A New Approach to Prevention and Reduction of Youth Violence

When a senior scientist such as Kenneth Dodge writes an important paper about chronic youth violence, it behooves us to take note. His paper (Dodge, 2008) pertains to the deplorable prevalence of youth violence in America, but I believe scholars in other countries will find his thoughts stimulating as well.

Chronically violent youth constitute a relatively small percentage of their age cohort, but the costs of their trials, incarceration, and wasted lives are immense—not to mention the costs of the damages inflicted upon their victims. Dodge (2008) contends that the metaphors we use to explain youth violence are faulty, that is, unsupported by scientific findings and unlikely to help solve the problem. Thus, continuing to use these metaphors is dangerous.

Space does not permit me to elaborate on all the metaphors that Dodge critiques, but the superpredator metaphor is a good exemplar. The term “superpredator,” introduced into popular parlance in 1995, depicted a violent young person as bereft of all morality, unwilling to change, untreatable, and therefore destined to a lifetime of predatory crime. This metaphor captured the attention of the public and lawmakers, even appearing in the names of legislative acts such as the Violent Youth Predator Act of 1996 (cited in Dilulio, 1996). Many states began to transfer juvenile offenders to adult courts. The prevailing view became “Lock them up and throw away the key!” The problem with the superpredator metaphor is that scientific evidence does not support this depiction of inherently defective, incorrigible youth who cannot be rehabilitated. Dodge (2008) contends that a sizeable percentage of children with conduct disorders do change along the way to adulthood, through becoming involved in positive, nurturing environments, warm social bonds, and interventions such as multidimensional treatment foster care. He marshals the evidence from randomized controlled intervention trials to bolster his argument (see Dodge, 2008, for illustrative citations).

Dodge asks us to consider new metaphors. For example, if we thought of violence as tooth decay, we would believe that it could be prevented. Family practitioners (including nurse practitioners) could use regular checkups to identify early signs of youth conduct problems just as dentists identify early signs of poor dental health. Thus, a preventive system of care becomes the solution if we adopt the tooth decay metaphor. Other metaphors proposed by Dodge are cardiovascular disease (which implies a disease prevention solution), the public health model (which connotes injury prevention as the solution), and illiteracy (which requires education in social and cognitive skills as the solution).

It is exciting to contemplate the implications of reframing youth violence. We owe it to our troubled youth to do so. I am remembering the lonely boys and girls who participated in studies that I conducted with forensic psychologist Helen Smith (Smith & Thomas, 2000; Thomas & Smith, 2004). Some of these young people were on an antisocial trajectory, as they had already been expelled from school for fighting or bringing a weapon and/or had been charged with a violent offense by the juvenile justice system. Yet it would be a mistake to write them off as incorrigible. Their emotional pain was clearly evident. They hated school and felt that their classmates disliked them. They felt that school officials failed to take their complaints about bullying seriously. I agree with Kenneth Dodge that schools could play curative roles with these alienated youth. I urge you to read Dodge's paper for other worthwhile suggestions. Your responses (letters to the editor, manuscripts) are invited.