Background: An expansive literature on community violence exposure has almost exclusively focused on its effects on children, yet little is known about the effects of exposure to community violence on parents. Similarly, a wealth of research has investigated the impact of intimate partner violence, but not community violence, on mothers.…

Students, families, and communities across Chicago are affected by gun violence, but the levels and experiences differ greatly by location and by the racial composition of communities. In Chicago, recent rates of violence rose sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic, and then declined to pre-pandemic levels in 2022. Still, there were more than 4,000…

Background/Context: This article considers violence, both structurally and interpersonally, in Chicago, a city that moves to isolate and contain many of its Black working-class/low-income/no-income residents. Violence (particularly death by gun violence) should never be understood as a singular social problem that requires unilateral decisions on…

We consider two local reparations cases--the Evanston Restorative Housing Program and Chicago reparations for police torture survivors. We argue that the programs are shaped by the differing political opportunities, the local context, and the social location of their advocates given that one was constructed within government systems in Evanston…

Most students released from detention never return to school. This study uses youth participatory action research and Social Justice Youth Development Theory to explore the experiences of those who do. Findings demonstrate that formerly incarcerated students want to return to school but face institutionalized resistance that amounts to racialized…

During the coronavirus pandemic, the world shifted. Violence nationwide surged and teachers were forced to shift their classrooms to a remote style of education. These changes caused academic and social-emotional learning deficits as well as increases in violent behaviors exhibited by students when learning returned back to an in-person style.…

The current study seeks to understand the potential benefits of culturally matched cross-age peer mentoring for Black and Latinx adolescent mentors residing in low-income, urban communities. Data for the study were derived from a 4-year longitudinal project examining the effectiveness of community-based cross-age mentoring. Data from the current…

Research finds that vicarious strain significantly predicts juvenile delinquency. However, no studies have examined the influence of vicarious health strain on youth behavior despite the fact that when individuals directly experience poor health, there is a greater likelihood of crime and delinquency. Using a sample of youth from the Project on…

Racial disparities in violence exposure and criminal justice contact are a subject of growing policy and public concern. We conduct a large-scale, randomized controlled trial of a six-month behavioral health intervention combining intensive mentoring and group therapy designed to reduce criminal justice and violence involvement among Black and…

This article engages the question: In what ways and to what extent was William Rainey Harper's founding vision for the R.E.A. shaped by the rhetoric of American imperialism and its legitimation of violence against other nations? Using a historical methodology, this research explores how Harper's originating vision for the R.E.A. grew out of his…

This study explored racial differences in internalizing and externalizing problems among minority adolescents in impoverished urban communities. The study centered on a sample of 211 participants who were engaged in the 2018 Building Resilience Against Violence Engagement (BRAVE) programs. Their internalizing and externalizing problems were…

Exposure to community adversities and violence can be associated with a cascade of neurocognitive, mental health, and behavioral challenges among urban adolescents. Influenced by the bio-ecological framework, this study examines if problems with executive functioning (EF) exacerbate the relation between exposure to community adversity and violence…

David Blacker points to a problematic decline in personal freedoms, including student speech rights: "[A]s the 'educational mission' of schools moves ineluctably even further toward warehousing and surveillance--pre-jail--then remaining intra-institutional speech rights will easily be quashed." Critical of the elastic conception of…

In this article, we share our process of reflecting together and our resulting thoughts on the idea of anti-racist schooling amid our current experiences as Black men and fathers, as educators and researchers, as faculty colleagues, and as friends. In our respective careers, we have each continually posed questions that critically examine a range…

Mounting evidence suggests that social media can exacerbate tensions among gangs that ultimately lead to violence, but serious questions remain about precisely how conflict online translates to conflict offline. The purpose of this study is to examine the ways in which gang violence can be mediated by the Internet. We conducted a sociolinguistic…