The Long Reach of Violence: A Broader Perspective on Data, Theory, and Evidence on the Prevalence and Consequences of Exposure to Violence

We analyzed key individual, family, and neighborhood factors to assess competing hypotheses regarding racial/ethnic gaps in perpetrating violence. From 1995 to 2002, we collected 3 waves of data on 2974 participants aged 8 [corrected] to 25 years living in 180 Chicago neighborhoods, augmented by a separate community survey of 8782 Chicago residents. The odds of perpetrating violence were 85% higher for Blacks compared with Whites, whereas Latino-perpetrated violence was 10% lower. Yet the majority of the Black-White gap (over 60%) and the entire Latino-White gap were explained primarily by the marital status of parents, immigrant generation, and dimensions of neighborhood social context. The results imply that generic interventions to improve neighborhood conditions and support families may reduce racial gaps in violence.

It is important to estimate the burden of and trends for violence, crime, and abuse in the lives of children.

This review examines theoretical and empirical literature on children's reactions to three types of violence--child maltreatment, community violence, and interparental violence. In addition to describing internalizing and externalizing problems associated with exposure to violence, this review identifies ways that violence can disrupt typical developmental trajectories through psychobiological effects, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), cognitive consequences, and peer problems. Methodological challenges in this literature include high rates of co-occurrence among types of violence exposure, co-occurrence of violence with other serious life adversities, heterogeneity in the frequency, severity, age of onset, and chronicity of exposure, and difficulties in making causal inferences. A developmental psychopathology perspective focuses attention on how violence may have different effects at different ages and may compromise children's abilities to face normal developmental challenges. Emphasis is placed on the variability of children's reactions to violence, on outcomes that go beyond diagnosable disorders, and on variables that mediate and moderate children's reactions to violence.