School violence, and particularly, school shootings, remain a serious concern among parents, community members, educators, and governmental leadership at the local, state, and national levels. While school shootings periodically dominate media coverage of school safety issues, schools are among the safest places for students in the community. This…

For decades Hip Hop cultural practices have been disparaged for allegedly inciting and being responsible for the eruption of urban violence. This assumption, likely built upon pre-existing biases regarding the street culture and ethnic minorities where Hip Hop emerged, ignored how some of the genre's main elements -- particularly freestyle rap,…

Data from the School Crime Supplement (SCS) to the National Crime Victimization Survey (2013), a nationally representative sample survey of students ages 12 through 18, were used to evaluate co-occurring reports of bullying and other unfavorable conditions at school. Analysis is restricted to those respondents who were enrolled in grades 6 through…

Aggression in adolescents is harmful and emotionally devastating to youth and surrounding communities. This article integrates martial arts and therapeutic principles into a culturally sensitive model that cultivates change in the aggressive behaviors of disenfranchised adolescents. The art form of Capoeira is proposed for promoting positive…

Marijuana use and violent behavior are causing widespread public concern. This article reviews theory and research on the relation between marijuana use and aggressive/violent behavior. It is evident from the inconsistent findings in the literature that the exact nature of the relation remains unclear. This article identifies several possible…

Schools are basically safe places for children. School violence and disruption, although in decline through the mid- to late 1990s, remains a concern. National surveys that inform research, policy, and practice have been designed for different purposes and can present conflicting findings. Common standards of risk and harm that could advance…

In this study I examine the critical factors and themes that are identified as salient influencers of overt and relational aggression among youth. Sex differences and similarities associated with such adolescent perceptions are assessed. Forty-eight ethnically diverse youth between the ages of 14 and 16 years participated in sex-specific focus…

This paper discusses how the internal worlds of adolescents who are looked after in residential care homes impact upon workers and generate complex dynamics within teams. This is especially so regarding internal parental objects and couplings, which inevitably include those of abandoning, abusive and ambivalent parental figures. Versions of these…

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study tests whether the relationship between academic achievement and problem behaviors is the same across racial and ethnic groups. Some have suggested that academic achievement may be a weaker predictor of problem behaviors among Asian Pacific Islander American (API)…

Violence is a widespread phenomenon in juvenile street culture. But the questions of whether this relationship is a deterministic one, and if not, which are the contributing factors, are largely unanswered. This article focuses on the role of public space, starting with a comparison of the meaning of deviant behavior and crime in street culture in…