Community Violence and Youth: Affect, Behavior, Substance Use, and Academics

Community violence is recognized as a major public health problem (WHO, World Report on Violence and Health,2002) that Americans increasingly understand has adverse implications beyond inner-cities. However, the majority of research on chronic community violence exposure focuses on ethnic minority, impoverished, and/or crime-ridden communities while treatment and prevention focuses on the perpetrators of the violence, not on the youth who are its direct or indirect victims. School-based treatment and preventive interventions are needed for children at elevated risk for exposure to community violence. In preparation, a longitudinal, community epidemiological study, The Multiple Opportunities to Reach Excellence (MORE) Project, is being fielded to address some of the methodological weaknesses presented in previous studies. This study was designed to better understand the impact of children’s chronic exposure to community violence on their emotional, behavioral, substance use, and academic functioning with an overarching goal to identify malleable risk and protective factors which can be targeted in preventive and intervention programs. This paper describes the MORE Project, its conceptual underpinnings, goals, and methodology, as well as implications for treatment and preventive interventions and future research

Jobs or jails? The crime drop in Texas

Crime went down throughout the U.S. in the 1990s. Potential explanations include demographic shifts, improved economic opportunities, changes in drug markets, evolving police strategies, and an increasing prison population. Previous attempts to parcel out responsibility among these explanations are unpersuasive. Some do not consider all of the explanations, others rely on highly aggregated data, still others confuse cause and effect. An analysis of Texas counties that deals with these problems shows that the Texas crime drop was largely due to increases in the jail and prison population; property crime also dropped due to increases in real wages and wealth and in public order arrests. Further prison construction would not be cost-effective in Texas due to declining marginal returns, but direct interventions to improve economic opportunities or make police work more proactive may be. © 2005 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.