This article examines the relationship between exposure to violence, fear of exposure to violence, and sexual risk among a sample of urban middle school youth. The sample included 911 seventh-grade students who completed self-report surveys. Approximately 20% of the sample reported at least one direct threat or injury with a weapon in the past 3…

The association of more crime with youthful age is widely accepted in social science. However, a literature search revealed no studies of the age-crime relationship that controlled for young ages' economic disadvantage. This research gap is addressed using the California Criminal Justice Statistics Center's arrest detail and Census poverty…

The reliability, validity, and utility of the Adult Suicidal Ideation Questionnaire (ASIQ), Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS), Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation (BSS), and Reasons for Attempting Suicide Questionnaire (RASQ) with correctional mental health populations was evaluated. Evidence was found indicating good to excellent reliability for all…

There is insufficient empirical evidence exploring associations between gang membership and school violence behaviors. Using a sample of 272,863 high school students, this study employs a structural equation model to examine how school risk and protective behaviors and attitudes mediate effects of gang members' involvement with school violence…

More than 20 percent of children (ages 2-17) in the United States have witnessed and/or been victims of multiple forms of violence. Children from birth through age 5 are more likely to experience maltreatment and neglect than other age groups. Violence and trauma (including neglect), whether in the home or the community, have lasting effects on…

This study identified predictors of transience among homeless emerging adults in three cities. A total of 601 homeless emerging adults from Los Angeles, Austin, and Denver were recruited using purposive sampling. Ordinary least squares regression results revealed that significant predictors of greater transience include White ethnicity, high…

This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of a universal yoga-based social-emotional wellness promotion program, Transformative Life Skills, on indicators of adolescent emotional distress, prosocial behavior, and attitudes toward violence in a high-risk sample. Participants included 49 students attending an alternative education school in an…

Objective: Childhood abuse has been linked to negative sequelae for women later in life including drug and alcohol use and violence as victim or perpetrator and may also affect the development of women's social networks. Childhood abuse is prevalent among at-risk populations of women (such as the homeless) and thus may have a stronger impact on…

On March 15, 2007, Santa Barbara residents were shocked when a baby-faced 15-year-old high school student was stabbed to death in the heart of the city's fashionable State Street shopping district. His assailant, just 14, was a member of a rival street gang and a student at the local junior high. "It was a wakeup call for the entire…

A central feature of the U.S. Department of Education's Higher Education Center for Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Violence Prevention is the promotion of multiple prevention strategies that affect campus and surrounding community environments as a whole and can, thereby, have a large-scale effect on the entire campus community. In outlining the…

Utilizing the concept of race-based traumatic stress, this study tested whether posttraumatic stress symptoms explain the process by which perceived discrimination is related to health risk behaviors among Mexican American adolescents. One hundred ten participants were recruited from a large health maintenance organization in Northern California.…

Three respondents provide cogent commentary on the author's first article, "Does the Adolescent Brain Make Risk Taking Inevitable? A Skeptical Appraisal." Two respondent papers argue that the author mischaracterized valid and useful developmental and biological arguments affirming adolescents' singular risk propensities; the third…

Latino youth in a low-income urban community are at high risk of exposure to violence. Given an accumulation of factors before, during, and after migration, immigrant youth might be at increased risk of exposure to violence and other relevant stressors (e.g., acculturation stress, language proficiency, acculturation/enculturation, and parental…

Understanding the progression of violent and nonviolent criminal activity remains a matter of theoretical debate. In the present study, the authors build on criminological theory and assess the extent to which the progression of violent and nonviolent criminal behaviors follows different trajectories. The authors rely on semiparametric mixture…

Building on several recent papers that have brought the study of criminal career lengths back to the attention of criminologists, this study used a sample of serious offenders to examine the length of their official criminal career. This study not only examined overall career length, but it also examined the career length for five categories of…