Theories and Approaches | Social and Cultural Factors
Individual and Situational Factors

Theories and Approaches

Leading Causes of Death Reports Centers for Disease Control statistics.

Division of Violence Prevention Run by the Centers for Disease Control, it has four priority areas for violence prevention: youth violence, family and intimate violence, suicide, and firearm injuries.

Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence Research and databases on violence.

Social and Cultural Factors

Poverty, Unemployment, and Racial Discrimination

Concentrating Poverty Breeds Violence A 1996 article from Population Today reports that concentrating poverty breeds violence. Scroll down to find the article.

Poverty in the United States A 1998 U.S. Census Bureau report. (PDF)

Poverty, Inequality, and Crime Overview of how poverty and inequality can influence crime rates.

Labor Markets, Employment, and Crime (Text) (PDF) A research study by the National Institute of Justice.

Child Abuse and Neglect

Cycle of Violence Revisited (Text) (PDF) Long-term study of victims of childhood neglect and abuse, examining whether a cycle of violence exists.

Breaking the Cycle of Violence: Recommendations to Improve the Criminal Justice Response to Child Victims and Witnesses (Text) (PDF) Report from the Office for Victims of Crime.

Ten Critical Threats To America's Children: Warning Signs for the Next Millennium A 1999 report from the National League of Cities, National School Boards Association, Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital, and Youth Crime Watch of America.

Values that Make Crime More Acceptable

Media

Children and TV Violence This article from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry discusses the adverse effects of TV violence on children and teenagers.

Violence on Television--What do Children Learn? What Can Parents Do? From the American Psychological Association.

Motion Picture Association (MPA) This organization serves as the advocate of the American motion picture, home video, and television industries. Among other things, the site contains information about movie ratings and TV parental guidelines.

National Television Violence Study This pioneering three-year study, funded by the National Cable Television Association, is a highly comprehensive scientific assessment of television violence.

Contributors to Violent Behavior Among Elementary and Middle School Children This study published in Pediatrics by Mark Singer et al. examines the relative contributions of exposure to violence, parental monitoring, and television-viewing habits to children's self-reported violent behaviors.

Trained to Kill This Christianity Today article by David Grossman, a military expert on the psychology of killing, argues that how today's media conditions kids to pull the trigger.

What Makes Kids Kill? This 1998 article by Jon Katz argues that the media are not to blame but "the gun lobby is our modern equivalent of Murder, Inc."

Television Violence Monitoring Project An extensive UCLA study of violence on network television.

Individual and Situational Factors

Biology

Crime and Biology Links Links on the biological causes of crime.

Crime Times Research reviews and information on the biological causes of criminal, violent, and psychopathic behavior.

Crime Times A journal looking at brain dysfunction as a cause of crime.

The Evil Gene A Research in Review article says there is little possibility of a gene for criminal behavior.

Fear changes a brain—especially a child's Research shows that living in fear-ridden environments changes the brains of children.

Psychobiological Criminology

Drugs and Alcohol

Alcohol and Crime Rport from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Drugs and Crime Links to many federal government publications on drugs and crime.

Guns

Join Together: Gun Violence This project of the Boston University School of Public Health is a national resource for communities working to reduce gun violence.

Gun Ownership This USA Today illustration reveals that the number of American households with guns has sharply and steadily declined.

Rational Choice

Opportunity Makes the Thief Ronald Clarke and Marcus Felson argue that opportunity is a root cause of crime and illustrate how opportunity theories of crime assist thinking about crime prevention. (PDF File)

Reorienting Crime Prevention Research and Policy: From the Causes of Criminality to the Context of Crime (PDF) (Text) A research report from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Classical School Criminology An outline of the school of criminology that holds that criminals act rationally.

What Causes Crime? A brief overview of what is known about the causes of crime. (PDF File)

Genetic and Environmental Influences on Criminal Behavior An overview of recent research by Caitlin M. Jones, Rochester Institute of Technology.

Lecture Notes on Criminology Links to lecture notes on many different theories of crime.

Return to Criminal Justice in America Links