School interventions offer best shot at reducing youth violence

Children referred to child protective services are more likely to be victims of violence.ER Productions Limited/DigitalVision via Getty Images by Laura Voith, Case Western Reserve University Black youth show up in emergency rooms with gunshot wounds or other violent injuries at an alarming and disproportionate rate in the United States. Some hospitals have violence interventions that can be effective in keeping these kids safer after they are treated, but in most cases victims are sent back into the world to continue their struggles. What if there were a way to prevent these kids from ending up in that hospital room in the first place? What if, years earlier, we could identify factors that predict which children are most likely to head down paths to violence? I’m a social scientist focused on this question, and my research has led me to an answer that I believe is at once obvious and profound: Find these children early in public schools and help them then and there. The study I led provides evidence that kids who grow up in poverty – or who are referred to child protective services – are significantly more likely to become victims of violence when they become teenagers....