Exposure to violent experiences can be traumatic and can negatively impact multiple factors such as growth, educational functioning, coping skills and relationships. Teenagers are not only being exposed to violence within their neighborhoods at a much higher percentage but also through technology and media. Violence affects its victims, those who observe violence, family members, co-workers, service providers and all members of the community. All sorts of violence have damaging short- and long-term effects on mental, physical and religious well-being.
Youth violence influences entire communities. Violence increases health care costs, decreases property value, and disrupts social services. Youth violence negatively impacts perceived and actual safety, support in community events, youth’s school attendance, and viability of businesses. Researchers identify risk factors for youth violence by tracking the advancement of children and teenagers over the first two decades of life and measuring how often particular personal characteristics and social conditions at a given age are connected to violence at later degrees of the life course. To be considered risk factors, they must have both a theoretical rationale and a demonstrated ability to predict violence.
A great understanding of scientific research studies the relationship between inadequate school performance and delinquency. The direction of the causal link between education and juvenile delinquency is fundamentally complex. Early destructive behavior may lead to difficulties in the classroom. Such difficulties, in turn, may result in a child’s receiving damaging evaluations from teachers or peers. These, in turn, might result in delinquency. Despite the ongoing investigation of the direction of causality, the evidence is obvious that poor school performance, truancy, and leaving school at a young age are connected to juvenile delinquency. Several parts linked to delinquency, aggression, and violence have been identified.
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The dynamics of adolescent violence are best understood from a developmental viewpoint, which recognizes that patterns of behavior change over the life course. Adolescence is a time of disturbing change and vulnerability, which can include an increase in the frequency and means of expression of violence and other risky behaviors. Understanding when and under what circumstances violent behavior typically occurs helps researchers craft interventions that target those critical points in development. Violence in juveniles has been around for years it is one of the most common acts of delinquency.
Families play an essential role in the development of children and adolescence. Reflections of juvenile delinquency have shown that the family situation can present as either a risk or protective factor. A risk factor is a characteristic that, when present, promotes the appropriation of harmful behavior. “Research has shown that as the number of risk factors to which youth are exposed increases, so does the probability that he/she will engage in delinquent behaviors. Moreover, the presence of one risk factor may promote the existence of another risk factor, which in turn leads to a greater likelihood of problematic behavior.”(SAVIGNAC, 2009)
Families exposed to multiple risk factors are considered at-risk families. In contrast, a protective factor is a characteristic that offsets the negative influences of risk factors and diminishes the likelihood of delinquency. Being able to recognize and understand the effects of these family-based risk and protective factors is important in preventing children and youth from becoming involved in illegal, harmful, and/or inappropriate behavior. If a juvenile shows any type of aggression or violence they probably have seen it happen while they were with their families.
Effective intervention plays an essential role in any plan designed to reduce the percentages of juvenile delinquency. ‘Individuals who are employed in the juvenile justice system use intervention as an important component of dispositional sanctions imposed in juvenile cases.'(unknown, 2020). This is especially true for the treatment of serious, violent, and chronic juvenile offenders who have the potential for long and harmful criminal careers and who, absent effective interventions, are likely to recidivate while at the time of top offending. Identifying the best practices for stopping adolescent violence involves two approaches, each with its modifications.
The first is a meta-analysis, a rigorous statistical method of linking the results of several investigations to obtain more credible estimates of the results of a general type of treatment or intervention. This quantitative method can be used to review program evaluation evidence and represent overall results about the power and persistence of the influence, or effect size, that distinct types of programs have on violent behavior. In the field of youth violence, meta-analysis has been used originally for evaluations of interventions with violent or delinquent youths. The second, less empirical approach is to examine the evaluation analysis and identify the overall tactics that characterize efficient programs. The empirical approach is more easily conducted than meta-analyses, and they give beneficial information for creating hypotheses and representing general conclusions about the effectiveness of numerous strategies for countering youth violence.
Strategies and programs are originally classified as effective or ineffective. ‘Effective strategies and programs are then further broken down into Model programs, which meet very high standards of demonstrated effectiveness, and Promising programs, which meet a minimum standard. Finally, within Model and Promising categories, a distinction is made between strategies and programs that have demonstrated effects on violence and serious delinquency and those that have demonstrated effectiveness on known risk factors.'(The United States, 2000)
