary driver of terrorism, with more than 99 per cent of all terrorist-related deaths occurring in countries involved in a violent conflict or with high levels of political terror. The majority of deadly attacks take place in the Middle East, North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa, with Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, and Syria, bearing the heaviest burden. 

In countries with high levels of economic development, social alienation, lack of economic opportunity, and state involvement in an external conflict are the major drivers of terrorist activity. In Western Europe, terrorism-related deaths have fallen dramatically in the past few years, but the number of incidents has increased. There has been a sizeable increase in the number of attacks carried out by actors with far-right, white nationalist, or anti-Muslim beliefs in both Western Europe and North America in the past two decades. The number of incidents across the two regions increased from three in 2002 to 59 in 2017, with social media playing a crucial role in the dissemination of xenophobic speech and incitement to violence.

Extremist groups today have unprecedented access to the general public through the internet, which allows for more efficient and effective recruitment, incitement, and propaganda, as well as the purchase of weapons and unregulated money transfers. Both state and non-state actors can also use AI-enabled deep learning to create ‘deepfakes,’ which create seemingly real footage of people speaking words they never uttered and have the potential to fuel misinformation, divisions, and political instability.

NEW TECHNOLOGIES

Technological advances are contributing to the changing nature of conflict. There are concerns about the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to enhance cyber, physical, and biological attacks. For example, by making them more finely targeted,  harder to attribute, and easier for small groups perhaps even ‘lone wolfs’ to carry out.

Emerging technologies are lowering the barriers to the acquisition of biological weapons – toxic substances or diseases used to harm or kill humans, livestock, and crops. There are concerns that advances in AI and 3D printing could facilitate biological attacks , by automating the development and production of the weapons and the systems that develop them.

There is also mounting international concern over the development of so-called lethal autonomous weapons (LAWs), which could identify and engage a specific target without human guidance, thereby transferring responsibility over life and death from human moral systems to complex data systems, devoid of an ethical compass. The UN Secretary-General has called for fully autonomous weapons to be prohibited by international law, as have over 30 nations .

Perhaps the most prevalent modern-day threat is that of cyber-attacks. According to IBM’s X-Force Incident Response and Intelligence Services, the number of cyber-attacks doubled in the first half of 2019 in comparison with the second half of 2018, most of them targeting manufacturers, oil and gas companies, and educational institutes. Owners of critical infrastructure are especially at risk, as malicious actors seek to target airport control towers, nuclear power plants, hospitals, and dams. Over the past year, more than a hundred cyber incidents with the potential to undermine international peace and security were identified. Such attacks would cause substantial damage and casualties.

On the flip side, advances in AI and other technologies also provide new tools and preventive strategies for police and counterintelligence agencies to better prevent attacks and identify perpetrators. But here too there are risks. For example, predictive policing comes with its own downsides, including inbuilt racial and religious biases, which can engender radicalisation to violent extremism.

THE NUCLEAR THREAT

Today, we are witnessing the unravelling of the international arms control architecture and a gradual backtracking on established arms control agreements, which have supported global stability, restraint, and transparency. The continued existence of nuclear weapons poses an ever-greater threat to the survival of humanity. While the number of nuclear weapons has dropped from more than 60,000 during the Cold War to around 14,000 today, nuclear weapons are more powerful today. At the same time relations between nuclear-armed states are fraying, and divisions over the pace and scale of disarmament are growing. 

When the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty ended in August 2019, the UN Secretary-General deplored the loss of “an invaluable brake on nuclear war”. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) faces a similar demise. The total elimination of nuclear weapons can still be achieved, but it will require a renewed commitment to trust and cooperation between the world’s most powerful countries. The Secretary-General has called on states to renew fervour on outstanding and current arms control agreements. 

LOOKING FORWARD

In 1945, the UN was primarily designed as a tool to manage interstate relations as the world reeled from the horrors of two world wars. While today’s world is in many ways safer, the nature of threat has evolved considerably. New, more complex and more sophisticated threats require imaginative and bold responses, and strengthened collaboration between states, as well as the private sector and civil society. Institutional boundaries must also be bridged, so that political, human rights, and development partners can work in concert.

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The Effects of Violence on Communities: The Violence Matrix as a Tool for Advancing More Just Policies

Beth E. Richie is Head of the Department of Criminology, Law and Justice and Professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America's Prison Nation (2012) and Compelled to Crime: The Gender Entrapment of Battered Black Women (1996) and editor of The Long Term: Resisting Life Sentences, Working toward Freedom (with Alice Kim, Erica Meiners, Jill Petty, et al., 2018).

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Beth E. Richie; The Effects of Violence on Communities: The Violence Matrix as a Tool for Advancing More Just Policies. Daedalus 2022; 151 (1): 84–96. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/daed_a_01890

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In this essay, I illustrate how discussions of the effects of violence on communities are enhanced by the use of a critical framework that links various microvariables with macro-institutional processes. Drawing upon my work on the issue of violent victimization toward African American women and how conventional justice policies have failed to bring effective remedy in situations of extreme danger and degradation, I argue that a broader conceptual framework is required to fully understand the profound and persistent impact that violence has on individuals embedded in communities that are experiencing the most adverse social injustices. I use my work as a case in point to illustrate how complex community dynamics, ineffective institutional responses, and broader societal forces of systemic violence intersect to further the impact of individual victimization. In the end, I argue that understanding the impact of all forms of violence would be better served by a more intersectional and critical interdisciplinary framework.

Rigorous interdisciplinary scholarship, public policy analyses, and the most conscientious popular discourse on the impact of violence point to the deleterious effects that violence has on both individual health and safety and community well-being. Comprehensive justice policy research on topics ranging from gun violence to intimate abuse support the premise that the physical injury, psychological distress, and fear that are typically associated with individual victimization are directly linked to subsequent social isolation, economic instability, erosion of neighborhood networks, group alienation, and mistrust of justice and other institutions. This literature also points to the ways that structural inequality, persistent disadvantages, and structural abandonment are some of the root causes of microlevel violent interactions and at the same time influence how effective macro-level justice policies are at responding to or preventing violent victimization. 1

The most exciting of these analyses have emerged from the subfields of feminist criminology, critical race theory, critical criminology, sociolegal theory, and other social science research that take seriously questions of race and culture, gender and sexuality, ethnic identity and class position, exploring with great interest how these factors influence the prevailing questions upon which practitioners in our field base their practice; questions such as how to increase access to justice, the role of punishment in desistance, the factors that lead to a disproportionate impact of institutional practices, and the perceptions about, and possibilities for, violence prevention and abolitionist practices. 2 Discussions about the future of justice policy would be well served by attending to this growing literature and the critical frameworks that are advanced from within it.

In this essay, I will attempt to illustrate how discussions of the effects of violence on communities are enhanced by the use of a critical framework that links various microvariables with macro-institutional processes. Drawing upon my work on the issue of violent victimization toward African American women and how conventional justice policies have failed to bring effective remedy in situations of extreme danger and degradation, I argue that a broader conceptual framework is required to fully understand the profound and persistent impact that violence has on individuals embedded in communities that are experiencing the most adverse social injustices. I use my work as a case in point to illustrate how complex community dynamics, ineffective institutional responses, and broader societal forces of systemic violence intersect to further the impact of individual victimization. In the end, I argue that understanding the impact of all forms of violence would be better served by a more intersectional and critical interdisciplinary framework.

Following a review of the data on violent victimization against African American women, I describe the violence matrix , a conceptual framework that I developed from analyzing data from several research projects on the topic. 3 I do so as a way to make concrete my earlier claim: that the effect of violence on communities must be understood from a critical intersectional framework. That is, my central argument here is an epistemological one, suggesting that in the future, the most effective and indeed “just” policies in response to violence necessitate the development of critical far-reaching systemic analysis and social change at multiple levels.

Violent victimization has been established as a major problem in contemporary society, resulting in long-term physical, social, emotional, and economic consequences for people of different racial/ethnic, class, religious, regional, and age groups and identities. 4 However, like most social problems, the impact is not equally felt across all subgroups, and even though the rates may be similar, the consequences of violent victimization follow other patterns of social inequality and disproportionately affect racial/ethnic minority groups. 5 When impact and consequences are taken into account, it becomes clear that African American women fare among the worst, in part because of the ways that individual experiences are impacted by negative institutional processes. 6

While qualitative data suggest that there is a link between social position in a racial hierarchy and Black women's subsequent vulnerability to violence, the specific mechanism of that relationship has yet to be described or tested. 7 However, despite new research that examines the effects of race/ethnicity and gender in combination, there has been a lack of systematic analysis of the intersection of race and gender with a specific focus on the situational factors, cultural dynamics, and neighborhood variables that lead to higher rates and/or more problematic outcomes of violent victimization in the lives of African American women. 8

These unanswered questions led to the years of fieldwork that informed the development of the violence matrix. I was interested in broadening the understanding of violence by analyzing the contextual and situational factors that correlate with multiple forms of violent victimization for African American women, incorporating the racial and community dynamics that influence their experiences. I was also concerned about the ways that state-sanctioned violence and systemic oppression contributed to the experience and impact of intimate partner abuse and looked for a way to incorporate “ordinary violence” and “the injustices of everyday life” into an analytic model. I offer this conceptual approach as a potential epistemological model because it proposes to enhance the scientific understanding of violent victimization of African American women by looking at gender and race, micro and macro, individual, community, and societal issues in the same analysis, whereas in most other research, rates of victimization are described either by gender or race, and typically not from within the contexts of household, neighborhood, and society.

More specifically, domestic violence, sexual abuse, and other forms of violence typically understood to be associated with household or familiar relationships are usually studied as a separate phenomenon constituting a gender violence subfield distinct from other forms of victimization that are captured in more general crime statistics. 9 The more general research that documents crimes of assault, homicide, and so on does not typically isolate analyses of the nature of the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim, even if it is noted. As a result, gender violence and other forms of violent victimization against women are studied separately, and their causes and consequences, the intervention and prevention strategies, and the needs for policy change are not linked analytically to each other. This leaves unexamined the significant influence of situational factors (such as intimacy) or contextual factors (such as negative images of African American women) on victimization, and on violence more generally.

Prior to describing the violence matrix, readers may benefit from a brief overview of the problems that it was designed to account for. African American women experience disproportionate impacts of violent victimization. 10 As the following review of the literature shows, the rates are high and the consequences are severe, firmly establishing the need to focus on this vulnerable group. The goal is not to suggest it is the only population group at risk or that racial/ethnic identity has a causal influence on victimization, but rather to look specifically at how race/ethnicity and gender interact to create significant disproportionality in rates of, perceptions about, and consequences of violence, and to develop an instrument to collect data that can be analyzed conceptually and discussed in terms of contextual particularities.

Assault . According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2005, Black women reported experiencing violent victimization at a rate of 25 per 1,000 persons aged twelve years or older. 11 In an earlier report, Black women reported experiencing simple assaults at 28.8 per 1,000 persons and serious violent crimes at 22.5 per 1,000 persons, twelve years or older. Black women are also more likely (53 percent) to report violent victimization to the police than their White or male counterparts. 12 Situational factors such as income, urban versus suburban residence, perception of street gang membership, and presence of a weapon influence Black women's violent victimization. Other variables are known to complicate this disproportionality, most notably income, age, neighborhood density, and other crimes in the community like gang-related events. However, few studies note or analyze their covariance. Additionally, reports after 2007 detail statistics on violent victimization for race or gender, but not race and gender; therefore, numbers regarding Black women's experiences are largely unknown.

Intimate partner violence . Intimate partner violence is a significant and persistent social problem with serious consequences for individual women, their families, and society as a whole. 13 The 1996 National Violence Against Women Survey suggested that 1.5 million women in the United States were physically assaulted by an intimate partner each year, while other studies provide much higher estimates. 14 For example, the Department of Justice estimates that 5.3 million incidents of violence against a current or former spouse or girlfriend occur annually. Estimates of violence against women in same sex partnerships indicate a similar rate of victimization. 15

According to most national studies, African American women are disproportionately represented in the data on physical violence against intimate partners. 16 In the Violence Against Women Survey, 25 percent of Black women had experienced abuse from their intimate partner, including “physical violence, sexual violence, threats of violence, economic exploitation, confinement and isolation from social activities, stalking, property destruction, burglary, theft, and homicide.” Rates of severe battering help to spotlight the disproportionate impact of direct physical assaults on Black women by intimate partners: homicide by an intimate partner is the second-leading cause of death for Black women between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. 17 Black women are killed by a spouse at a rate twice that of White women. However, when the intimate partner is a boyfriend or girlfriend, this statistic increases to four times the rate of their White counterparts. 18 While the numbers are convincing, they are typically not embedded in an understanding of how situational factors like relationship history, religiosity, or availability of services impact these rates. 19

Sexual victimization . When race is considered a variable in some community samples, 7 to 30 percent of all Black women report having been raped as adults, and 14 percent report sexual abuse during their childhood. 20 This unusually wide range results from differences in definitions and sampling methods. However, as is true in most research on sexual victimization, it is widely accepted that rape, when self-reported, is underreported, and that Black women tend to underutilize crisis intervention and other supportive services that collect data. 21 Even though Black women from all segments of the African American community experience sexual violence, the pattern of vulnerability to rape and sexual assault mirrors that of direct physical assault by intimate partners. The data show that Black women from low-income communities, those with substance abuse problems or mental health concerns, and those in otherwise compromised social positions are most vulnerable to sexual violence from their intimate partners. 22 Not only is the incidence of rape higher, but a review of the qualitative research on Black women's experiences of rape also suggests that Black women are assaulted in more brutal and degrading ways than other women. 23 Weapons or objects are more often used, so Black women's injuries are typically worse than those of other groups of women. Black women are more likely to be raped repeatedly and to experience assaults that involve multiple perpetrators. 24

Beyond the physical, and sometimes lethal, consequences, the psychological literature documents the very serious mental health impact of sexual assault by intimate partners. For instance, 31 percent of all rape victims develop rape-related post-traumatic stress disorder. 25 Rape victims are three times more likely than nonvictims to experience a major depressive episode in their lives, and they attempt suicide at a rate thirteen times higher than nonvictims. Women who have been raped by a member of their household are ten times more likely to abuse illegal substances or alcohol than women who have not been raped. Black women experience the trauma of sexual abuse and aggression from their intimate partners in particular ways, as studies conducted by psychologists Victoria Banyard, Sandra Graham-Bermann, Carolyn West, and others have discussed. 26 It is also important to note the extent to which Black women are exposed to or coerced into participating in sexually exploitative intimate relationships with older men and men who violate commitments of fidelity by having multiple sexual partners. 27 Far from infrequent or benign, it can be hypothesized that these experiences serve to socialize young women into relationships characterized by unequal power, and they normalize subservient gender roles for women, although very little empirical research has been done to make this analytical case.

Community harassment . In addition to direct physical and sexual assaults, Black women experience a disproportionate number of unwanted comments, uninvited physical advances, and undesired exposure to pornography in their communities. Almost 75 percent of Black women sampled report some form of sexual harassment in their lifetime, including being forced to live in, work in, attend school in, and even worship in degrading, dangerous, and hostile environments, where the threat of rape, public humiliation, and embarrassment is a defining aspect of their social environment. 28 They also experience trauma as a result of witnessing violence in their communities. 29

For some women, this sexual harassment escalates to rape. Even when it does not, community harassment creates an environment of fear, apprehension, shame, and anxiety that can be linked to women's vulnerability to violent victimization. It is important to understand this link because herein lie some of the most significant situational and contextual factors, like the diminished use of support services and reduced social capital on the part of African American women.

Social disenfranchisement . Less well-documented or quantified in the criminological data is the disproportionate harm caused to African American women because of the ways that violent victimization is linked to social disenfranchisement and the discrimination they face in the social sphere. Included here is what other researchers have called coercive control or structural violence. 30 The notion of social disenfranchisement goes beyond emotional abuse and psychological manipulation to include the regulation of emotional and social life in the private sphere in ways that are consistent with normative values about gender, race, and class. 31 These aspects of violence against African American women in particular are conceptualized in the violence matrix, and include being disrespected by microracial slurs from community members and agency officials, and having their experience of violent victimization denied by community leaders. 32 African American women are also disproportionately likely to be poor, rely on public services like welfare, and be under the control of state institutions like prisons, which means that they face discrimination and degradation in these settings at higher rates. 33 These situational and contextual factors that cause harm are indirectly related to violent victimization and must be considered part of the environment that disadvantages African American women. From this vantage point, it could be argued that when women experience disadvantages associated with racial and ethnic discrimination, dangerous and degrading situations, and social disenfranchisement, they are more at risk of victimization. 34

The violence matrix ( Table 1 ) is informed by the data reviewed above and by my interest in bringing a critical feminist criminological approach to the understanding of violent victimization of African American women. It asserts that intimate partner violence is worsened by some of the contextual variables and situational dynamics in their households, communities, and broader social sphere, and vice versa. The tool is not intended to infer causation, but rather to broaden the understanding of the factors that influence violence in order to create justice policy in the future.

The Violence Matrix

The violence matrix conceptualizes the forms of violent victimization that women experience as fitting into three overlapping categories, reflecting a sense that the forms are co-constituted and exist within a larger context and in multiple arenas: 35 1) direct physical assault against women; 2) sexual aggressions that range from harassment to rape; and 3) the emotional and structural dimensions of social disenfranchisement that characterize the lives of some African American women and leave them vulnerable to abuse. Embedded in the discussion of social disenfranchisement are issues related to social inequality, systemic abuse, and state violence.

Consistent with ecological models of other social problems, the violence matrix shows that various forms of violent victimization happen in several contexts and are influenced by several variables. 36 First, violence occurs within households, including abuse from intimate partners as well as other family members and co-residents. Dynamics associated with household composition, relationship history, and patterns of household functioning can be isolated for consideration in this context. The second sphere is the community in which women live: the neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and public spaces where women routinely interact with peers and other people. This context has both a geographic and a cultural meaning. Community, in this context, is where women share a sense of belonging and physical space. An analysis of the community context focuses attention on issues like neighborhood social class, degree of social cohesion, and presence or absence of social services. The third is the social sphere, where legal processes, institutional policies, ineffective justice policies, and the nature of social conditions (such as population density, neighborhood disorder, patterns of incarceration, and other macrovariables) create conditions that cause harm to women and other victims of violence. 37 The harm caused by victimization in this context happens either through passive victimization (as in the case of bystanders not responding to calls for help because of the low priority put on women's safety) or active aggression (as in police use of excessive force in certain neighborhoods) that create structural disadvantage. 38

The analytic advantage of using a tool like the violence matrix to explain violent victimization is that it offers a way to move beyond statistical analyses of disproportionality to focus on a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between contextual factors that disadvantage African American women and the situational variables leading to violent victimization. Two important features of this conceptual framework allow for this. First, the violence matrix theoretical model considers both the forms and the contexts as dialectical and reinforcing (as opposed to discrete) categories of experience. Boundaries overlap, relationships shift over time, and situations change. It helps to show how gender violence and other forms of violent victimization intersect and reinforce each other. For example, sexual abuse has a physical component, community members move in and become intimate partners, and sexual harassment is sometimes a part of how institutions respond to victims. This theoretical model examines the simultaneity of forms and contexts, a feature that most paradigms do not have. 39 The possibility that gender violence (like marital rape) could be correlated with violence at the community level (like assault by a neighbor) holds important potential for a deeper understanding of violent victimization of vulnerable groups and therefore informs the future of justice policy.

A second distinguishing feature of this conceptual model is that it broadens the discussion about violent victimization beyond direct assaults within the household (Table 1, cells 1 and 2) and sexual assaults by acquaintances and strangers (cells 5 and 8), which are the focus of the majority of the research on violence against women. It includes social disenfranchisement as a form of violence and social sphere as a context (cells 3, 6, 7, 8, and 9). In this way, the violence matrix focuses specific attention on contextual and situational vulnerabilities in addition to the physical ones. More generally, this advantages research and justice praxis. This approach responds to the entrenched problem of gender violence as it relates to issues of structural racism and other forms of systematic advantage. Models like this therefore hold the potential to inform justice policy that is more comprehensive, more effective, and, ultimately, more “just.”

My hope is that the violence matrix will deepen the understanding of the specific problem of violence in the lives of Black women and serve as a model for intersectional analyses of other groups and their experiences of violence. I hope it points to the utility of moving beyond quantitative studies and single-dimension qualitative analyses of the impact of violence and instead encourages designing conceptual models that consider root causes and the ways that systemic factors complicate its impact. This would offer an opportunity for a deeper discussion around violence policy, one that would include attention to individual harm, and how it is created by, reinforced by, or worsened by structural forms of violence. It would bring neighborhood dynamics into the analytical framework and engage issues of improving community efficacy and reversing structural abandonment in considerations of potential options. Questions about where strategies of community development and how the politics of prison abolition might appear would become relevant. And in the end, it would advance critical justice frameworks that answer questions about what 1) we might invest in to keep individuals safe; 2) how we might help neighborhoods thrive; and 3) how we might create structural changes that shift power in our society such that violence and victimization are minimized. More than rhetorical questions and naively optimistic strategies, these are real issues that must inform any discussion of the future of justice policy. A model like the violence matrix, modified and improved upon by discussions at convenings like those hosted by the Square One Project, offer some insights into both the what and the how of future justice policy. I hope that this essay is helpful in moving that discussion forward.

T. R. Young, “Beyond Crime and Punishment: Part 2–Democratic Proposals for Social Justice,” Critical Criminology 7 (2) (1996): 92–107.

Eva Broodman, “An Immanent Critique of the Prison Nation: The Contradictions of Carceral ‘Anti-Violence,'” Philosophy & Social Criticism 44 (5) (2018): 571–592; Angela Davis, The Meaning of Freedom, and Other Difficult Dialogues (San Francisco: City Lights Publisher, 2010); Shaun L. Gabbidon and Helen Taylor-Greene, Race and Crime , 3rd ed. (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE Publications, 2012); and Paul Leighton, Gregg Barak, and Allison Cotton, Class, Race, Gender, and Crime: The Social Realities of Justice in America (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010).

Beth E. Richie, Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America's Prison Nation (New York: New York University Press, 2012).

Michele C. Black, Kathleen C. Basile, Matthew J. Breiding, et al., National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2010 Summary Report (Atlanta: The National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2011); Frederick P. Buttell and Michelle Mohr Carney, “A Large Sample Evaluation of a Court-Mandated Batterer Intervention Program: Investigating Differential Program Effect for African American and Caucasian Men,” Research on Social Work Practice 16 (2) (2006): 121–131; Erika Harrell, “Black Victims of Violent Crime” (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2007); National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, “Costs of Intimate Partner Violence against Women in the United States” (Atlanta: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2003); Ruth D. Peterson, Lauren J. Krivo, and John Hagan, Divergent Social Worlds: Neighborhood Crime and the Racial-Spatial Divide (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2010); Patrick Sharkey, Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress toward Racial Equality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013); and Patricia Tjaden and Nancy Thoennes, Full Report on Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence against Women: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey (Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice, 2000).

Natalie J. Sokoloff and Ida Dupont, “Domestic Violence at the Intersections of Race, Class, and Gender: Challenges and Contributions to Understanding Violence against Marginalized Women in Diverse Communities,” Violence Against Women 11 (1) (2005): 38–64; Darrell Steffensmeier, Ben Feldmeyer, Casey T. Harris, and Jeffery T. Ulmer, “Reassessing Trends in Black Violent Crime, 1980–2008: Sorting Out the ‘Hispanic Effect’ in Uniform Crime Reports Arrests, National Crime Victimization Survey Offender Estimates, and U.S. Prisoner Counts,” Criminology 49 (1) (2011): 197–252; and James D. Unnever and Shaun L. Gabbidon, A Theory of African American Offending: Race, Racism, and Crime (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2011).

Danielle McGuire, At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance–A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power (New York: Vintage, 2010); R. L. McNeely and Jose B. Torres, “Reflections on Racial Differences in Perceptions of Intimate Partner Violence: Black Women Have to Be Strong,” Social Justice in Context 4 (1) (2009): 129–136; Casey T. Taft, Thema Bryant-Davis, Halley E. Woodward, et al., “Intimate Partner Violence against African American Women: An Examination of the Socio-Cultural Context,” Aggression and Violent Behavior 14 (1) (2009): 50–58; Shatema Threadcraft, Intimate Justice: The Black Female Body and the Body Politic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); and Eve Waltermaurer, Carole-Ann Watson, and Louise-Anne McNutt, “Black Women's Health: The Effect of Perceived Racism and Intimate Partner Violence,” Violence Against Women 12 (12) (2006): 1214–1222.

Buttell and Carney, “A Large Sample Evaluation of a Court-Mandated Batterer Intervention Program”; Shannan Catalano, Erica Smith, Howard Snyder, and Michael Rand, “Female Victims of Violence” (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2009); Michelle D. Mitchell, Gabrielle Hargrove, Marietta H. Collins, and Martie P. Thompson, “Coping Variables that Mediate the Relation between Intimate Partner Violence and Mental Health Outcomes among Low-Income, African American Women,” Journal of Clinical Psychology 62 (12) (2006): 1503–1520; and Shondrah Tarrezz Nash, “Through Black Eyes: African American Women's Constructions of their Experiences with Intimate Male Partner Violence,” Violence Against Women 11 (11) (2005): 1420–1440.

Janette Y. Taylor, “No Resting Place: African American Women at the Crossroads of Violence,” Violence Against Women 11 (12) (2005): 1473–1489; Nikki Jones, Between Good and Ghetto: African American Girls and Inner-City Violence (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2010); and Jody Miller, Getting Played: African American Girls, Urban Inequality, and Gendered Violence (New York: New York University Press, 2008).

Carole E. Jordon, “Advancing the Study of Violence against Women: Evolving Research Agendas into Science,” Violence Against Women 15 (4) (2009): 393–419.

Buttell and Carney, “A Large Sample Evaluation of a Court-Mandated Batterer Intervention Program.”

Harrell, “Black Victims of Violent Crime.”

Callie Rennison, “Violent Victimization and Race, 1993–98” (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, 2001).

Shannon Catalano, “Intimate Partner Violence in the United States” (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, 2006).

Tjaden and Thoennes, Full Report on Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence against Women .

Kim Fountain and Avy A. Skolnik, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Domestic Violence in the United States in 2006: A Report of the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Program (New York: National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, 2007), https://avp.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/2006_NCAVP_DV_Report.pdf; Valli Kanuha, “Compounding the Triple Jeopardy: Violence in Lesbian Relationships,” Women and Therapy 9 (2) (1990): 169–184; and Diane R. Dolan-Soto and Sara Kaplan, New York Lesbian, Gay, Transgender and Bisexual Domestic Violence Report (New York: New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, 2005), http://avp.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/2005_AVP_DV_Report.pdf .

Emiko Petrosky, Janet M. Blair, Carter J. Betz, et al., “Racial and Ethnic Differences in Homicides of Adult Women and the Role of Intimate Partner Violence–United States, 2003–2014,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 66 (28) (2017): 741–746.

Taft et al., “Intimate Partner Violence against African American Women.”

Catalano et al., “Female Victims of Violence.”

Tricia B. Bent-Goodley, “Perception of Domestic Violence: A Dialogue with African American Women,” Health and Social Work 29 (4) (2004): 307–316; Blanca Ramos, Bonnid E. Carlson, and Louise-Ann McNutt, “Life-Time Abuse, Mental Health and African American Women,” Journal of Family Violence 19 (3) (2004): 153–164; Christina G. Watlington and Christopher M. Murphy, “The Role of Religion and Spirituality among African American Survivors of Domestic Violence,” Journal of Clinical Psychology 62 (7) (2006): 837–857; and Carolyn West, “Black Women and Intimate Partner Violence: New Directions for Research,” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 19 (12) (2004): 1487–1493.

Patricia Tjaden and Nancy Thoennes, Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence (Washington, D.C: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, 2006).

Helen A. Neville and Jennifer Hamer, “'We Make Freedom': An Exploration of Revolutionary Black Feminism,” Journal of Black Studies 31 (4) (2001): 437–461.

Christina A. Byrne and David S. Riggs, “Gender Issues in Couple and Family Therapy Following Traumatic Stress,” in Gender and PTSD , ed. Rachel Kimerling, Paige Ouimette, and Jessica Wolfe (New York: The Guilford Press, 2002), 382–399; Jacquelyn Campbell, “Health Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence,” The Lancet 359 (9314) (2002): 1331–1336; Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, “Unlocking Options for Women: A Survey of Women in Cook County Jail” (Chicago: Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, 2002), https://www.issuelab.org/resources/46/46.pdf ; Cheryl Sutherland, Chris Sullivan, and Deborah Bybee, “Effects of Intimate Partner Violence versus Poverty on Women's Health,” Violence Against Women 7 (10) (2001): 1122–1143; and Tjaden and Thoennes, Full Report on Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence against Women .

Samuel Perry and Cyrus Schleifer, “Race and Trends in Pornography Viewership, 1973–2016: Examining the Moderating Roles of Gender and Religion,” Journal of Sex Research 56 (1) (2019): 62–73; Charlotte Pierce-Baker, Surviving the Silence: Black Women's Stories of Rape (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1998); and G. Erlick Robinson, “International Perspectives on Violence against Women,” Archives on Women's Mental Health 6 (3) (2003).

Pauline B. Bart and Patricia H. O'Brien, Stopping Rape: Successful Survival Strategies (Elmsford, N.Y.: Pergamon Press, 1985); and West, “Black Women and Intimate Partner Violence.”

National Victims Center and Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center, “Rape in America: A Report to the Nation” (Arlington, Va., and Charleston, S.C.: National Victim Center and Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center, 1992).

Victoria Banyard, “Measurement and Correlates of Prosocial Bystander Behavior: The Case of Interpersonal Violence,” Violence and Victims 23 (1) (2008): 83–97; Victoria L. Banyard and Sandra A. Graham-Bermann, “A Gender Analysis of Theories of Coping with Stress,” Psychology of Women Quarterly 17 (3) (1993): 303–318; and West, “Black Women and Intimate Partner Violence.”

Walter Dekeserdy and Marilyn Corsianos, Violence against Women in Pornography (New York: Routledge, 2016); and Jody Raphael and Jessica Ashley, “Domestic Sex Trafficking of Chicago Women and Girls” (Chicago: Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority and DePaul University College of Law, 2008).

Campbell, “Health Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence”; West, “Black Women and Intimate Partner Violence”; Shannan M. Catalano, The Measurement of Crime: Victim Reporting and Police Recording (El Paso, Tex.: LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2006); and Gail Wyatt, “The Sociocultural Context of African American and White Women's Rape,” Journal of Social Issues 48 (1) (1992): 77–91.

Esther Jenkins, “Black Women and Community Violence: Trauma, Grief and Coping,” Women and Therapy 25 (2) (2002): 29–44.

Evan Stark, Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

Joshua M. Price, Structural Violence: Hidden Brutality in the Lives of Women (Albany: SUNY Press, 2012).

Raphael and Ashley, “Domestic Sex Trafficking of Chicago Women and Girls.”

Michelle Gaseau and Keith Martin, “Secrets Behind Bars: Sexual Misconduct in Jails–Jails Take Proactive Role to Prevent Illegal Behavior,” Corrections.com; Kaaryn Gustafson, Cheating Welfare: Public Assistance and the Criminalization of Poverty (New York: New York University Press, 2011); and Gabriel Winant, “Black Women and the Carceral State,” Dissent 63 (3) (2016): 147–151.

Mary Bosworth and Jeanne Flavin, Race, Gender, and Punishment: From Colonialism to the War on Terror (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2007); Mimi Kim, “From Carceral Feminism to Transformative Justice: Women-of-Color Feminism and Alternatives to Incarceration,” Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work 27 (3) (2018): 219–233; and Elizabeth Sweet, “Carceral Feminism: Linking the State, Intersectional Bodies, and the Dichotomy of Place,” Dialogues in Human Geography 6 (2) (2016): 202–205.

Richie, Arrested Justice ; and Susan Schechter, Women and Male Violence (Boston: South End Press, 1982).

Urie Bronfenbrenner, “Ecological Systems Theory,” in Six Theories of Child Development: Revised Formulations and Current Issues , ed. Ross Vasta (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2016), 187–249.

David Gurnham, “A Critique of Carceral Feminist Arguments on Rape Myths and Sexual Scripts,” New Criminal Law Review 19 (2016): 141.

Banyard, “Measurement and Correlates of Prosocial Bystander Behavior.”

Jordon, “Advancing the Study of Violence against Women.”

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April 19, 2021 | Caitlin Elsaesser, Assistant Professor of Social Work

How Social Media Turns Online Arguments Between Teens Into Real-World Violence

Social media isn’t just mirroring conflicts happening in schools and on streets – it’s triggering new ones

Common social media practices like commenting and tagging can exacerbate arguments among teens and in some cases lead to violence (Adobe Stock).

The deadly  insurrection at the U.S. Capitol  in January exposed the  power of social media  to influence real-world behavior and incite violence. But many adolescents, who spend  more time on social media  than all other age groups, have known this for years.

“On social media, when you argue, something so small can turn into something so big so fast,” said Justin, a 17-year-old living in Hartford, during one of my research focus groups. (The participants’ names have been changed in this article to protect their identities.)

For the last three years, I have studied how and why  social media triggers and accelerates offline violence .  In my research , conducted in partnership with Hartford-based peace initiative  COMPASS Youth Collaborative , we interviewed dozens of young people aged 12-19 in 2018. Their responses made clear that social media is not a neutral communication platform.

In other words, social media isn’t just mirroring conflicts happening in schools and on streets – it’s intensifying and triggering new conflicts. And for young people who live in disenfranchised urban neighborhoods, where firearms can be readily available, this dynamic can be deadly.

Internet Banging

It can result in a phenomenon that  researchers at Columbia University have coined “internet banging.” Distinct from cyberbullying, internet banging involves taunts, disses, and arguments on social media between people in rival crews, cliques, or gangs. These exchanges can include comments, images, and videos that lead to physical fights, shootings and, in the worst cases, death .

It is estimated that the typical U.S. teen uses screen media  more than seven hours  daily, with the average teenager daily using three different forms of social media. Films such as “ The Social Dilemma ” underscore that social media companies create addictive platforms by design, using features such as unlimited scrolling and push notifications to keep users endlessly engaged.

According to the young people we interviewed, four social media features in particular escalate conflicts: comments, livestreaming, picture/video sharing, and tagging.

Comments and Livestreams

The feature most frequently implicated in social media conflicts, according to our research with adolescents, was comments. Roughly 80% of the incidents they described involved comments, which allow social media users to respond publicly to content posted by others.

Taylor, 17, described how comments allow people outside her friend group to “hype up” online conflicts: “On Facebook if I have an argument, it would be mostly the outsiders that’ll be hypin’ us up … ‘Cause the argument could have been done, but you got outsiders being like, ‘Oh, she gonna beat you up.’”

Meanwhile, livestreaming can quickly attract a large audience to watch conflict unfold in real time. Nearly a quarter of focus group participants implicated Facebook Live, for example, as a feature that escalates conflict.

Brianna, 17, shared an example in which her cousin told another girl to come to her house to fight on Facebook Live. “But mind you, if you got like 5,000 friends on Facebook, half of them watching … And most of them live probably in the area you live in. You got some people that’ll be like, ‘Oh, don’t fight.’ But in the majority, everybody would be like, ‘Oh, yeah, fight.’”

She went on to describe how three Facebook “friends” who were watching the livestream pulled up in cars in front of the house with cameras, ready to record and then post any fight.

Strategies to Stop Violence

Adolescents tend to  define themselves through peer groups  and are highly attuned to slights to their reputation. This makes it difficult to resolve social media conflicts peacefully. But the young people we spoke with are highly aware of how social media shapes the nature and intensity of conflicts.

A key finding of our work is that young people often try to avoid violence resulting from social media. Those in our study discussed four approaches to do so: avoidance, deescalation, reaching out for help and bystander intervention.

Avoidance involves exercising self-control to avoid conflict in the first place. As 17-year-old Diamond explained, “If I’m scrolling and I see something and I feel like I got to comment, I’ll go [to] comment and I’ll be like, ‘Hold up, wait, no.’ And I just start deleting it and tell myself … ‘No, mind my business.’”

Reaching out for support involves turning to peers, family or teachers for help. “When I see conflict, I screenshot it and send it to my friends in our group chat and laugh about it,” said Brianna, 16. But there’s a risk in this strategy, Brianna noted: “You could screenshot something on Snapchat, and it’ll tell the person that you screenshot it and they’ll be like, ‘Why are you screenshotting my stuff?’”

The deescalation strategy involves attempts by those involved to slow down a social media conflict as it happens. However, participants could not recount an example of this strategy working, given the intense pressure they experience from social media comments to protect one’s reputation.

They emphasized the bystander intervention strategy was most effective offline, away from the presence of an online audience. A friend might start a conversation offline with an involved friend to help strategize how to avoid future violence. Intervening online is often risky, according to participants, because the intervener can become a new target, ultimately making the conflict even bigger.

Peer Pressure Goes Viral 

Young people are all too aware that the number of comments a post garners, or how many people are watching a livestream, can make it extremely difficult to pull out of a conflict once it starts.

Jasmine, a 15-year-old, shared, “On Facebook, there be so many comments, so many shares and I feel like the other person would feel like they would be a punk if they didn’t step, so they step even though they probably, deep down, really don’t want to step.”

There is a  growing consensus  across both major U.S. political parties that the large technology companies behind social media apps need to be more tightly regulated. Much of the concern has focused on the  dangers of unregulated free speech .

But from the vantage point of the adolescents we spoke with in Hartford, conflict that occurs on social media is also a public health threat. They described multiple experiences of going online without the intention to fight, and getting pulled into an online conflict that ended up in gun violence. Many young people are improvising strategies to avoid social media conflict. I believe parents, teachers, policymakers and social media engineers ought to listen closely to what they are saying.

Originally published in The Conversation .

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Violence in our society - the Introduction to Curing Violence

According to the 2018 Global Peace Index, the United Kingdom is the 28th safest society in the world (when compared to 163 other countries) and sits in the safest continent in the world. [1] And yet concerns about the levels of violence in our society continue to not only make headlines but, more importantly, blight the lives of our citizens and our communities.

Our ability to quantify how much violence there is in our society and the nature of that violence is probably better now than it has ever been. And while that data can tell us only so much, the trends are revealing. At its most abstract, we can look at overall levels of violence in society, through the use of large public surveys. These tell us that overall violence is down. In England and Wales, there has been a 46% decrease in the number of violent incidents over the past 15 years. [2] Latest data from the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey reported a 41% decrease in violent incidents since 1998. [3] In Northern Ireland, there has been a 61% reduction in the number of households reporting being a victim of violent crime since 1998. [4]

However, focusing on positive overall trends can be a misplaced sedative. It is sobering that an estimated 1.9 million adults aged 16 to 59 years experienced domestic abuse in the last year [5] and that there are an estimated 3.4 million female victims and 631,000 male victims of sexual assault in England and Wales. [6] While only 2.6% of adult Scots were a victim of violent crime last year, far fewer than 20 years ago, that still represents nearly 14,000 individuals whose lives were affected by violence towards them. [7]

Moreover, data about recent changes in specific categories of violent behaviour offers real cause for concern. In England and Wales, there has been a 16% increase in police recorded offences involving a knife or sharp instrument in the last year. [8] In Scotland, police recorded crime data for 2016-17 suggests an increase in murder and robbery. [9] While we should be glad that there has been a 99% reduction in the number of deaths connected to the security situation in Northern Ireland since its peak in 1972, there were still 101 paramilitary style assaults in 2017, a rise of 19% on 2016. [10] When set in that context, it is perhaps not surprising that 64% of the public believe that violence has gone up over the past year. [11]

Data also tells us that violence is not one thing — it does not have a single cause, a single character, or a single impact, and the burden of violence falls particularly heavily on some groups in our society. Across the UK, as in the rest of the world, that, those individuals living in our more deprived communities suffer from violence more than the rest of us. [12]   Latest data from Scotland, which accords with data across the developed world, shows that 79% of all incidents of domestic abuse in 2016-17 had a female victim and a male accused, with 88% of the violence occurring in the victim’s own home. [13] Young people in England and Wales aged 16-24 are the most likely group in the population to be victims of violent crime and around three quarters of the perpetrators of violence are male. [14] Scottish data estimates that over half of violent crime (54%) was alcohol related in 2014-15. [15] There is a tragic diversity in the violence that harms our children, our livelihoods, our communities and our society.

The purpose of Curing Violence

Even though we are getting less violent overall, it is not good enough in a civilised society to accept the level of violence present in our society nor how unequally that violence impacts on our citizens. It is not helpful to be alarmist about violence but neither should we be complacent. Not one of us — no matter where we live or what we do — can be certain who will suffer from the next act of violence. The victims are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings love and need.

The essays in the book represent varied insights into violence and the many varied solutions to it. But the views contained herein are not arbitrarily selected. We have explicitly curated these voices because they exemplify four themes.

First, the voices in this book seek to solve problems. The essays and contributions start where too many books on crime and wider social policy end — at the point where they recognise the urgency of tackling a problem without being clear about what we can constructively do about it. The point of this book is not to describe the problem of violence in our society — the point is to help solve it. Therefore, the essays contained here represent prescriptions as well as diagnoses. We hope this book can contribute to nourishing and spreading effective approaches and building and sustaining communities of good practice that can contribute to the work of reducing violence in our society.

Second, the voices in this book do not shy away from the complexity of violence in our society nor the complexity of what we can do to prevent it. We believe people can choose to do right and they can choose to do wrong but that these choices are heavily shaped by and reflect wider social and political choices that we make as a society. As this book of essays shows, violence can occur among the unequal relationships we have with each other, in our homes, on our streets and in our communities. Violence can occur when the legitimacy of our political and social settlements break down. Any reader seeking a simple solution to all violence in our society will be disappointed and we make no apology for that.

Third, the voices in here are inherently optimistic. They believe in people’s capacity to accept responsibility and to change for the better. They believe in communities’ capacity to confront violence. They are all unified by what Dr Martin Luther King called the “fierce urgency of now”. They believe we can reconcile and rehabilitate those who have done wrong, that our communities can grow better at preventing violence and become better places for us all to live our lives peacefully.

Four, the voices are diverse. We didn’t want to simply provide a new platform for the usual talking heads. We have sought out contributors with something new to add to the debate, whether it comes from working on the frontline, the lived experience of being a victim or a perpetrator (or, as is often the case, both) or simply those with a radical new idea. In the end, violence touches and concerns everyone in society and we have aimed to find voices that can speak to the joyous diversity of our society.

We hope this book of essays convinces the reader that we can reduce violence in our society: that by developing a rich understanding of violence and how to tackle its many root causes, we can make a real difference. Reducing violence is a responsibility for everyone — for those in power, in both government and in the formal criminal justice system, but also for all of us — in our schools and our hospitals, in the arts and in our civic society, on our streets, and in our homes.

If this small book in some way can help lead to a change in how we consider violence and the ways we can tackle it, if it can help us all reduce the violence in our society, then it will have achieved much.

This article is included in the Centre for Justice Innovation's Monument Fellowship book, Curing violence: How we can become a less violent society .

[1] Institute for Economics and Peace (2018) The Global Peace Index. Available at: http://visionofhumanity.org/app/uploads/2018/06/Global-Peace-Index-2018-2.pdf

[2] ONS (2018) Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2018. Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimeinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2018

[3] Scottish Government (2018) 2016-17 Scottish Crime and Justice Survey. Available at: https://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Crime-Justice/crime-and-justice-survey

[4] Department of Justice (2018) Experience of Crime: Findings from the 2016/17 Northern Ireland Crime Survey. Available at: https://www.justice-ni.gov.uk/publications/research-and-statistical-bulletin-92018-experience-crime-findings-201617-northern-ireland-crime

[5] ONS (2017) Domestic abuse in England and Wales: year ending March 2017. Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/domesticabuseinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2017

[6] ONS (2018) Sexual offences in England and Wales: year ending March 2017. Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/sexualoffencesinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2017

[7] Scottish Government (2018) 2016-17 Scottish Crime and Justice Survey. Available at: https://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Crime-Justice/crime-and-justice-survey

[8] ONS (2018) Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2018. Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimeinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2018

[9] Scottish Government (2018) 2016-17 Scottish Crime and Justice Survey. Available at: https://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Crime-Justice/crime-and-justice-survey

[10] PSNI (2018) Security Situation Statistics. Available at: https://www.psni.police.uk/inside-psni/Statistics/security-situation-statistics/

[11] YouGov/Centre for Justice Innovation Survey Results, March 2018 n: 1658 adults

[12] See, for example, ONS (2018) The nature of violent crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2017. Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/thenatureofviolentcrimeinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2017

[13] Scottish Government (2017) Domestic Abuse Recorded by the Police in Scotland, 2016-17. Available at: https://www.gov.scot/Publications/2017/10/3700/346362

[15] Scottish Government (March 2016) Scottish Crime and Justice Survey 2014/15: Main Findings. Available at http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2016/03/5269

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Are You Concerned About Violence in America?

What do you think is contributing to what experts say is a sharp increase in shootings and other assaults? What do you think could be done?

By Callie Holtermann

Have you followed news of recent shootings in Brooklyn, South Carolina, Sacramento and elsewhere? How have you reacted to these stories?

Are you concerned about what The Morning newsletter recently described as a growing crisis of violence in the United States? What do you think is contributing to it?

Here is how German Lopez, the newsletter’s author, frames the problem:

A gunman opened fire in a Brooklyn subway, wounding 10 people on Tuesday and injuring others. A mall shooting in South Carolina yesterday wounded 10. A gang shootout this month in Sacramento killed six and wounded 12 more. New Orleans reported its bloodiest weekend in 10 years. Road rage shootings appear to be up in some states. These are examples of America’s recent violent turn. Murders have spiked nearly 40 percent since 2019, and violent crimes, including shootings and other assaults, have increased overall. More tragedies, from mass shootings to smaller acts of violence, are likely to make headlines as long as higher levels of violent crime persist. Three explanations help explain the increase in violence. The Covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns disrupted all aspects of life, including the social services that can tame crime and violence. The high-profile police killings of 2020 and the protests that followed strained police-community relations. And Americans bought a record number of guns in recent years. Another explanation, covered in this newsletter before, ties these issues together: a growing sense of social discord and distrust. As Americans lose faith in their institutions and each other, they are more likely to lash out — sometimes in violent ways, Randolph Roth, a crime historian at Ohio State University, told me. Besides Covid and police brutality, the country’s increasingly polarized politics and poor economic conditions have also fueled this discord. That helps explain the murder spike, as well as recent increases in drug addiction and overdoses, mental health problems, car crashes and even confrontations over masks on airplanes.

The piece also contains graphs like this one:

Annual murder rate in the U.S.

10 murders per 100,000 people

Students, read the entire article and study the graphs, then tell us:

How concerned are you about violence in America? Have you been following stories about the shootings in Brooklyn, South Carolina and Sacramento mentioned in this article? What about other headlines chronicling trends in violent crime like the tide of attacks on Asian Americans ? How have you reacted?

Do you think there has been an increase in violence in your own community in recent years? For example, in your school or in other places where you spend a lot of time? What makes you say that?

Mr. Lopez compiles data and news stories into a narrative that violence is a persistent trend in America right now, then offers several potential explanations for why. Do you agree with his interpretations? Which of the explanations offered in this piece, if any, seem most plausible to you? Why?

What do you think of the argument made in the piece that one of the reasons for violence is “a growing sense of social discord and distrust” among Americans? Have you observed this yourself since the beginning of the pandemic? Do you agree that “as Americans lose faith in their institutions and each other, they are more likely to lash out — sometimes in violent ways”? Why or why not?

What do you think should be done to reduce violence in the United States? Spencer Bokat-Lindell outlines several proposals in this Debatable newsletter in the Times Opinion section. Which, if any, do you think could work? Why?

Part of what Mr. Bokat-Lindell examines is the role of policing and the idea that “the crime-reduction benefits of more police spending have to be weighed against its downsides, including negative interactions with the public, police violence, mass incarceration and further erosion of public trust.” What role, if any, do you think the police should play in the reduction of violent crime? Why?

Want more writing prompts? You can find all of our questions in our Student Opinion column . Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate them into your classroom.

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Callie Holtermann joined The Learning Network as a senior news assistant in 2020. More about Callie Holtermann

How Violence Has Affected My Life and the World

As human beings, we are social creatures, and living in a world marred by violence can be discouraging, to say the least. Violence is a problem that has affected almost every part of society, and it comes in many shades and forms. Whether it’s verbal, physical, emotional, or psychological, violence has a long-lasting impact on its victims and often extends beyond the individual level to affect entire communities.

In this post, I’m going to share my thoughts and experiences with violence, its effects on mental health, and the negative consequences it has on society. Additionally, I will explore the root causes of youth violence and how we can address them to create a safer society for everyone.

We’ll explore together what we can do about youth violence, which continues to be a problem all over the world. Not only is it harmful to the immediate victims, but it also affects the social and economic fabric of communities. Through examining an example of violence in my life, I hope to bring personal perspective and context to the topic.

So, let’s dive in and explore the many complexities of violence, and ways we can all work towards a peaceful and harmonious society.

What You Can Do About Youth Violence

Dealing with the issue of youth violence can be quite overwhelming, and it is okay to feel concerned. However, you don’t need to feel helpless or hopeless because there are actionable steps you can take to contribute to reducing youth violence. Here are some of them:

Create Awareness About Youth Violence

One way to address the issue of youth violence is by creating awareness. You can do this by sharing your experiences and listening to others. Also, indulge in conversations that address youth violence and its impact. Social media is an excellent platform to create awareness. Share your thoughts, experiences, and research on youth violence to influence others.

Advocate for Youth Violence Prevention Programs

Supporting youth violence prevention programs is another effective way to combat the menace. Get involved with youth-oriented organizations that provide support and resources to at-risk youth. Volunteer your time, resources, and skills to such organizations. You can also get lawmakers to invest and increase funding in youth programs that address violence prevention.

Encourage Positive Engagement Among Youths

It is important to encourage positive engagement among youths to reduce their risk of falling victim to violence. Get involved with youth-oriented activities such as sports, music, and art programs. Encourage and support activities that foster healthy relationships, conflict resolution, and self-discipline.

Mentor Youths on Conflict Resolution

Mentoring youths on conflict resolution skills is crucial in reducing youth violence. Youths need role models to guide them on the right path and show them what healthy relationships and conflict resolution look like. You can mentor youth through social programs, schools, or other avenues.

Be a Positive Role Model

Being a positive role model can go a long way in reducing youth violence. Youths are highly impressionable and can learn from your behavior and actions. Make it a point to model non-violent behavior and language, be kind, respectful, and show empathy to others.

Final Thoughts

Youth violence is a complex issue that requires a collective effort to address. Taking the above steps can help reduce the prevalence of youth violence and its impact. Remember, it takes a village to raise a child. Every little effort counts in making the world a safer place for youths.

How Has Violence Affected The World?

Violence is a global issue that affects everyone, from individuals to entire nations. It is not limited to physical assault or violent behavior but also includes economic, political, and social violence. The effects of violence are far-reaching and impact the world in many ways, including:

Environmental Impact

War and conflict result in the destruction of natural resources, habitats, and ecosystems.

Heavy weapons and ammunition produce toxic chemicals and pollutants that harm the environment and wildlife.

Economic Impact

Violence causes financial losses, including the destruction of infrastructure, property, and businesses.

The cost of healthcare, legal services, and victim support increases.

Political Impact

Violence can lead to the loss of trust in governments and institutions and fuel political unrest.

It can cause mass migration, strained diplomatic relations, and destabilized regions.

Social Impact

Violence has a detrimental effect on mental health, leading to trauma, anxiety, and depression.

It perpetuates cycles of violence and trauma that continue for generations.

In conclusion, Violence is a significant global issue that affects us in many different ways. It causes environmental, economic, political, and social impacts and disintegrates people’s trust in governments, institutions, and each other. Thankfully, we can all play our part in ending violence by advocating for non-violent means of conflict resolution and promoting peacebuilding strategies.

What Are the Causes of Youth Violence?

Many factors that can contribute to youth violence:

Social and Economic Factors

• Lack of education
• Unemployment
• Lack of access to healthcare
• Limited opportunities

Family Factors

• Absent parents
• Lack of parental supervision
• Domestic violence
• Drug or alcohol abuse

Mental Health Factors

• Trauma or abuse
• Substance abuse or addiction
• Cognitive or behavioral problems

Community Factors

• High crime rates
• Gang or social pressure
• Exposure to violence in media or society
• Easy access to guns or other weapons

Understanding the causes of youth violence is essential for preventing it. By addressing these underlying issues, we can help create a safer and more stable environment for young people. It’s up to all of us to work together to make a positive impact on our youth and our communities.

How Does Violence Affect Mental Health?

Violence can have a significant impact on an individual’s mental health, often leading to a range of psychological and emotional problems. Here are a few ways that violence can affect mental health:

Increases Stress and Anxiety Levels

Being exposed to violence, whether physically or through the media, can lead to increased stress and anxiety levels. The constant fear of being a victim of violence can result in feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and vulnerability.

Contributes to Depression

People who have experienced violence, especially traumatic events such as physical attack or sexual assault, are more likely to develop depression. The feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and a decreased sense of self-worth can consume individuals and interfere with their daily lives.

Triggers PTSD

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a common mental health condition that affects many people who have experienced violence. Repeated exposure to violence or a significant traumatic event can lead to symptoms such as flashbacks, nightmares, and feelings of guilt, shame, and anger.

Harmful Physical and Behavioral Changes

Individuals who have experienced violence may experience harmful physical symptoms such as headaches, fatigue, and an increased risk of developing chronic medical conditions. It can also lead to negative behavioral changes, including self-harm, substance abuse, and aggressive behavior.

Impacts Social Relationships

The effects of violence can extend beyond the individual and affect their social relationships. Many who have experienced violence may have difficulty holding close relationships and may feel socially isolated.

Limitations to Work, Education, and Daily Life

Violence can also limit an individual’s ability to work, study, and carry out their daily activities. People may experience difficulties with concentration, memory, and decision-making, leading to decreased performance and productivity.

In conclusion, violence can negatively affect an individual’s mental health in many ways. It is essential to take measures to prevent and effectively treat the psychological impacts of violence. Seek assistance from licensed professionals and take part in self-care activities such as exercise, meditation, and connecting with supportive friends and family.

How Does Youth Violence Affect My Life?

As a young person, the prevalence of violence is a part of our reality. From bullying to street violence, it can take many forms and has far-reaching effects on our lives.

Physical Safety

Youth violence can pose a significant threat to our physical safety. It can cause physical harm, pain, and even result in death, leaving us feeling vulnerable and unsafe. It’s essential to be aware of potentially dangerous situations to keep ourselves protected.

Mental Health

Exposure to violence can also impact our mental health. It can lead to anxiety, depression, PTSD, and other psychological conditions that can plague us for years. It’s crucial to seek support in the aftermath of violent incidents to manage these emotions properly.

Academic Achievement

Violence can disrupt our schooling and hinder our academic performance. It’s challenging to focus on schoolwork and achieve our best when we’re worried about our safety or dealing with the consequences of violence. This can lead to falling behind academically and struggling with future opportunities.

Community and Relationships

Youth violence can fracture our relationships with others and create a toxic community. It can instill fear and distrust and make it difficult to form close bonds with our peers and neighbors. It’s crucial to find supportive communities that prioritize safety and respect.

Youth violence is a pervasive issue that can significantly affect our lives. It’s vital to recognize the impact it can have and take steps to protect ourselves and seek support when needed. By doing so, we can create safer, healthier communities with better futures for all.

What is an Example of Violence in Life?

Violence comes in many forms. It can be physical, emotional, or verbal. The effects of violence can be long-lasting and damaging to individuals and their families. Here are some common examples of violence in life:

Domestic Violence

Domestic violence can occur between spouses, partners, or family members. This type of violence can take many forms, including physical abuse, emotional abuse, and sexual abuse. Domestic violence often goes unreported, making it difficult for victims to get the help they need.

Bullying is a form of violence that can occur at school, work, or online. It often involves a power imbalance, where one person or group targets another person or group. The effects of bullying can be severe and long-lasting, leading to anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues.

Sexual Assault

Sexual assault is a form of violence that involves any unwanted sexual activity. This can include rape, sexual harassment, and sexual abuse. The effects of sexual assault can be traumatic and long-lasting, leading to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental health issues.

Gun Violence

Gun violence is a form of violence that has become all too common in today’s society. It can take many forms, including mass shootings, gang violence, and domestic violence. The effects of gun violence can be devastating, leading to injury or death for victims and their families.

War is one of the most destructive forms of violence. It can have far-reaching effects on individuals, families, and entire communities. The effects of war can include physical injuries, PTSD, and other mental health issues.

Violence is a pervasive issue that affects individuals and communities around the world. By understanding the different forms of violence that exist, we can work towards creating a safer, more peaceful world for everyone.

The Negative Impact of Violence on Society

Violence is a problem that has plagued society for centuries. The negative effects of violence are pervasive and far-reaching, affecting individuals, families, and entire communities. Here are some ways in which violence affects society negatively:

Increased crime rates

Violence begets violence. When violent acts go unchecked, they create a culture of fear and chaos. This, in turn, leads to increased crime rates, as people become more inclined to resort to violence to solve their problems or protect themselves.

Economic losses

Violence has a significant impact on the economy. Property damage, healthcare costs, and decreased productivity all contribute to economic losses. Industries such as tourism, service, and retail can suffer significant losses as a result of violent crime, especially in areas with high crime rates.

Deterioration of mental and physical health

Violence can cause lasting damage to mental health, with survivors suffering from conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and anxiety. Physical health can also be affected, with injuries and disabilities resulting from violent acts.

Social disruption

Communities affected by violence can experience social disruption. Families can be torn apart, neighborhoods can become divided, and trust in institutions such as law enforcement and government can erode.

Impact on children

Children are particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of violence. Exposure to violence can cause a range of problems, including behavioral issues, depression, and anxiety. This can affect their ability to learn and succeed in life.

The negative effects of violence on society are numerous and far-reaching. Addressing this issue requires a comprehensive approach that prioritizes prevention and rehabilitation. By working together, we can create safer, more resilient communities that are better equipped to deal with the challenges of violence.

Television Violence and its Impact on Society essay

Many people believe that television violence has a negative effect on society because it promotes violence. Do you agree or disagree?

Today, the impact of television on the audience is still significant that raises the public concerns about the possible negative impact of television violence on society (Machlis & Forney, 2010). On the other hand, some people argue that the negative impact of television on society is insignificant because people are rational and can distinguish the real world from the imaginary one. However, the television violence does have the negative impact on society because people see violence on the regular basis. As a result, they grow accustomed to violence and take it for granted. If they see violence on television over and over again they start believing that violence is a norm and comprises an integral part of their life.

In fact, people become vulnerable to the impact of television because, if they see violence, for instance, they may grow disturbed about cases of violence occurring in society. Steadily people may grow anxious about their own safety and start expecting violent and aggressive behavior from the part of their social environment. Eventually, they may slip to the aggressive and violent behavior as the means of self-defense and, more important, they steadily learn that the aggressive and violent behavior is a norm since they watch violence on television day after day and there is no effective counteraction to the violence in society.

On the other hand, it is possible to argue that people should be reasonable and rational in the perception of the information which they receive from mass media, including television. Therefore, they should not necessarily behave in the violent way as they watch other people behave on television.

In fact, people live in society and they respect existing social norms and standards (Moy, et al., 1999). Therefore, if violence is anti-social, then they will never behave in a violent or aggressive way, unless they are inclined to the anti-social behavior because of some reasons (Machlis & Forney, 2010). Instead, they behave in the rational way and respect social norms, while the violence on television cannot change the existing social norms and values. People are just living according to rules and legal norms that are acceptable within their community.

However, arguments of opponents of the belief that television violence cannot have a negative impact on society are inconsistent because they apparently underestimate the depth of the impact of television on the audience (Lawson & Stowell, 2009). If people are always exposed to the violence on television, they stop perceiving it as something abnormal. In fact, the normal psychological reaction of the average viewer on violence is repulsion. However, if that viewer watch the violence on television over and over again, it becomes less shocking, until the moment, when the viewer perceives the violence as a norm. As the attitude of the viewer on the violence on television evolves, so does change the viewer’s attitude to violence in the real world (Lawson & Stowell, 2009). The viewer just starts believing that violence is not abnormal but a routine part of social life. Therefore, the viewer starts believing that violence is a plausible means of resolution of any problems fast.

In addition, viewers are vulnerable to the impact of violence from the early childhood. As a result, children are also vulnerable to the impact of violence on television (Moy, et al., 1999). At this point, it is worth mentioning the fact that children perceive television in a different way compared to adults. They cannot always distinguish the real world and fiction on television. They cannot clearly say what is good and what is right because their personality and values are just forming. As a result, the exposure of children to violence leads to the development of negative behavioral patterns, such as violence and aggression that influence their social relations and may cause deviant behavior.

Thus, the violence on television is dangerous because it has a negative impact on society. Arguments of those, who believe that violence on television does not have negative impact on society, are inconsistent because people cannot always think rationally and perceive the information they receive from television critically. Moreover, they learn negative behavioral patterns and become violent and aggressive under the impact of the violence on television. In such a way, the violence on television does have a negative impact on people, their behavior and social relations.

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Home / Essay Samples / Entertainment / Television / Why Television Is The Leading Cause Of Violence In Today’s Society

Why Television Is The Leading Cause Of Violence In Today's Society

• Category: Social Issues , Entertainment
• Topic: Media Influence , Media Violence , Television

Pages: 4 (1790 words)

Views: 4081

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• Gerbner, G., & Gross, L. (1976). Living with television: The violence profile. Journal of communication, 26(2), 172-199.
• Feshbach, S., & Singer, R. D. (1971). Television and aggression.
• Gerbner, G. (1978). Cultural indicators: Violence profile no. 9. Journal of communication, 28(3), 176-207.
• Centerwall, B. S. (1992). Television and violence: the scale of the problem and where to go from here. Jama, 267(22), 3059-3063.
• Sege, R., & Dietz, W. (1994). Television viewing and violence in children: the pediatrician as agent for change. Pediatrics, 94(4), 600-607.
• Johnson, J. G., Cohen, P., Smailes, E. M., Kasen, S., & Brook, J. S. (2002). Television viewing and aggressive behavior during adolescence and adulthood. Science, 295(5564), 2468-2471.
• Thompson, D. A., & Christakis, D. A. (2005). The association between television viewing and irregular sleep schedules among children less than 3 years of age. Pediatrics, 116(4), 851-856.

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