Youth Violence in Context

This book examines how protective and risk factors associated with two distinct types of youth violence-exposure to and engagement in violence-are nested within four layers of the ecological framework: community, family, peers, and youth characteristics.

Dr. Eileen M. Ahlin is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Penn State Harrisburg. She uses an ecological framework to study violence to identify policies and practices that address risk and protective factors of youth violence among informal and formal social controls. Her work spans the community and institutional corrections. She was named a 2016 W.E.B. Du Bois Fellow by the National Institute of Justice, when she and Dr. Maria João Lobo Antunes were awarded a grant to examine how residential mobility influences violence among marginalized populations. Her recent research appears in Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Aggression and Violent Behavior, Race and Justice, and The Prison Journal. She is author or co-author of several books and edited volumes, including Taking Problem-Solving Courts to Scale: Diverse Applications of the Specialty Court Model (2021, Lexington), The Veterans Treatment Court Movement: Striving to Serve Those Who Served (2018, Routledge), and Rethinking America's Correctional Policies: Commonsense Choices from Uncommon Voices (2017, Lexington). In 2020, Dr. Ahlin was the recipient of Penn State Harrisburg's Excellence in Research and Scholarly Activity Award. Dr. Maria João Lobo Antunes is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology & Criminal Justice at Towson University. She is a quantitative criminologist with specializations in juvenile delinquency and exposure to crime, immigrants and criminal justice, and the nexus of neighborhoods, parenting, and youth behaviors. Together with Dr. Eileen Ahlin, she is a 2016 recipient of the National Institute of Justice's W. E. B. Du Bois Fellowship which focused on the how inner-city mobility influences minority and immigrant youth delinquency. Her most recent scholarship can be seen in Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Feminist Criminology, Aggression and Violent Behavior, Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, and Journal of Youth and Adolescence.

Preface; 1. Understanding the two types of violence; 2. Ecological framework and theoretical perspectives of youth violence; 3. Community; 4. Family; 5. Peers and school; 6. Youth characteristics and the individual; 7. Applicability of routine activity theory/lifestyles perspective to youth violence