Murder Is No Accident: Understanding and Preventing Youth Violence in America Hardcover - 2003 - 1st Edition

From the jacket flap

There are solutions to teen homicide and violence. Murder Is No Accident shows how one city broke its cycle of killing, proving that youth violence is not inevitable. During the early 1990s in Boston, youth violence and criminal activity were at epidemic proportions, and nearly one juvenile homicide occurred every month. Remarkably, by the end of the decade, there were no juvenile homicides, and the overall juvenile crime and violence rates had dramatically declined.

Authors Deborah Prothrow-Stith and Howard R. Spivak-two prominent Boston-area public health officials who played leading roles in that city's turnaround-show that the key to Boston's success was creating an interdisciplinary citywide movement. The city's movement-made up of educators, community leaders, police officers, emergency room workers, activist teens, teen and family member survivors of violence, and many others-worked for more than ten years to implement multifaceted preventive programs that confronted each risk factor for youth violence, including

• Positive Role Models: Peer mentoring and teacher-training programs
• Healthy and Safe Communities: Youth centers, after-school programs, and other organized recreational activities
• Poverty: Economic stimulus policies to help reduce poverty in inner-city and rural areas
• Pro-Social Behaviors: Conflict resolution and violence prevention curricula in schools
• Domestic Violence: Home visitation programs and screening to protect kids from domestic violence
• Gun Buybacks: Reduction in the number of firearms on the streets

Boston became the nation's premier success story for youth violence prevention. Your city can do it too. In this vital resource, Drs. Deborah Prothrow-Stith and Howard R. Spivak combine their impassioned message for violence prevention with a wealth of research, personal stories, and information, giving the nation's leaders and concerned citizens a powerful tool for preventing youth violence in their own neighborhoods and surrounding communities.

Media reviews

Citations

• Booklist, 11/01/2003, Page 464
• Library Journal, 11/15/2003, Page 88
• Publishers Weekly, 09/08/2003, Page 63