NCJ Number
186625
Editor(s)
Adam Graycar
Date Published
2000
Length
6 pages
Annotation
Crime and violence prevention involves cooperation among many parts of society in Australia and elsewhere, and many known measures that prevent violence occur outside the criminal justice system--within families, communities, and the health care system.
Abstract
Interpersonal violence is now widely accepted in Australia and other countries as a public health problem rather than being seen mainly as a matter for the criminal justice system. Internationally, violence is a focus of the work of the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States. The author emphasizes the importance of a rigorous focus on the well-being of populations and on public health's use of population-wide data to aid the understanding of problems related to crime and violence and the identification of solutions. In this way, public health can make a valuable contribution to crime and violence prevention and cover a much broader spectrum than the criminal justice system alone. Viewing interpersonal violence as lying within the injury area of public health, with its focus on population-level risk factors, highlights the need for coordinated approaches to preventing and dealing with interpersonal violence. Public health and criminal justice system approaches to violence are compared, and risk factors emphasized by the public health approach are discussed. 26 references and 1 note