Serious Youth Violence and Innovative Prevention: On the Emerging Link Between Public Health and Criminology

Abstract

It was not so long ago that scholarly writings pointed to the vast chasm that existed between criminal justice and public health approaches to understanding and controlling interpersonal violence. Other scholarship of the day examined how criminal justice and criminology could benefit from adopting elements of the public health approach. For sure, there still exist many differences in how the two disciplines approach the violence problem, but over the years there have been some promising developments at the intersection of public health and criminology. This paper surveys the evolving link between public health and criminology, with a special focus on serious youth violence. It is concerned with both research and practice and how these efforts—across primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention strategies—are contributing to improved public health-criminology collaborations or public health-influenced programs that have a discernable impact on youth violence.

Keywords:

• public health
• youth violence
• violence prevention
• evidence-based policy

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brandon C. Welsh

Brandon C. Welsh, PhD, is a professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University and a senior research fellow at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement. His research interests include the prevention of delinquency and crime and evidence-based crime policy. He is an author or editor of 10 books, including Experimental Criminology: Prospects for Advancing Science and Public Policy (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), The Oxford Handbook of Crime Prevention (Oxford University Press, 2012), and The Future of Criminology (Oxford University Press, 2012).

Anthony A. Braga

Anthony A. Braga, PhD, is a professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University and a senior research fellow in the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management at Harvard University. His research involves collaborating with criminal justice, social service, and community-based organizations to address illegal access to firearms, reduce gang and group-involved violence, and control crime hot spots. His most recent book is Policing Problem Places: Crime Hot Spots and Effective Prevention (Oxford University Press, 2010).

Christopher J. Sullivan

Dr Christopher J. Sullivan received his doctorate at Rutgers University’s School of Criminal Justice in 2005, and is currently an assistant professor in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati. He has published a number of works in the areas of developmental, life-course criminology; juvenile delinquency and justice/prevention policy; and research and analytic methods. Recent publications have appeared in Youth Violence & Juvenile Justice, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Criminology, Justice Quarterly, Prevention Science, and Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency. He is on the editorial boards of Youth Violence & Juvenile Justice, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, and Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency.