Getting Serious About Community-Based Approaches to Youth Violence Prevention

Abstract

In their paper “A Community-Based Systems Learning Approach to Understanding Youth Violence in Boston,”1 Bridgewater and colleagues demonstrate the complexity involved in reaching a deep understanding of the etiology and escalation of youth violence, especially in relation to gang membership and gang violence. Indeed, gang activity continues to be a prevalent issue in the Unites States. Recent national surveys have shown of all jurisdictions served by city and county law enforcement agencies, 32.4 percent reported experiencing gang problems.2 An additional concern is that a significant portion of gang members are youth, with members under the age of 18 making up approximately 37 percent of gangs.3 The Youth Violence Systems Project (YVSP) represents a unique attempt to understand the dynamic nature of youth violence and gang involvement with the explicit goal of determining where prevention efforts should be targeted. This is accomplished with a group model-building process in which community members and researchers enter into a “real” partnership at each stage of model development, evaluation, refinement, and simulation (through focus groups, neighborhood briefs, academic-community advisory board input). As I will briefly articulate in the following paragraphs, this community-based systems learning approach advances both theory and practice in the area of youth violence prevention, but also suggests the need for refinement and expansion of the models.