The root cause of violentization is trauma from chronic exposure to violence, usually beginning in childhood or adolescence. Victims of violence become victimizers.
Why? Because at some point the victim of chronic violence makes the decision that this is a violent, dog-eat-dog world and that to avoid being a victim of violence one must become more violent and dangerous than potential abusers or attackers – to essentially fight fire with fire.
In part 1 of this episode, we explored the five-stage adaptive process of violentization described by criminologist researcher Lonnie Athens.
In this part 2 we turn to the all-important question of prevention and interventions to interrupt and even reverse the violentization process at both the individual and community levels.
A disease model is used for practical perspective.
To reduce serious criminal violence, reduce and effectively treat violent trauma.
Host David Risley maintains the solutions to serious criminal violence fall into four buckets: trauma, jobs, incentives, and educating the public.
At the highest and most difficult end of the violentization scale, ultraviolent and predatory violent people are so dangerous, resistant to de-violentization, and malignant in their effect on communities that there is rarely, if ever, a practical intervention alternative to long-term incapacitation through incarceration. But even then, treatment of violentization is sometimes possible.
At the lower end of the violentization scale, interventions include:
Restorative justice programs and community and problem-solving policing are also important, but deserve fuller discussion in their own episodes. In the meantime, more on those topics is found on the antiviolence strategy paper published on David Risley’s personal website at https://david-risley.com.
Finally, what may be the knottiest problem of them all: the resource riddle.