Abstract
Alarming rates of community violence and the detrimental impact on youth and communities stress the need for a well-founded response. This paper presents an integrative review of theory and research on the broad range of educational interventions to counter community violence. Based on critical analysis of distinctions in perspectives, objectives, and strategies, we established a multidisciplinary taxonomy of distinguishable approaches. The results show most interventions focus on either individual behavior or group interaction, while strategies for transformation of social systems are underrepresented. Based on related imbalances in theoretical orientations, the paper suggests a conceptual reorientation of community violence that includes structural mechanisms and enables a targeted approach of the many levels through which youth and communities are affected. By presenting a coherent overview of current educational responses, this paper assists policymakers and practitioners in integrating multiple strategies in a context-based and community-involved approach to reverse violence and promote peace.
Keywords
Over the past decades, children’s exposure to violence and its detrimental consequences have caused great concern around the globe (UNICEF, 2016). Approximately 30–50% of youth around the world directly experience violence in their communities and 70–98% are estimated to have been a witness to community violence (Guterman et al., 2010; Haj-Yahia et al., 2013; Jain & Cohen, 2013; Shields et al., 2008). These high rates have been recognized as a global public health issue for quite some time now, and various reports have stressed the need for an effective response (UNESCO, 2017; UNICEF, 2016; WHO, 2014). The World Health Organization considers violence prevention and reduction a top priority and calls for a variety of measures, from enactment and enforcement of legislation to reduce access to weapons to social and educational programs that promote equity and nonviolence in communities (WHO, 2014). At the same time, their report underlines the existing lack of data on violence in communities and the need for strategies informed by evidence. In this paper, we therefore address this need by offering a critical analysis of how “community violence” is defined and how existing programs intervene to counter community violence. Despite the considerable amount of research on the subject and an extensive collection of intervention programs, the existing body of knowledge is extremely fragmented and the scientific literature provides little insight into the distinguishable approaches and how they might work in different contexts (Abt & Winship, 2016; Butts et al., 2015; Fowler et al., 2009). Through an integrative review of theory and research, we aim to contribute to an overview of current educational responses and provide a critical analysis of their primary objectives and strategies to counter community violence by unraveling various layers of intervention and how they are related to different underlying theoretical orientations and conceptualizations. To position and mark our entry point into this study, we first present the conceptual framework that informed our analysis by distinguishing between individual- and systemic-oriented educational approaches and how these are reflected in the conceptualization of community violence.
Clinical-Individualistic Versus Critical-Systemic Perspectives
Considering the alarming rates of youth exposure to community violence and the increasing evidence of its detrimental impact, violence prevention has become of major concern in education (UNESCO, 2017) and other policy areas such as security (Skogan, 2011) and health (McDaniel & Sayegh, 2020). As a result, community violence has been addressed from a variety of disciplinary foci and perspectives. An important distinction is whether the impact of community violence is considered from the perspective of how it affects individual youth or how whole communities and social dynamics are affected. In developmental psychology, the impact of exposure to community violence, commonly referred to as being a victim of or witnessing violence outside the home (Overstreet, 2000), has been well documented for youth on the individual (and often clinical) level, demonstrating negative behavioral, emotional, and academic outcomes, including post-traumatic stress disorder, antisocial behavior (e.g. delinquency, gang involvement, aggression), low school engagement, and poor academic functioning (Overstreet, 2000; Voisin & Berringer, 2015). Much less attention has been given to how high rates of violence have a large impact on the community context in which youth grow up, causing a communal sense of insecurity in neighborhoods (Fowler et al., 2009). Nevertheless, the impact on neighborhood characteristics such as a lack of social interaction and a generalized fear for safety has been found substantial (Fowler et al., 2009; Liska & Warner, 1991; Markowitz et al., 2001), and there is a strong evidence base for the importance of such neighborhood characteristics for youth’s development (Minh et al., 2017).
A similar distinction between clinical-individualistic and more critical-systemic-oriented perspectives can be distinguished in theoretical perspectives on the underlying roots of community violence. In some of the first types of theoretical perspectives, high rates of violence are attributed to a deficit in norms, attitudes, and beliefs of individual people in so-called “violence-prone” areas due to a lack of impulse control (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990) or a normative system that facilitates the development of violence and crime into a social tradition passed on from generation to generation (Wolfgang & Ferracuti, 1967, in Kubrin, 2009). Such deficit-oriented perspectives reflect what Anderson (2012) calls “the iconic ghetto”: a pervasive stereotype in the imagination of outsiders, reinforced by the media, that stigmatizes people in poor neighborhoods as unable or failing to assume the responsibility to take care of themselves and their families and suggests communities are to blame for the violent circumstances in their neighborhoods. This deficit thinking is often reflected in the terminology used, labeling people and particularly youth living in violent areas as “deviant,” “antisocial,” or “criminal,” reflecting a pathological interpretation of behavior without considering systemic aspects. In contrast, critical-systemic theoretical perspectives argue that such a perspective produces a stigma that disregards the complex social dynamics violence produces. For example, Das and Kleinman (2000) demonstrate how a “dominant ecology of fear” (p. 11) has a strong impact on social dynamics in communities affected by high levels of violence—in particular, when perpetrators and victims are embedded in the same social space. Furthermore, these critical-systemic theories argue that when the main focus is on individual people and individual communities, social, economic, and political systems in wider society and how they affect community violence remain unexposed. In his elaborate work on violence and peace, Galtung (1996) proposes how physical or direct types of violence are related to structural mechanisms that deprive people of their basic needs. From such a critical-systemic perspective, power imbalances reflected in the earlier mentioned processes of stigmatization and in social inequalities (e.g., unequal access to public resources for safety, education, and health, increased exposure to police violence, unfair treatment from governmental organizations) can be considered expressions of structural violence. Galtung (1996) argues that contexts of historical social inequalities and injustices where such expressions of structural violence are justified and made acceptable present a fundamental obstacle to countering direct types of violence and establishing peace (Galtung, 1996).
From an educational perspective—that is, from the perspective of how educational programs can intervene and contribute to countering community violence—a primary focus on individual-level causes and consequences can be considered problematic since it risks overlooking systemic aspects of community violence, within and beyond the communities where it is manifesting, that strongly affect youth’s development. In educational research in general, various critiques of a clinical-individualistic pedagogy that focuses on treating “internalizing symptoms” (e.g., depression, anxiety, PTSD) or “externalizing problem behavior” (e.g., aggression, impulsive behavior) underline that it suggests the social problems youth are facing are private issues that should be addressed through personal responsibility and individual resilience (De Winter, 2024; Freire, 2021; Kolluri & Tichavakunda, 2023). These critiques argue that by individualizing social problems, these individual-oriented approaches undermine the potential of educational environments to create opportunities for collective action and social change (De Winter, 2024; Freire, 2021). Despite the potential to transform individual behavior, a clinical-individualistic perspective that is focused on adaptation to the existing circumstances does not seem to offer a basis for larger transformations of those circumstances and the elements or structures in it that sustain violence.
In line with these critiques on a clinical-individualistic perspective, theories of critical pedagogy and transformative education (Bajaj, 2015; Biesta, 2015; Freire, 2018) offer a more critical-systemic perspective on educational practice. According to both Freire (2018) and Biesta (2015) education should have a transforming impact on the known reality, adding something new and expanding the horizons of possibility. They both argue that education should not solely train students for a future place in society but should also be directed at questioning current social realities. In Freire’s (2021) vision of critical pedagogy, this also means that in order to be transformative, educational practice has a task of striving for social justice and challenging dominant social structures of inequity and its oppressive effects. He proposed that such a transformative process should always start with those people who suffer from the reality that needs to be transformed (Freire, 2018) and strongly critiqued universal curricula that are not meaningful in people’s own experiences and localities (Freire, 2021). In order to work toward change, Freire (2021) argued educational practice needs a curriculum that addresses matters of context, disrupts relations of subordination, and actively encourages participation of the community involved.
In short, the distinction between clinical-individualistic and more critical-systemic-oriented perspectives, as described previously, serves as a relevant conceptual framing for this review. In line with the critiques on a clinical-individualistic perspective, we adopt a critical-systemic perspective on community violence in order to uncover underlying assumptions and implicit “deficit-thinking” in the current educational response to counter community violence. Based on theories of critical pedagogy and transformative education (Bajaj, 2015; Biesta, 2015; Freire, 2018), we adopt a perspective on community violence that acknowledges the complex social dynamics and structural mechanisms involved that go well beyond the borders of neighborhoods and communities affected by high levels of violence, such as structurally conditioned poverty and related social wrongs and inequities. Furthermore, in line with Freire’s (2021) critiques of relations of oppression and universal curricula, we adopt a critical perspective on power imbalances between dominant and nondominant perspectives and the extent to which interventions involve people from the community with which they are working with. Based on such a critical-systemic perspective and related theories that informed our analysis, the central question we address in this paper is: “Which current educational responses toward community violence can be distinguished in terms of objectives, strategies, and underlying theoretical orientations and to what extent do they aim to work toward transformation and address the complex social dynamics and structural mechanisms involved? And how can the resulting overview and critical analysis of current approaches inform the conceptualization of community violence and the design of well-founded educational responses?”
Defining Community Violence: A Variety of Perspectives
The diversity of perspectives and interventions directed at community violence seems to be a reflection of the various conceptualizations that exist (Overstreet, 2000). Although community violence has been investigated in a considerable amount of research, broad consensus on a univocal definition has not yet been achieved in the academic debate (Ali-Saleh Darawshy et al., 2020). Nevertheless, most definitions refer to “interpersonal violent behavior” in the public domain (Ali-Saleh Darawshy et al., 2020) and generally seem to be conceptualized from a clinical-psychological perspective that focuses on the consequences for individual development (Overstreet, 2000). In Ali-Saleh Darawshy et al.’s (2020) review study, community violence is defined as “interpersonal violent behavior that takes place in community settings (e.g. the street, the school, the neighborhood, and public spaces), which causes or threatens to cause injuries to another person or group; this may include assaults, chasing, use of weapons, gunfire, etc.” (p. 365). Community violence can therefore be considered a container concept, incorporating a variety of types of violence, including gang-related violence and violence in schools. Despite the overlap in exposure to community violence and other types of violence—both in the private sphere and the public domain—and the fact that these boundaries are never absolute, it is important to note that the term community violence overall does not encompass domestic violence, sexual violence, vandalism or political violence. For instance, while community violence might involve political motives and can stem from discontent of social inequality or other issues in the social sphere, the concept does not refer to calculated acts of violence used as an instrument to reach specified ideological goals, such as in the case of various forms of political violence like violent protests, terrorism, or rebellion. Accordingly, in this paper, we focus on the violence that takes place in the public rather than private domain, involving informal actors instead of institutionalized agents and concerning violence against civilians instead of institutions or power structures. Formalized forms of violence, such as acts of war and politically driven violence orchestrated by state actors or political movements (e.g., police violence or violence by para-military and rebel groups), are therefore outside the primary scope of this paper. Instead, in line with the foregoing, we build on Ali-Saleh Darawshy et al.’s (2020) definition of community violence, with specific regard for its environmentally pervasive character (Lorion & Saltzman, 1993) and the complex social dynamics (Anderson, 1999; Das & Kleinman, 2000) and structural mechanisms involved (Galtung, 1996). While we agree that community violence can be defined as a direct type of violence between individuals (i.e. interpersonal), we emphasize that the intricate dynamics of community violence go beyond the individual and interpersonal level and involve systemic aspects not only within communities experiencing high levels of violence, but also related to social, economic, and political structures in wider society that have been underexposed in the literature (Burrell et al., 2021; Wilkins et al., 2014). This means that when conceptualizing community violence as a social issue and considering well-founded solutions, we problematize a narrow definition that centralizes the interpersonal level where community violence manifests because it reflects a limited, clinical-individualistic perspective toward community violence and disconnects it from the systemic aspects involved.
The Need for a Critical Analysis of Distinguishable Approaches for Practice and Theory
While a narrow definition of community violence from a clinical-individualistic perspective might seem to provide a straightforward starting point for the development of a response, even within this limited conceptualization, a variety of perspectives and approaches have been developed, each containing their own underlying principles with regard to causes, effects, and potential solutions. The existing body of knowledge on community violence and lines of intervention is extremely fragmented, segregated in multiple academic disciplines (mainly psychology, education, and criminology) that each present a profusion of theoretical perspectives that are seldomly seen in relation but function either as separated worlds or as oppositional approaches denouncing each other’s results (Overstreet, 2000; Weijers, 2020). This is problematic for policymakers, administrators, and practitioners looking for applicable interventions to counter community violence, who, in the absence of an integrative conceptual framework to study community violence, are confronted with an extensive but impenetrable collection of intervention programs (Abt & Winship, 2016; Voisin & Berringer, 2015). Insufficient knowledge about the distinguishable approaches and their potential impact hinders well-considered choices for implementation, and there is little practical guidance on how to identify the right interventions for a particular context (Abt, 2014, in Abt & Winship, 2016). Furthermore, the scientific literature provides little insight into how interventions address various layers of individual, interpersonal, and contextual processes involved in order to examine what works (Abt & Winship, 2016; Burrell et al., 2021).
In addition to the potential value for practice, unraveling these various intervention layers and how they are related to different theoretical orientations might also provide useful insights to reconsider existing conceptualizations of community violence. The construction of a more holistic conceptualization of community violence that addresses how social, economic, and political structures are involved might offer a more comprehensive theoretical basis for the development of interventions, the evaluation of their effects, and the understanding of how interventions work toward change in specific contexts. This also calls for critical reflection on research designs to develop and assess the effectiveness of interventions for community violence since research sites, methods, and measures of impact are often Western-based and give preference to dominant perspectives, overlooking perspectives of nondominant communities (Philip et al., 2018). Despite the wide variety of interventions, the majority appears to have been developed in Western countries, shaped by perspectives of dominant groups, and not attuned to a diversity of local contexts, in particular those of nondominant communities. During our own research in slum neighborhoods in Brazil, we have witnessed how community organizations draw little benefit from existing interventions and are left to their own resources to establish an educational response to community violence that fits their context (van Dijk et al., 2020). Our findings underlined the importance of a profound engagement of local communities in educational programs and carefully considered local meanings and experiences in contexts of violence in order to construct strategies attuned to the local context that do not overlook violence-related dynamics (van Dijk et al., 2020).
To assist practitioners and researchers in the field, in this paper, we gradually work toward an integrative overview of the different types of interventions and their perspectives on countering community violence that exists across various contexts and countries, based on an integrative review of the literature, with the specific ambition to include nondominant perspectives. First, we present an analysis of the main approaches toward community violence across the central academic disciplines that have been investigating the issue and whether they can be considered educational responses based on theories on transformative education. Second, based on the analysis of a number of intervention programs—both established and less well-known or unconventional ones—we examine objectives, strategies, and underlying theoretical orientations and explore perspectives on youth and communities. Building on these analyses informed by a critical-systemic perspective on community violence, we discuss some fundamental tensions in the design, implementation, and evaluation of interventions in relation to the complex and systemic character of community violence and the underrepresentation of community perspectives. The resulting overview, presented in a taxonomy of distinguishable approaches based on critical analysis of the different intervention strategies and their underlying principles, offers a review and critical “diagnosis” of the current approaches to counter community violence that could provide important directions for practitioners and policymakers. However, while the primacy of this review is with the field of practice, the paper also offers an important conceptual contribution by addressing imbalances in theoretical orientations toward community violence and demonstrating major consequences for intervention approaches, primarily oriented toward the individual instead of systemic change. By underlining the underexposure of social, economical, and political conditions of inequality and oppression involved in community violence, we emphasize the need for a conceptual reorientation in order to promote the development of thorough and targeted approaches to counter community violence and its harmful impact on children and communities.
Method
To gather literature on interventions directed at community violence, we worked in a phased cyclic process of literature search and analysis, using multiple search strategies and a three-step analysis. In the first phase, we started with making an initial broad overview of various approaches toward community violence based on a general search for review studies on the issue, including reviews focused on exploring the problem of community violence and its consequences and review studies of intervention programs and their effectiveness. This general search for review studies consisted of relevant studies that were already known to the authors through prior research as a meaningful starting point. Additionally, we consulted multiple electronic databases (Google Scholar, Web of Science, and ERIC) and specific educational review journals, including International Review of Education, Educational Research Review, and Review of Educational Research, searching for studies that included the terms “community violence,” “gang violence,” or “youth violence.” Google Scholar was selected because it is considered a suitable database for exploratory general searches, and the other databases and journals were selected because they are leading in the fields of education, psychology, and social sciences. This general search was directed at an exploration of the literature on community violence, related concepts, and approaches, and resulted in an initial overview based on 87 studies, including journal articles (reviews and single studies), policy reports, books, and book chapters. This initial overview was complemented through manual backward citation searching, 1 focused on finding studies that described intervention programs, generating another 25 studies.
In a second phase, we conducted an independent additional search using combinations of the following key terms in English, Spanish, and Portuguese: (1) youth, children, adolescents; (2) community violence, gang violence, youth violence; and (3) education, intervention, prevention, and program. Related to our prior work and special interest in Latin America and our ambition to include a more diverse representation of contexts and perspectives in our review, we decided to expand the search with publications in Spanish and Portuguese. We consulted with a research librarian regarding the search terms and developed the following search string for a systematic search in Web of Science: TS = ((youth OR child* OR adolescents) AND (“community violence” OR “gang* violence” OR “youth violence”) AND (education* OR intervention OR prevention OR programme)). Using the alert system from February 5 to December 31, 2021, the search generated 106 studies, including journal articles (reviews and single studies), dissertations, and book chapters. Titles and abstracts were reviewed by the first author for relevancy—that is, if the paper addressed an intervention or approach in response to community violence directed at youth. This resulted in the exclusion of 86 studies because they did not describe an intervention (e.g., Bordin et al., 2022), were not directed at violence or at other types of violence outside the definition of community violence (e.g., domestic violence, sexual abuse, suicide prevention; for example, Van Wyk, 2022), or were not directed at youth (e.g. Raja et al., 2021). In addition, we conducted targeted gray literature searches 2 in order to find more information on specific intervention programs or approaches—in particular, those that were not retrieved via earlier searches, such as community building and victim support groups, which enabled us to include less-established programs including bottom-up initiatives from nondominant communities and programs developed in non-Western contexts. In total, the search strategies in this second phase resulted in the inclusion of an additional 43 studies, including journal articles, policy and research reports, book chapters, essays, dissertations, and theses. The search strategies in phase 1 and 2 combined resulted in a total of 155 studies included in this review, published between 1991 and 2021. We focused on this time span because in the ’90s, there was a proliferation of research into community violence, and in these years, the analysis of the issue from an educational perspective expanded quickly (Overstreet, 2000). Included studies were predominantly written in English but also in Portuguese (n = 6), Spanish (n = 3), and Dutch (n = 15). All reviewed articles are listed in online Supplementary Table S1.
The initial overview based on the first step of the analysis was sequentially revised, complemented, and further specified and detailed as the analysis of succeeding literature progressed. In this second step of the analysis, the main features of interventions located in the literature were systematically analyzed, informed by theories of critical pedagogy and transformative education (as presented in the conceptual framework in the introduction), and based on the following questions:
• What is the intervention’s view on the causes of community violence?
• What is the intervention’s view on potential solutions?
• How are these views related to theoretical orientations regarding the roots of violence?
• What are the main objectives of the intervention?
• Who are the main agents (developers, facilitators/staff, and participants or target group)?
• What are the main ingredients of the intervention?
• To what extent does the intervention involve local community and youth?
• For which type(s) of contexts has the intervention been designed?
• In which type(s) of contexts has the intervention been implemented?
• Which effects have been reported and how were these measured?
Building on the results of these analyses, we located some noticeable distinctions that we investigated further in the third step of the analysis. In this step, we focused on several tensions related to the content and presentation of interventions directed at community violence that we will address and elaborate on in the continuing of this paper. Informed by our conceptual framework and central research question as presented in the introduction, in this final step of the analytical process, we synthesized and interpreted the results from the previous steps, particularly in relation to the complex social dynamics and structural mechanisms involved in community violence and the underrepresentation of community perspectives. This third step in the critical analysis involved six dimensions. Firstly, since in this review we are looking for educational responses toward community violence, we critically analyzed whether the approaches’ objectives we identified could be considered educational based on theories on transformative education (1). Secondly, when zooming in on the interventions’ objectives and strategies, we distinguished a subdivision of various intervention levels and different types of transformation interventions aspired and accordingly established three distinguishable clusters of educational intervention strategies (2). Subsequently, we critically analyzed how these objectives and strategies reflect different theoretical orientations on the roots of violence, which, while uncommonly referred to explicitly in the literature, we identified as important underlying assumptions for the construction of approaches toward community violence (3). A related aspect of these approaches, which we analyzed in more detail, is the distinct perspectives on youth and the communities in which they live (4). Furthermore, separate from the type of intervention strategy, we observed distinctions in the way communities are involved in intervention programs (5). Finally, we examined available indications for the effectiveness of the various intervention strategies and how diverse methods and measures for evaluation are related to different perspectives on community violence (6). Table 1 provides an overview of educational interventions encountered in this review organized according to these six dimensions of our analysis and their distinguishable categories.
Taxonomy of Interventions in Response to Community Violence With the Aim of Transformation
Results
Dimension 1: The Objective of Transformation: An Analysis of Educational Approaches
Firstly, based on our conceptual framework related to theories on transformative education (Biesta, 2015; Freire, 2018), we have analyzed whether the approaches and interventions we identified in our review of the literature can be considered educational responses to community violence. Based on this first dimension of the analysis, in the subsequent dimensions we included only those interventions that were determined educational. We considered interventions educational if they aim for at least one of the three “major functions” of education as proposed by Biesta (2012): (1) qualification, focusing on acquiring knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes; (2) socialization, initiating youth in existing practices and traditions of a certain culture; and (3) subjectification, which is best understood as the opposite of socialization, not incorporating youth as “newcomers” in existing orders but investigating ways of being independent of these orders. Combining these three dimensions, Biesta (2015) proposes that education adds something new to the world and involves an interference that should have a transforming impact, causing a reorganization of the known reality. This line of thought ties in with the ideas of Freire (2018), who emphasized that education should not only aspire self-reflection and a critical understanding and awareness of oneself and the world but ultimately also strive for the conditions to produce a new set of arrangements where students and teachers come to see the world not as a static reality but as a reality in process, in transformation. Such an aspiration for transformation is what we understand as educational, and therefore, in our analysis we looked across the central academic disciplines that have been studying community violence (i.e., education, psychology, and criminology) in order to critically analyze which approaches and interventions can be considered educational from such a transformative perspective and which can not.
In our analysis, we identified such transformative educational objectives among interventions in the literature from different academic disciplines. In general, we discerned two divergent main objectives in the approaches toward community violence: containment and transformation of violence. Examples of the first type of approach are repressive police action and punishment through a criminal justice approach, as well as security measures in schools, directed at keeping violence outside school walls through metal detectors, police patrol, and a “zero tolerance” policy of immediate suspension or expulsion of students involved in violent incidents (Noguera, 1995; UNESCO, 2017; Welsh & Little, 2018). While such repressive approaches focused on restriction and control might also expect change in the sense of reduction of violent behavior through punitive measures, their major objective or purpose is, however, the containment of violence and not its transformation. Therefore, they were not considered educational responses and were excluded from the continuing dimensions of the analysis, regardless of whether they were implemented in schools.
Opposite to such repressive approaches, on the other hand, we identified initiatives that address social aspects of violence with the objective of creating alternatives for violence and working toward change. Whether administered by law enforcement or by schools and social services, these interventions aim to realize some kind of transformation. For example, in educational research, we found a wide variety of comprehensive school programs that encourage positive relations between students and school staff, as well as interventions aimed at improving prosocial behavior and conflict-resolution skills (Johnson & Johnson, 1996; UNESCO, 2017; Welsh & Little, 2018). In psychological research, we found several therapeutic programs aiming to reduce the negative impact of exposure to community violence on youth from a psychosocial health perspective. These interventions offer training in psychological coping strategies, either to reduce internalizing symptoms (e.g., depression, anxiety, or PTSD) (Voisin & Berringer, 2015) or externalizing problem behavior, like anger management therapy (Ali-Saleh Darawshy et al., 2020). But also in the criminological literature, we found several initiatives that aim for transformation, such as socio-preventive responses to community violence that offer alternatives to violent crime by providing youth “at risk” access to social and other public services and improving their opportunities in education and employment (Williams et al., 2014). While administered by law enforcement and based on criminology, from a transformative perspective on education, these interventions can be considered educational.
In the rest of this paper, we will explore the latter type of intervention with the goal of countering community violence by creating peaceful alternatives (e.g., establishing a positive school climate, training in anger management, or improving employment opportunities). Irrespective of the academic discipline they stem from, these interventions have an objective to transform and aim to construct alternatives and generate something new, which, in line with Biesta and Freire, we argue is fundamental for an educational approach. However, interventions with such a transformational objective still consist of a wide variety of initiatives with many differences between them. Therefore, in order to create an overview, we critically analyzed what type of transformation these educational interventions aspired for and how their objectives and strategies were related to theoretical perspectives on the roots of violence. Based on this next dimension of the analysis, we distinguish between three different clusters of intervention strategies (see Figure 1), characterized by three types of transformation and three levels of intervention, which we will outline one by one.
Three Clusters of Intervention Strategies: (1) Qualification of Individual Youth, (2) Socialization of Peer Groups, and (3) Social Reorganization of the Environment.
Dimension 2: Three Types of Transformation and Levels of Intervention
In our analysis, we distinguish between three types of transformation, inspired by Biesta’s (2012) major functions of education. 3 The categories, as we use them, are not an exact match to how Biesta uses them in his work. They are derived from his classification and adapted to interpret the transformational objectives of what we categorized as educational interventions directed at community violence in the following way. Firstly, qualification of youth in skills, attitudes, or knowledge can be considered a type of transformation that is directed at enabling youth to act or behave in a certain manner. We identified this type of transformation in those interventions that focus on teaching youth nonviolent attitudes and prosocial behavior or other skills that might help them to promote peace or reduce the negative impact of violence. An interesting example of the latter is the mindfulness-based stress reduction program (MBSR) that teaches skills to reduce high-stress levels induced by exposure to community violence (Sibinga et al., 2016). This program aims to qualify young people in coping strategies to deal with the consequences of their mental health (see Table 1 for more information). Similarly, the violence prevention program “El Joven Noble” (Kelly et al., 2010) is directed at improving skills by replacing “violent-provoking norms and attitudes with a set of beliefs that support harmony, balance and responsibility in all relationships” (Kelly et al., 2010, p. 210). The program aims to improve self-efficacy by teaching nonviolent alternatives for conflict resolution. Like El Joven Noble and MBSR, interventions that focus on qualification mostly intervene at the individual level, targeting the individual behavior of youth.
Secondly, we identified interventions directed at the socialization of youth that focus on the transmission of social norms and values and youth’s integration into society through employment and schooling. This can be considered a different type of transformation because it is not directed at their individual behavior but aims to transform social norms and insert youth in particular cultural traditions and institutions of society. Interventions that aim for socialization generally intervene at the level of group interaction. Mind that this is an important distinction from how Biesta (2012) originally argued about the socialization function of education since he refers to how individuals are introduced and embedded in cultural practices. Contrary to an individual-oriented approach, we found that these interventions particularly focus on social groups and make use of the group’s social cohesion as an instrument and potential source of support in the change process. One example is the TIP program, 4 implemented in Colombia, which approaches entire youth street gangs in order to transform group behavior and enhance their access to public services (Gutierrez-Martinez et al., 2020). Instead of separating the individual from the group, the group becomes the target of intervention with the objective of establishing change in the peer group. A similar approach is represented by some anti-bullying programs that, instead of focusing on the bully or the bullied, take the entire classroom and its group dynamics as their target for change (Kärnä et al., 2011; Smith et al., 2003). Likewise, the Glen Mills School for delinquent boys was based on the idea that the same (group) processes that are believed to contribute to the development of what the researchers call antisocial behavior (e.g., imitation and reinforcement, status and recognition, peer pressure and the need to belong) can be used as a resource to encourage prosocial behavior (Dubnov, 1986; Hilhorst & Klooster, 2004).
Thirdly, we found interventions that do not aim for behavioral change in youth or their adjustment to societal norms but foster critical analysis of existing social processes that fuel violence and encourage the participation of youth in establishing alternative cultural ways and new policies. We classified this type of transformation as social reorganization because it is directed at awareness and transformation of social processes and structures. Although this category differs in many ways from Biesta’s (2012) function of subjectification, it involves a similar process of “investigating ways of being independent from existing orders” (p. 31). While Biesta (2012) refers to the subjectivity of the individual, we refer to a category of interventions that aim to empower people not only regarding how to be independent of existing orders individually but also to establish alliances with others and encourage them to reorganize these orders or create new ones. This is illustrated by a peace education program from Colombia called Hermes that aims to establish cultural change in schools and addresses asymmetrical power relationships in educational environments (Marciales Mogollón & Vega Romero, 2019). By targeting the entire school community, questioning not only behavior of students and teachers but also organizational values and school policy related to conflict management, this initiative enables youth and everyone involved in the school to analyze their functioning and construct an alternative culture of consensus. Interventions that aim for such a social reorganization often intervene at a broader societal or contextual level, aiming for a change in the environment such as within institutions (e.g., school climate, disciplinary procedures, policy on social services) or neighborhood contexts, for example, through the transformation of social processes in communities and community initiatives. An example of the latter is the neighborhood program “Why are we so angry?” (Abdi, 2021), which aims to improve mutual trust and create collective efficacy in neighborhoods affected by community violence while cooperatively working on and advocating for community needs on a policy level (see Table 1 for more information).
Overall, in our analysis we identified three types of transformation (qualification, socialization, and social reorganization) and three levels of intervention (individual behavior, group interaction, and environment) that often occurred in the combinations as previously described and that we therefore organized as three clusters of intervention strategies (see Figure 1): (1) qualification of individual youth, (2) socialization of peer groups, and (3) social reorganization of the environment. However, while these clusters have their own particular focus, they are not mutually exclusive but are interconnected and often overlap: the content of interventions focused on qualification also has a socializing impact and vice versa, while both types can also, to some extent, encourage critical analysis of society’s orders. Furthermore, several intervention programs include a diversified set of program elements that operate at various levels of intervention and aim for different types of transformation. As Biesta (2012) argues, education has a multidimensional character with overlapping and conflicting purposes. Accordingly, interventions both within and between these three clusters can share similar features while also pursuing disparate strategies.
Nevertheless, choices for a specific strategy have important implications and reflect the intervention’s view on the roots of violence, in particular regarding the importance attributed to either individual or systemic factors that might lead to different considerations about whether the individual or the environment should be the main target of change and whether to adopt an individual or a collective approach. Based on our conceptual framework that distinguishes between clinical-individualistic and critical-systemic perspectives on community violence, in the next section of this paper, we will analyze for each cluster how theoretical orientations to the roots of violence are reflected in the selection of a certain level of intervention and type of transformation to provide a solution to community violence.
Dimension 3: Underlying Views to the Roots of Violence
Operating at the interface between criminology and youth studies, theories on youth delinquency address developmental, social psychological, political, and anthropological explanations of crime and violence (Lilly et al., 2019), which, as we will demonstrate , seem to provide a basis for the form and content of various transformative, educational interventions to counter community violence. Although they are uncommonly referred to explicitly in the literature we located in this review and explicit program theories were usually absent, in our analysis, we established underlying connections between these theories’ central ideas and the strategies for transformation pursued by educational interventions in each of the three established clusters.
Cluster 1: Lack of Behavioral Skills and Impulse Control
The first cluster, consisting of intervention strategies that aim to transform youth’s individual values and attitudes and to provide knowledge and skills assumed to reduce violence and its negative impact, are based on the view that transformation of youth’s individual behavior is required, reflecting a clinical-individualistic perspective on community violence as described in the introduction of this paper. Some of these interventions particularly focus on “youth at risk,” who are assumed to be inclined to a risky lifestyle and attracted to peer groups with antisocial and criminal behavior because they pursue excitement and suspense (Bol et al., 1998; Junger-Tas, 1996; Van den Brink, 2006). This focus reflects theoretical orientations to the roots of violence based on the self-control theory of crime (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990) that centralizes a tendency toward risk and other associated individual characteristics such as hyperactivity and impulse control. The ability to control impulses, delay need satisfaction, and make use of verbal communication techniques instead of violence to get things done is considered of great importance to prevent people from violent and criminal behavior (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990). We found that training in these abilities is often a central component of therapeutic programs from a psychosocial health perspective, like anger management therapy, but also more comprehensive educational programs that aim to improve self-efficacy by teaching nonviolent behavioral strategies such as “Aulas en Paz” (see Table 1) and United Nations school programs that teach about peace, tolerance, and human rights (Page, 2004; UNESCO, 2017; UNICEF 2016). For example, STYL, a program of cognitive behavior therapy for “high-risk” young men in Liberia, focuses on actively practicing new skills like planning, goal-setting, and self-control in order to reshape their social identity as “outcasts” (Blattman et al., 2017). In a combination of group therapy and one-on-one counseling, participant youth were trained in managing anger and emotions, reducing automatic behaviors, and replacing fast decision-making with conscious slow reflection, aimed at reducing “antisocial behavior,” which in the respective study was operationalized as selling drugs and committing other types of crime, involvement in fights, and carrying weapons (Blattman et al., 2017). Program elements intended to foster skills of self-control (e.g., deliberate decision-making, controlling emotions and impulses) aim for transformation on a qualification level through the disruption of existing patterns of thinking and behavior and acquire new skills and attitudes to reduce violent tendencies. As such, intervention strategies in this cluster reflect a theoretical perspective that attributes community violence to a deficit in norms, attitudes, and beliefs of individual youth.
Cluster 2: Lack of Social Bonds to Mainstream Society
The second cluster, consisting of intervention strategies directed at the transformation of social norms in peer groups and their social integration, is based on the view that (re) socialization of youth in mainstream society is required to counter community violence. Some programs focus on peer pressure prevention, while others involve adult and peer role models to encourage certain life choices or model particular attitudes and behaviors that are culturally accepted by mainstream society. In these interventions, we recognize the view that delinquent behavior is learned through social interaction via a process of imitation and reinforcement, offered by the differential association and social learning theory that particularly stress the role of peer groups as an important “risk factor” for crime involvement (Angenent, 1991). Although we found these theories were not often mentioned in the identified interventions, their theoretical perspective was reflected in strategies to intervene in norms for conflict resolution in peer groups or youth gangs. For example, the widely implemented violence reduction strategy “Cure Violence” uses role models to convince gang-involved youth to refrain from violent retaliation after an attack from a rivaling gang (Butts et al., 2015). Additionally, outreach workers form relations with “high-risk” youth and help connect them to “prosocial institutions,” providing employment opportunities, recreational activities, and education (Butts et al., 2015). Our analysis established the theoretical link between such strategies and the ideas of the social bonds theory (Hirschi, 1969), which contends that bonds to school, work, and family but also attachment to societal norms help to prevent involvement in (violent) crime and other types of “antisocial behavior.” The stronger the bonds, the lesser the chance of being involved in crime because these bonds help people “stay on track.” Like Cure Violence, several deterrence programs that we found in our review connect gang-involved youth to social services to address housing conditions, joblessness, health problems, and other issues that limit their opportunities to build a life in mainstream society (e.g., TIP, CIRV; see Table 1). Such a focus on improving young people’s living conditions reflects the view that criminal behavior might be a consequence of (frustration about) negative circumstances that limit their possibilities to achieve success via socially accepted means, as outlined in strain theory. In particular, in meritocratic societies where everyone is supposed to be able to accomplish “the American Dream,” people who feel strained by a lack of income, bad housing, poor health, and other disadvantages might turn to illegal means to achieve financial success (Merton, 1938, in Weijers, 2020). By providing support and improving youth’s living conditions, these intervention strategies break ground to focus on transformation of the environment. While this second cluster of interventions focuses on embedding youth in mainstream society, the last cluster of intervention strategies that we will now turn to takes this a step further by questioning precisely that dominant society’s role and its social structures and actively trying to establish a reorganization of young people’s reality from the bottom up.
Cluster 3: A Consequence of Social Exclusion and Oppression
Finally, our analysis showed that intervention strategies from the third cluster that question processes of social exclusion and encourage the empowerment of youth and communities are based on the view that a social reorganization of the environment is required to counter community violence, reflecting a critical-systemic perspective on community violence as described in the introduction of this paper. This includes strategies that enable equal participation and resist power imbalances within communities and society, challenging disempowering social structures. For example, in Mexico, the establishment of autonomous schools improves access to education for Indigenous people with a culturally relevant curriculum that protects their culture, language, and civil rights but also aspires for socio-political restructuring by creating awareness about injustices and violence caused by a history of marginalization (Bajaj, 2015; De Buck, 2020). In these schools, students are encouraged to form alliances in order to create solutions to urgent community matters such as community violence and politically advocate for their needs and rights (De Buck, 2020). These educational projects offer a solution to community violence by addressing social, economical, and political conditions of inequality and oppression based on the view that historical systematic exclusion and social injustice lies at the bottom of multiple forms of violence (Bajaj, 2015; Pino, 2007).
These intervention strategies reflect a view on community violence in line with theoretical approaches that build on strain theory and argue that young people growing up in socioeconomic disadvantage seek alternative means to achieve success when the “legitimate” route seems inaccessible to them (Cohen, 1955; Lilly et al., 2019). In opposition to other theories, this approach argues that aggressive and violent behavior does not stem from poor self-control or a lack of nonviolent conflict resolution skills but can be considered a response to earlier experiences of humiliation and exclusion (Pels, 2003). In this view, accumulated frustration due to negative circumstances and experiences that cause anger, rancor, and feelings of injustice, such as poverty and unequal treatment by people in authority (e.g., police, teachers, employers) function as a main trigger for violence (Pels, 2003; Agnew, 1992 in Weijers, 2020). These views are reflected in interventions such as the Indigenous autonomous schools in Mexico and the earlier described Hermes program in Colombia that address these triggers and cooperatively create alternative paths of resistance to social inequality in order to act for social change and counter community violence.
While some intervention strategies in this third cluster are directed at addressing disempowering processes at the societal level, others aim to transform social processes at a neighborhood level. In the latter, we recognize theoretical perspectives on community violence that underline its negative impact on trust and social organization among neighbors, which means that there is less collective efficacy to intervene and maintain order in the public interest (Kubrin, 2009; Lilly et al., 2019; Sampson et al., 1997). In these types of environments, joining a gang can become an appropriate means of protection from armed offenders (Pitts, 2008; Decker and Van Winkle, 1996, in Ilan, 2015) while securing economic survival (Padilla, 1992; Sanchez-Jankowski, 1991, in Ilan, 2015). In contrast with deficit-oriented approaches that suggest people living in neighborhoods with high levels of violence endorse values that are oppositional to dominant society, these lines of research demonstrate that residents share conventional values and desire a crime-free community (Kornhauser, 1978, in Kubrin, 2009). Our analysis showed that these theoretical perspectives are reflected in programs for community building that aim for stronger ties among neighborhood residents and collective action to advocate for and address community needs, including those related to safety improvement and violence reduction. In our review, we found only one such example through a gray literature search in the earlier described initiative: “Why are we so angry?” This program aims to create a safer neighborhood through community meetings where residents share experiences, build trust, and work toward a collective response to violence (Abdi, 2021). Such a bottom-up approach reflects a view on transformation that encourages dialogue and the active participation of community residents to create new arrangements and reorganize social reality.
Dimension 4: Distinct Perspectives on Youth and Communities
The three clusters of intervention strategies and their various underlying theoretical orientations to the roots of violence also have an impact on the selected approach toward young people and the communities in which they live. Based on our conceptual framework that distinguishes between a clinical-individualistic and critical-systemic perspective on community violence, analysis of the interventions we located in this review revealed two distinct perceptions of communities that experience high levels of violence. Some interventions seem to consider community violence as an “outside threat” that youth and communities have to guard themselves against, such as in the case of stress reduction programs and other interventions from a clinical-individualistic perspective that teach young people coping strategies in response to violent environments (e.g., MBSR, Child and Family Traumatic Stress Intervention, see Table 1). These interventions seem to approach their participants as victims of community violence in need of effective strategies to reduce the negative impact of exposure to violence. Such a perspective that focuses on the victimhood of youth is solidly grounded in the literature on community violence that, when defining the phenomenon, centralizes victimization and differentiates between experiencing and witnessing violence. Contrastingly, other interventions from a clinical-individualistic perspective take an approach toward young people as offenders. They consider community violence as a problem coming from “within,” a social problem caused by particular youth and communities and their “antisocial” patterns of behavior (e.g., STYL, Scared Straight, see Table 1).
A one-sided focus on either victims or offenders seems to overlook the fact that young people are often both, known as the victim-offender overlap (Berg et al., 2012). This phenomenon has been explained by individual characteristics such as increased risk-taking and a lack of self-control (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990) but has also been related to street cultural practices and other neighborhood processes (Berg et al., 2012). The victim-offender overlap has proven stronger in neighborhoods with a street cultural orientation that legitimizes violence to resolve interpersonal disputes (Berg et al., 2012). In a neighborhood context where residents, in response to dangers, believe that a reputation for violence may reduce their risk of victimization (Anderson, 1999; Stewart & Simons, 2010), susceptibility to violent victimization as well as violent offending may indeed actually increase (Berg et al., 2012; Burgason et al., 2014). Considering community violence either as an “outside threat” or an “inside restraint” therefore seems to disregard the intricate social dynamics because the roles of perpetrators, victims, and witnesses are alternated and embedded in the same social space (Das & Kleinman, 2000). Furthermore, a dichotomy between the perception of youth and communities as either victims or offenders tends to reduce community violence to a deficit of individuals and communities, overlooking the importance of social, economic, and political conditions at the macro level (Pino, 2007).
Several interventions do recognize the complex dynamic of community violence involving competing influences, codes, and positions (victim, offender, witness), reflecting a more critical-systemic perspective on community violence. However, this acknowledgment does not always translate to a matching methodology. In the end, interventions usually choose one main focus instead of combining multiple perceptions of their participants. For example, several offender-oriented programs do include elements of care but with the aim to cease or reduce perpetration. These choices for particular strategies are displayed in Figure 2, organized in the three clusters of interventions. Each cluster contains strategies that focus on their target group as victims (e.g., qualifying youth with coping strategies for trauma symptoms in cluster 1, or addressing structural inequality in cluster 3) and strategies that perceive them as offenders (e.g., teaching anger management strategies in cluster 1 or changing violent group norms in cluster 2). The overview in Figure 2 again underlines that only the third cluster of intervention strategies specifically addresses systemic aspects of community violence by intervening in social processes and structures, focusing on systemic change in communities (e.g., trust, collective efficacy) or at the societal level (e.g., alliances to address social inequality).
Intervention Strategies With a Perception of the Target Group as Victim or Offender, Organized in Three Clusters: (1) Qualification of Individual Youth, (2) Socialization of Peer Groups, and (3) Social Reorganization of the Environment.
Dimension 5: Types of Community Involvement
Another central dimension of our analysis is the distinctive way in which communities are involved. Based on our conceptual framework as presented in the introduction and related to our ambition to include nondominant perspectives, we identified a wide variety in the type and degree of community involvement interventions aspired (Figure 3). Although a recent meta-review to evaluate interventions directed at community violence has shown that active engagement and partnership with critical stakeholders is a main condition for effectiveness (Abt & Winship, 2016), we found that participation of community members in the design and implementation of interventions was relatively rare. Independent from the earlier distinguished intervention clusters, we observed four types of community involvement based on a categorization developed by McLeroy et al. (2003).
Four Types of Community Involvement: as Setting, Target, Resource, or Agent.
Firstly, several interventions in all three clusters work with communities as a “setting”—for example, by implementing their interventions in prioritized neighborhoods with high levels of violence (e.g., MBSR, TIP, and “Why are we so angry?”). Some of these and other interventions also consider communities as a “target” of change, with the goal of impacting community indicators. Remarkably, in our review of the literature, we rarely encountered programs that primarily target the community environment. Several programs incorporate such elements as a supplement, like the TIP program that organizes restorative community actions with participant youth (e.g., painting murals, sowing plants), intended to contribute to their behavioral change and their connection to the community (Gutierrez-Martinez et al., 2020). Likewise, the Cure Violence strategy includes public education campaigns such as vigils and marches to change community attitudes toward violence (Butts et al., 2015). However, both programs are primarily aimed at changing social norms and group interaction among youth instead of changing the community environment. An interesting exception is the initiative “Why are we so angry?” that specifically targets community indicators and aims to establish trust, shared norms, and collective action among neighbors (Abdi, 2021).
A third type of community involvement particularly intends to promote ownership and participation and considers the community a “resource.” We found several interventions from all three clusters that mobilized communities as a resource (see Table 1). However, the degree to which community members and, in particular, youth are actively involved varied substantially. In our review, we distinguished between programs that hire staff from the community and aspire collaboration with community organizations (e.g., STYL in cluster 1, Cure Violence in cluster 2, and Abrindo Espaços in cluster 3) and programs where community members actively contribute to the design, implementation, and evaluation of the intervention (e.g., BBMI in cluster 1, Olweus in cluster 2, and Hermes in cluster 3). 4 Some initiatives actually design a methodology in cooperation with community members, directed at a specified collective purpose. Other interventions organize meetings with community representatives to discuss “off the shelf” options and jointly decide which program would best suit the particular context. However, this type of community involvement does not necessarily mean that youth are also invited to participate in that process. In our review, we found only a few interventions where young people actively participated in program development and implementation—for example, as facilitators or by providing input on how to tailor the program to the local context. Hermes was the only program we identified that particularly aimed to engage gang-involved youth in the design process to include their perspective. In most studies, youth participation was not addressed, and we could not determine whether they were consulted or otherwise involved.
Finally, McLeroy et al. (2003) distinguish a fourth type of community involvement when communities are taken as an “agent” by identifying and strengthening “naturally occurring units of solution” (p. 530)—for example, through encouraging formal and informal social networks and cooperation between initiatives. The autonomous Indigenous schools were the only interventions that prioritized such efforts as their main objective. While we did not find clear connections between the categorization in clusters and other types of community involvement, only interventions in cluster 3 involved communities as an agent.
In several intervention programs, community involvement was aspired in theory but not secured in practice. For example, in the case of Cure Violence, in most intervention sites the intended collaboration with community organizations was not sufficiently reached, either due to an omission to attempt or a lack of community leaders willing to be involved in the program (Butts et al., 2015; Fox et al., 2015; Wilson & Chermak, 2011). This might be related to the intricate social dynamics produced by community violence, as earlier research has shown that high rates of violent crime increase levels of fear, which contributes to decreased social interaction and social control (Bellair, 2000; Liska & Warner, 1991), weaker trust in neighbors, and reduced membership of community organizations (Kubrin, 2009; Perlman, 2010; Sampson et al., 1997). This presents substantial obstacles to community involvement in programs directed at community violence. For example, deterrence interventions that have been effective in contexts where strong partnerships between law enforcement, service providers, and community representatives were built have encountered difficulties in contexts where organized criminal groups were larger and more dangerous because fear and mistrust between parties obstructed the opportunities for effective implementation (Abt & Winship, 2016).
Dimension 6: Indications of Effectiveness
Now that we have established an overview of the existing educational interventions directed at community violence, an important question that remains is whether there are any indications of their effectiveness. While investigating intervention effects is not an explicit goal of this review study, we located a number of meta-reviews and meta-analyses that provide some relevant indications (Abt & Winship, 2016; Ali-Saleh Darawshy et al., 2020; Voisin & Berringer, 2015). Furthermore, all 26 intervention programs that we found did report to some extent about their results (see Table 1), and although our record of the literature is by no means exhaustive and these findings are therefore not representative nor conclusive, critical analysis of their effects and how these were measured does present several interesting indications to consider. Therefore, based on our conceptual framework, in this last dimension of our analysis, we consider how diverse methods and measures for evaluation are related to different perspectives on community violence and to which extent the intervention strategies in the three distinguished clusters provide a solution for community violence considering the systemic aspects involved.
One prominent result repeated in evaluations of multiple individual-oriented strategies from the first intervention cluster is the value of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Interventions with a CBT component focused on youth as victims have established positive results for the reduction of anxiety, depression, and PTSD symptoms (Ali-Saleh Darawshy et al., 2020; Voisin & Berringer, 2015), and CBT interventions focused on youth as offenders have demonstrated a significant impact on reducing aggressive behavior and preventing recidivism (Abt & Winship, 2016; Voisin & Berringer, 2015). However, in line with their strategy for transformation on an individual level, their effectiveness has been established solely in relation to behavioral and psychological outcomes for individual participants (e.g., reduced antisocial behavior or internalizing symptoms), and potential effects on the interpersonal or community level have not been measured. Furthermore, CBT components proved particularly effective in combination with services that improved participants’ opportunities and living conditions, such as vocational training and cash grants to stimulate self-employment (Abt & Winship, 2016; Blattman et al., 2017). These types of services are also part of intervention strategies from cluster 2, such as programs directed at specific (groups of) violent offenders with a coordinated response from law enforcement, social services, and community stakeholders. Such focused deterrence programs have also established quite some evidence for their effectiveness (Abt & Winship, 2016), measured predominantly at the neighborhood level through a reduction of gun violence and homicide rates among gangs (Braga & Weisburd, 2012; Papachristos & Kirk, 2015). An example is the frequently investigated program Cure Violence, which has shown mixed results, ranging from neighborhoods with a 56% decline in homicides to no effects or, in one case, even an increase in violent events (Butts et al., 2015; Wilson & Chermak, 2011). However, without an ethnographic and qualitative component, researchers could not interpret why the findings varied (Butts et al., 2015). Moreover, reduced homicide and assault rates might be an indicator of effectiveness, but many other relevant dimensions related to community violence have not been evaluated. Few evaluation studies located in our review included community parameters such as collective efficacy, sense of safety, and neighborhood satisfaction, while these might provide more insight into the potential impact of interventions at the community level. Furthermore, while many interventions in cluster 2 are directed at changing group norms and encouraging socialization, only a few studies include outcome measures at the interpersonal level, such as positive peer interaction and student-teacher relations. Both indicators are included in the evaluation of the Olweus anti-bullying program, but unfortunately, the intervention had limited impact on this area despite significant effects on student’s individual behavior across various subtypes of aggression and victimization (Sullivan et al., 2021).
In the third cluster of interventions directed at social reorganization, we retrieved fewer examples of intervention programs, and not all of them were evaluated. However, the Hermes program for peace education has multiple evaluation studies that demonstrated positive results for individual students and teachers, their social relations, and the surrounding communities (Marciales Mogollón & Vega Rivera, 2019; Pinzon-Salcedo & Torres-Cuello, 2018). Indicators for school climate improved, such as student-teacher relations and the rate of students who feel at home at school (Marciales Mogollón & Vega Rivera, 2019). However, while school directors found that conflict management in their schools had improved, other measures for potential effects at the institutional level were not included (Pinzon-Salcedo & Torres-Cuello, 2018).
Overall, it has been proven difficult to come to coherent conclusions about the value of interventions directed at community violence. Firstly, corresponding with the three intervention clusters we established in this review and the three types of transformation they aspire to, the outcome measures for effectiveness used in evaluation studies can generally be distinguished into three categories as well: (1) behavioral and psychological outcomes for individual participants (e.g., antisocial or internalizing behavior), (2) interpersonal indicators (e.g., student-teacher relations or peer interaction), and (3) effects at the neighborhood level (e.g., gun violence or homicide rates). This variation does not only complicate the comparison between interventions but also underlines that interventions assess their effectiveness based on their perspective on community violence. For example, while CBT interventions have shown positive results for individual behavior, we argue that based on these measures that reflect a clinical-individualistic perspective on community violence, it is difficult to assess their value as an effective response to community violence that takes into account the complex social dynamics and structural mechanisms involved. Secondly, many interventions demonstrated mixed and inconclusive results, indicating that their effectiveness in a particular neighborhood or context is no guarantee for success when implementing the intervention elsewhere. Therefore, research with a multi-sited approach that includes ethnographic components, community parameters, and an in-depth qualitative examination of the change process could contribute to a better understanding of what works best in which context.
Conclusion and Discussion
Based on our analysis of the literature and the interventions we located in this review, we have established a taxonomy that offers insight into current educational responses to community violence and their distinguishing perspectives, objectives, and strategies. This taxonomy, presented in Table 1, is not meant as a classification of interventions into mutual, exclusive categories but rather as a practical overview that brings segregated perspectives from various academic disciplines together and demonstrates which choices are made in the design, implementation, and evaluation of interventions. What type of transformation do they aspire and at which level do they intervene? What is their perception of youth, and to what degree do they involve the community? And how do they measure the outcomes of their strategy? Table 1 presents an overview of our analysis of these elements for the 26 intervention programs we identified in our review of the literature.
Based on our integrative review and analysis of the literature, we would like to make two different contributions. Firstly, the taxonomy presented in Table 1, although by no means exhaustive, prominently offers a contribution relevant to policy and practice related to the development of educational policies and intervention strategies in response to community violence. Secondly, the results of our review offer a contribution relevant to scholarship, which concerns related implications for how community violence is conceptualized in the scientific literature. In the following, we will discuss five important considerations that policymakers, practitioners, and researchers should take into account when constructing educational responses to community violence.
First, our analysis has demonstrated that the intervention strategies reflect choices for a particular type of solution, which, when carefully examined, reveal theoretical orientations toward the roots of community violence. These theoretical orientations often remain implicit assumptions in intervention descriptions, while they have important consequences for the selected approach. The revealed assumptions in this review can prove useful for practitioners and policymakers in their analysis of the local situation and the construction of a well-founded response with related strategies that tune in with the particular context. Furthermore, although the interaction between various factors is generally accepted in the research on causes, consequences, and solutions for community violence, in the design and implementation of interventions, there is a considerable risk of favoring one element over the other. As we found in our analysis, even interventions that combine multiple strategies usually single out one main focus regarding the dimensions in the taxonomy as presented previously. They centralize a main type of transformation and a main level of intervention and perceive youth principally as either victims or offenders. Targeting one element of the problem exclusively is problematic because, as illustrated by its various definitions, community violence is an intricate and diffuse phenomenon with many angles and aspects that may require a combination of strategies. Earlier reviews also suggested that the chronicity and pervasiveness of community violence calls for a strategy that builds on multiple interventions that address the many levels through which it develops and affects youth and communities (Abt & Winship, 2016; Fowler et al., 2009).
Second, while all types of transformation can be potentially valuable to counter community violence, they are not equally represented. As Biesta (2012) puts forward in his analysis of the three major functions of education, the educational curriculum currently prioritizes qualification and socialization. He argues that this selective focus reflects the value society attributes to learning outcomes, academic achievement, and good citizenship compared to empowerment, agency, and resistance. In our analysis of interventions directed at community violence, we identified a similar concentration of program elements that intend qualification and socialization, with the risk that adaptation to the environment or dominant society becomes the central aim and that transformation of that environment and the elements or structures in it that sustain violence receive a marginal position. This aligns with the recent work of Kolluri and Tichavakunda (2023) that demonstrates the general emphasis in educational practice on individualistic qualification at the expense of structural change, even in counter-deficit-oriented approaches. We argue that intervention strategies aimed at social reorganization of the environment, allowing for a participative and dialogical process to re-create the world, should not be overlooked and deserve a more prominent place in the design and evaluation of interventions to counter community violence. Since we retrieved few evaluations of intervention programs directed at social reorganization, we particularly call on researchers to fill this gap. Furthermore, despite the fact that the concept of community violence explicitly refers to the community context, a large share of the interventions we identified in our review were primarily intervening on the individual level. Although there is a strong evidence base for the effectiveness of these interventions in transforming individual behavior, the question remains whether they suffice to provide a long-term solution for community violence. Earlier research also underlined that, in particular, in the psychosocial health domain, interventions for youth implemented in response to community violence have mostly been developed to address either mass violence or family violence and sexual abuse, while few interventions specifically target community violence (Voisin & Berringer, 2015). Considering the environmentally pervasive character of community violence, an individualized approach that aims to “remedy” assumed deficiencies in youth and communities and fails to address deficiencies of social, economic, and political structures involved will not provide an adequate response.
A third consideration resulting from this imbalanced focus on qualification and socialization concerns the need for a critical debate on the conceptualization of community violence. We argue that the predominance of a clinical-individualistic perspective on community violence reflected in individualized and interpersonal approaches is closely connected to how these interventions are based on conceptually one-sided theoretical orientations and models. While the scientific literature evidently points toward the intricate dynamics of community violence and the environmental and sociopolitical factors involved, this is hardly reflected in current definitions of community violence that generally emphasize individual and interpersonal frames of the concept. When systemic aspects such as processes of social exclusion and marginalization are disregarded, intervention strategies are based on an incomplete conceptual framework that implicitly attributes responsibility for community violence to “malfunctioning” individuals instead of deficient systems. In order to arrive at a holistic conceptual understanding of community violence, the historical and systemic violence that lies at the bottom of power imbalances within societies across the globe should be incorporated more prominently in theoretical orientations toward causes and solutions. We argue for critical analysis of social, economic, and political structures that exclude, disadvantage, and discriminate groups of youth and communities and how they relate to community violence. Careful examination of these intricate dynamics will generate more insight into the significance of structural mechanisms and, more importantly, can contribute to the development of intervention strategies aimed at transforming disempowering systems. Herein lies an important assignment for research—to work toward agreement on a more comprehensive definition of community violence that includes systemic aspects and to expand counter-deficit approaches that consider structural oppressions and foster systemic change (Kolluri & Tichavakunda, 2023).
A fourth important element for both the field of practice and of research to consider is the level of community involvement that varies substantially between interventions, even between programs that are labeled as “community-based.” While active engagement and partnership with communities are broadly acknowledged as an important condition for success, almost half of the interventions we located in our review work with communities as a setting for their program but do not include them as an actual partner. Only a few programs involve youth in the intervention design and implementation. Despite a vast amount of research from multiple academic disciplines, different theoretical orientations, and a variety of intervention strategies, the perspective of youth on the issue of community violence is infrequently explored. What are young people’s ideas about the causes, consequences, and solutions for community violence, and how do they reflect on their role in a potential solution? These questions are currently mostly left unanswered in the various approaches we distinguished, and the active involvement of youth in finding answers and developing solutions could thus be considered a collective challenge. For researchers, this implies the construction of genuine and equal partnerships between academia and communities that correct power imbalances between stakeholders, also advocated for by Vetter et al. (2022) in this journal. Such partnerships need to move beyond mere formalities toward participatory processes that deliberately aim to transform power imbalances and give prominence to perspectives of nondominant groups (Philip et al., 2018). These participatory processes might also be of fundamental importance for the development of strategies attuned to the local context.
Lastly, in line with the foregoing, we argue for more diversity in research sites and designs, using methodologies that examine how change is effected in different contexts. Earlier research has pointed toward the differential effects of interventions in various settings, even demonstrating examples of intervention strategies that caused harmful effects due to a mismatch with the local situation (Abt & Winship, 2016; Wilson & Chermak, 2011). For a better understanding of how interventions can reckon with the complex dynamics of community violence, an in-depth qualitative examination of the change process could provide more insight into strategies that offer an adequate response in context-specific ways. Since the majority of intervention strategies are currently being developed, implemented, and evaluated in Western contexts, scholars should expand the scope and enable the inclusion of non-Western research sites and studies. The latter also implies a critical reflection on measures of impact in order to move beyond the dominant paradigm of individual behavioral and psychological parameters and include nondominant perspectives (Philip et al., 2018). This might also fill the knowledge gap of intervention effects at the environmental level if studies pay more attention to the measurement of potential effects on communities, institutions, and systems.
With the establishment of this overview, we hope to contribute to the initial impetus to an overall, encompassing perspective that integrates the diversity of insights that might help to counter community violence and work toward a peaceful environment. There is no “one size, fits all” solution to the complex issue of community violence, and in order to achieve significant change, we might actually need a variety of approaches. As argued by Abt and Winship (2016), “Even the best interventions are not powerful enough to permanently reverse high rates of violence on their own” (p. 27). Their advice is a strategy that builds over multiple interventions. The findings of our review underline the importance of building on various types of transformation to counter the multi-faceted aspects of community violence—in particular those currently underexposed. This means strategies that exclusively focus on the qualification of individual youth or socialization of peer groups, while valuable on an individual and interpersonal level, are not sufficient, and interventions should adopt a broader approach that also addresses the transformation of social systems.
In conclusion, the environmentally pervasive character of community violence, involving intricate social dynamics in neighborhoods where victims and perpetrators are embedded in the same social space and feelings of injustice about poverty and social inequality cause a communal sense of mistrust and unsafety, calls for a context-based approach and a critical-systemic perspective. We argue that in order to provide a substantive solution, interventions should start from the local context and actively involve community members—young people, in particular—in the analysis of the issue as well as in the design and implementation of a solution. Only if interventions empower communities and youth to participate in the development of new arrangements, underlying processes of social exclusion and the impact of community violence on social dynamics in neighborhoods and wider society can be addressed substantially. In our view, the call for more agency should not be limited to educational intervention programs but should also be the basis for reliable and capable authorities that properly execute their fundamental tasks in providing a just social and security system. This does not only involve consistent and fair police action and ensuring the right to a fair judicial process but also means providing protection against unlawful and discriminatory treatment by government bodies and eradicating other forms of systemic violence. A sustainable solution for community violence needs a response that eliminates social, economical, and political conditions of inequality and oppression (Bajaj, 2015; Pino, 2007). To conclude with Freire (2018, 2021), in dialogue between perspectives and strategies and between people in “praxis,” we might encounter precisely the collective experience that offers inspiration to work toward the “viable unprecedented” that earlier might have seemed impossible and to re-create our environment.
Supplemental Material
sj-docx-1-rer-10.3102_00346543251324491 – Supplemental material for Educational Responses Toward Community Violence: A Critical Analysis of Perspectives on Causes and Solutions
Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-rer-10.3102_00346543251324491 for Educational Responses Toward Community Violence: A Critical Analysis of Perspectives on Causes and Solutions by Annelieke van Dijk, Mariëtte de Haan and Micha de Winter in Review of Educational Research
Footnotes
Notes
Authors
ANNELIEKE VAN DIJK is a postdoctoral researcher in the field of education and pedagogy at Utrecht University; e-mail:
MARIËTTE DE HAAN holds the chair Intercultural Education at Utrecht University; e-mail:
MICHA DE WINTER is emeritus professor of Youth, Education and Society at Utrecht University; e-mail:
References
Supplementary Material
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