Children and Violence: Trauma in the American War Zone (From Children and Young People in Conflict with the Law, P 92-101, 1996, Stewart Asquith, ed. - See NCJ-167654)

• NCJ Number: 167658
• Author(s): J Garbarino; K Kostelny
• Date Published: 1996
• Length: 10 pages
• Sale Source: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom

Annotation

This chapter discusses violence in the lives of American children and youth.

Abstract

The gun culture is one of the recurrent themes in the violence facing young people in today's America. It is associated with a clear and present danger to their mental health, social behavior and educational success. The accumulation of risk is forcing children to cope with more than they can handle, resulting in their own risky, self-defeating behaviors. Efforts to understand the impact of chronic community violence on children and youth highlight several concerns, including: unmet medical needs; the corrosive effects on personality and on academic achievement of co-experiencing poverty and violence; the distortion in children's values resulting from the experience of trauma; and declining trust in adults on the part of children and youth in high-violence communities. References