NCJ Number
150330
Journal
MASC Journal Volume: 27 Issue: 2 Dated: (Summer 1994) Pages: 15-17,34
Date Published
1994
Length
4 pages
Annotation
School administrators are under pressure to do something about violence, but few have the resources or the expertise to assess the extent of violence in their schools.
Abstract
Three widely used violence prevention approaches include the Violence Prevention Curriculum for Adolescents, the Community Violence Prevention Program, and Positive Adolescent Choices Training. Evaluations of programs do not definitively demonstrate their effectiveness, but program defenders blame the reported lack of success on evaluation shortcomings. Nonetheless, violence prevention programs too often lump together a broad range of behaviors and people and ignore the fact that different types of people turn to violence for every different reasons. Few school-based violence prevention programs actually target the relatively small group of young people who commit acts of serious violence. This is not to say, however, that violence prevention programs never work. Effective programs must recognize that violence usually results from a complex interaction of environmental, social, and psychological factors and that behavioral skills learned in school classes generally decline after 6 months. Schools must provide a positive social attachment for youth to at least partially lessen the estrangement and hopelessness that leads students to an alternative gang culture. Schools must also attempt to protect students from risks they encounter outside the classroom. Violence prevention strategies that include cognitive mediation programs have shown some success in changing behavior. A good violence prevention program model is considered to be the curriculum task force adopted by the Illinois Council for the Prevention of Violence. 8 references