Defining and Understanding Violence (From Insights Into Violence in Contemporary Canadian Society, P 34-42, 1987, James M MacLatchie, ed. -- See NCJ-122437)

• NCJ Number: 122438
• Author(s): D Ellis
• Date Published: 1987
• Length: 9 pages
• Sale Source: John Howard Soc of Canada
• Publication Type: Research (Theoretical)
• Language: English
• Country: Canada
• Note: *This document is currently unavailable from NCJRS.

Annotation

Although a variety of institutional and personal behaviors may cause serious harm to persons in Canada, these behaviors are selectively and subjectively defined as violence.

Abstract

For the purposes of this paper, violence, as traditionally viewed, is defined as "non-violable behavior that is strongly associated with reactions intended to inhibit its future occurrence." By this definition, injuries and deaths caused by wife abuse, police actions, businesses, and the State are not viewed as violence because it is not behavior "strongly associated with reactions intended to inhibit its future occurrence." On the other hand, resisting arrest, muggings, and stranger-to-stranger killings are viewed as violence because there is a strong official reaction to such behavior. Evidence over time, however, is that most people have been killed, maimed, hurt, injured, and devastated by State violence. Also, more injuries and deaths are caused by negligent business safety practices than by "street" criminals. Our concern should be to mount intensive social control against all institutional and personal behaviors that injure and kill people. This requires a broader definition of violence than is traditionally used in Canada.