VIOLENCE AND INTENTIONAL INJURIES: CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND PUBLIC HEALTH PERSPECTIVES ON AN URGENT NATIONAL PROBLEM

• NCJ Number: 144052
• Author(s): M H Moore; D Prothrow-Stith; B Guyer; H Spivak
• Date Published: 1991
• Length: 89 pages
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Emphasizing that violent crime is a threat to the Nation's health and safety as well as to public security, this paper aims to demonstrate how the criminal justice system's traditional vision and response to violent crime may be usefully complemented by the public health community's approach to the problem.

Abstract

The discussion notes that the approaches of the criminal justice system and the public health community overlap to a great degree, but the areas in which their approaches diverge are interesting and useful to efforts to understand and address the problem of violence. The analysis compares and contrasts the public health and criminal justice system approaches in five areas: (1) how each community tends to see and define the problems of violence, (2) the analytic frameworks used to identify the main causes of violence, (3) assumptions guiding each community's search for effective methods of intervention, (4) the main political and organizational resources of each resource, and (5) the main values believed to be the most important ones to be advanced and protected in organizing society's response to violence. The analysis notes that psychological impacts and fear as well as physical injuries must be included in the social consequences of criminal attacks resulting in injuries. It also emphasizes that violence that occurs in families and other ongoing relationships is particularly damaging and particularly difficult for the criminal justice system to identify and manage. Consequently, in these areas the public health and medical communities have particularly important roles. In addition, violence results from a complex causal system that includes but is not limited to the offender's intentions. Therefore, important opportunities exist to prevent criminal violence beyond those ordinarily used by the criminal justice system, although criminal justice agencies will probably continue to provide society's main efforts against violence. The public health approach can be useful in both prevention and control, as well as in providing victim services. Figures and 88 references