NCJ Number
148957
Editor(s)
A J Reiss Jr,
J A Roth
Date Published
1994
Length
408 pages
Annotation
This fourth volume of a panel study on understanding and preventing violence presents five of the panel's commissioned reviews and analyses of the consequences of violence and strategies for controlling them.
Abstract
A review of the research literature on public perceptions and reactions to violence addresses the public fear of victimization, including the individual and social consequences of fear, followed by an examination of the images and information on violence to which the public is exposed. Other topics discussed in this paper are the social evaluations of violent behavior and public opinion on legal sanctions and criminal justice. The second paper develops cost estimates for violence. It includes a comprehensive theoretical framework in which to evaluate the consequences and costs of violent behavior. A third paper explores the commonalities and complementarities of criminal justice and public health responses to violence. It notes that the criminal justice approach to violence is important is distinguishing intentional from unintentional injury. The public health approach directs society's attention to the care of the victim of violence and to efforts to counter the causes of violence. The remaining papers review the results of efforts to reduce violence through the prediction and classification of violent offenders and analyze the relationships between trends in violence and in prison populations during a period of extraordinary increase in the use of incarceration. Chapter references and a subject index