NCJ Number
133075
Date Published
1991
Length
59 pages
Annotation
This workshop on children and violence was held in Washington, DC, and involved a social worker, a youth center superintendent, and a government representative involved in youth services.
Abstract
The workshop set the focus on violence within the context of cultural forces, emphasizing a sense of socialized presence in interpersonal arrangements and associations formed by institutional or systemic interchanges. The social worker argued that children learn violence in the socialization process as an instrument or tool for coping. She noted that children must be introduced to a structure of relative permanence and some measure of predictable expectations if maturation is to proceed in healthy ways. The youth center superintendent pointed out that minority youth represent 60 percent of juveniles in public custody facilities, that 8 of 10 juveniles held in public facilities are in institutions rather than open settings, and that almost 11 percent of juveniles in public facilities are held for drug-related offenses. His youth center offers art therapy, group and individual counseling, a landscape/horticulture program, culinary arts, speech therapy, building trades, graphic arts, a youth entrepreneurship program, and a modified ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) program. Center goals are to identify youth at risk and provide early intervention, improve young people's literacy levels and give them marketable skills, provide youth with positive role models, strengthen the family structure, and develop specific programs for violent offenders. The government youth services representative sees violence as part of a cultural phenomenon that permeates every facet of a young person's coping style. A detailed statistical evaluation of the workshop is included. 3 references