The Issue of Youth Violence

The issue of youth violence is one very much in the news since the Columbine High School shootings of almost exactly a year ago. But while this killing spree is perhaps the most striking example of people under the age of 18 intentionally committing violent acts against other people, Columbine is in fact only one in a series of cases of juvenile violence, even simply one in a series of school shootings. And these school shootings can be seen as merely the natural development of other kinds of less lethal juvenile violence extending back as far as history is recorded.

The escalation of violence in the crimes committed by people under age 18 has received a great deal of attention in the psychological literature of the past decade, and so this literature review of youth violence focuses in some large measure on the concern expressed in scholarship for understanding (and therefore being able to divert) the factors that bring about children who find their only recourse lies with a gun in a schoolroom door. However, many researchers remain interested not simply in the most violent types of youth violence (which of course remains in the minority in terms of frequency of actual crimes committed, even if it looms very large in our imaginations) and so this literature review also looks at the attempt by researchers to understand what prompts children (these seemingly most innocent members of out society) to react with violence while other young people can turn and walk awa

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that children engage in criminal behavior because they were not sufficiently penalized for previous delinquent acts or that they have learned criminal behavior through interaction with others. A person who becomes socially alienated may be more inclined to commit a criminal act. Theories focusing on the role of society in juvenile delinquency suggest that children commit crimes in response to their failure to rise above their socioeconomic status, or as a repudiation of middle-class values. Most theories of juvenile delinquency have focused on children from disadvantaged families, ignoring the fact that children from affluent homes also commit crimes. The latter may commit crimes because of the lack of adequate parental control, delays in achieving adult status, and hedonistic tendencies (Marohn, 1990, p. 424). A number of studies in the current literature support this thesis; indeed it would be hard to find a piece of psychological literature that does not support the idea that individuals commit violent acts because they have somehow turned away from the norms of their families and other core social reference groups. However, there does not seem to be a significant difference in those who deviate from social norms and commit ac

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