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 away. This paper examines whether research has shown distinct differences between highly violent youths, youths who commit illegal acts that are either less violent or not violent at all, and those who do not commit any violent acts.
Definition of Subject Matter and Background
The issue of youth violence is a part of the larger social category of juvenile crime. This is simply a legal terms denoting various offenses committed by children or youths under the age of 18. Whi...