Eliminating Childhood ViolenceEDU 524 Fall II 2010

Chapter 12

Dr. Paul A. Rodríguez

2

Have We Given Up on Controlling ViolenceRobert Putnam (2000) writes that Americans have stopped joining organizations and have disassociated themselves from the political process. This lack of community and political involvement makes dealing with childhood violence almost impossible. There needs to be an increased effort on the part of America’s schools to work

cooperatively with the child welfare system and the police to identify abused children, school bullies and children beginning to show the early signs of violent behavior.

Schools are where youth crime frequently takes place, but the very center of youth crime activity, the school system, seems unwilling or unable to cooperate with law and child welfare enforcement to identify, report and then work with community agencies.

Craig and Pepler (1997) believe that only 9% of the juvenile violent crimes committed in schools are reported to criminal justice authorities, compared with a 37% report rate for similar juvenile street crimes.

When a child sees 8,000 murders on television, videos and video games by the time they finish grade school, (Simons 2001), and we have a serious youth violence problem in America, we must begin to wonder if violent entertainment provokes and encourages violence in children.

3

Eliminating Childhood ViolenceWhat can we do? A No-Tolerance Policy toward Child Abuse and Neglect A Well-Trained Core of Professionals for the Criminal Justice FieldAn astonishing 5% of the adult population in Texas (706,000 people) is in prison, on parole or on probation. Of the 163,000 prisoners in Texas, 89,400 are incarcerated for nonviolent crimes. African Americans in Texas are incarcerated at seven times the rate of whites, while probation is given to black prisoners only 20% of the time, compared with the 45% of white prisoners.

Control of Violence in the MediaLocal television news too often emphasizes violence and too seldom produces thoughtful stories on what works. This helps create a “mean world syndrome” in the minds of viewers, who then often conclude that nothing works.

4

Schools That Work to Limit Violence

The main aims of health promoting schools are to provide a healthy environment and to encourage healthy lifestyles for the pupils. Bullying behavior is one aspect that is expected to have an adverse effect, and preventing such behavior is an important task.Schools must do a better job of identifying children at risk of violent behavior. Bullying is one of the earliest signs of violence in children. There must be trained mental health professional in a school can have an enormously positive impact on children through the suggestions provided to teachers in containing violence.

Funding for ResearchWe really are in our infancy in the treatment of childhood violence. Much more money needs to be spent on developing effective treatment approaches at the individual , family, institutional and community levels to treat and then, ultimately, prevent childhood violence.

5

A Positive Attitude When it Comes to Children

Research on developmental resilience has introduced ideas that challenge three prominent beliefs about the way children develop into adults, and these still dominate our thinking:1. There are fixed stages of development2. Childhood trauma usually leads to adult psychopathology3. There are social conditions, interpersonal relationships and institutional

arrangements that are so toxic they inevitably lead to serious problems in the everyday functioning of children and adults, families and communities.

Research suggest that people do change, and that learning from prior experience appears to be an important reason for change. Continued research on resilience and self-righting abilities are absolutely essential if we are to understand how violent young children grow and change, and if creative treatment programs are to be developed.

6

More Treatment and Less PunishmentUnless we want to put more and more children in prison, where they learn to be really violent and where the probability is high that they will continue to commit violent acts, we should choose to build fewer prisons and place our emphasis on treatment. Glicken and Sechrest (2003) found little evidence that prisons reduce repeat offender rates among violent children at a greater level than community outreach programs or group homes. The illogic of building more and more prisons is found in California, a state that spends more on maintaining prisons than it spends on higher education. Putting children in jail seems utterly wrong. There is a value of using a child’s positive attributes (strengths) when mental health services may mitigate the impact of serious psychiatric symptoms and risk, allowing children to remain in homelike settings successfully.

7

Reflections1. Can you think of some positive rewards we can give parents for

controlling the amount of violence their children are permitted to view in the media?

2. Why do you think schools do such a minimal job of controlling bullying in and out of the classroom?

3. What would you do to improve the work of child welfare agencies in America so that they intervene quickly and effectively in child maltreatment cases?

4. Why do you think we provide so little money for research and training when youth violence is such a serious problem?

5. Why do you think people are so cynical about reports showing that violence and crime are down in any given year?