Schools need to work more cooperatively with child welfare and police to identify abused children and those showing early signs of violence. However, schools report only 9% of violent crimes that occur there. Exposure to violence in media and entertainment may encourage violent behavior in children. To address childhood violence, more efforts are needed for preventing child abuse, training criminal justice professionals, controlling violent media, identifying at-risk children, and funding research into effective treatment programs rather than punishment and incarceration. A positive, strengths-based approach is important to help violent children learn and change.

1. Eliminating Childhood ViolenceEDU 524 Fall II 2010Chapter 12Dr. Paul A. Rodríguez

2. Have We Given Up on Controlling ViolenceRobert Putnam (2000) writes that Americans have stopped joining organizations and have disassociated themselves from the political process. This lack of community and political involvement makes dealing with childhood violence almost impossible.There needs to be an increased effort on the part of America’s schools to work cooperatively with the child welfare system and the police to identify abused children, school bullies and children beginning to show the early signs of violent behavior.

3. Schools are where youth crime frequently takes place, but the very center of youth crime activity, the school system, seems unwilling or unable to cooperate with law and child welfare enforcement to identify, report and then work with community agencies.

4. Craig and Pepler (1997) believe that only 9% of the juvenile violent crimes committed in schools are reported to criminal justice authorities, compared with a 37% report rate for similar juvenile street crimes.

5. When a child sees 8,000 murders on television, videos and video games by the time they finish grade school, (Simons 2001), and we have a serious youth violence problem in America, we must begin to wonder if violent entertainment provokes and encourages violence in children.2

6. Eliminating Childhood ViolenceWhat can we do?A No-Tolerance Policy toward Child Abuse and Neglect

7. A Well-Trained Core of Professionals for the Criminal Justice FieldAn astonishing 5% of the adult population in Texas (706,000 people) is in prison, on parole or on probation. Of the 163,000 prisoners in Texas, 89,400 are incarcerated for nonviolent crimes. African Americans in Texas are incarcerated at seven times the rate of whites, while probation is given to black prisoners only 20% of the time, compared with the 45% of white prisoners.Control of Violence in the MediaLocal television news too often emphasizes violence and too seldom produces thoughtful stories on what works. This helps create a “mean world syndrome” in the minds of viewers, who then often conclude that nothing works. 3