Authority-Caused Community Violence and Its Implications for Understanding Youth Development and Community Violence Research

Background and Purpose: This research occurs in the context of a funded project creating cross-age mentoring services and carrying out a control-group study of service impact with youth in high-poverty, high-crime neighborhoods in a Midwest urban setting. The question addressed in this paper is how youth experience the perpetrators and effects of community violence. To further explore this problem within a participatory action research model, we trained the youth mentors to interview each other about the sources of community violence, their experiences of it, and what they thought services could do to help youth.

Methods: The group of mentors are a purposive sample of prosocial youth residing in the highest-crime, highest poverty areas of a large Midwestern city. The mentors (N=94, average age 16, 65% female) were asked to evaluate services and describe their experiences of community violence. All mentors participating in the program for more than 3 months (N=94) were taught to interview each other, using an interview protocol the youth co-designed. Youth asked peers to describe experiences of community violence, who perpetrated the violence, and to rank whether they were more worried about adult-caused or youth-caused violence. Interviews were tape recorded, transcribed, and analyzed qualitatively using a constant comparison thematic analysis. Axial codes were generated from the thematic analysis, which then could also be quantified in a content analysis. Results were member-checked with youth, who also co-author the final products.

Results: Adults in the community are significant sources of fear and outrage for youth. About 35% of youth reported illegal activities perpetrated by police, including theft and destruction of their property, harassment, child endangerment (intentionally dropping youth off in hostile gang territory), and physical abuse. Most youth experienced police as sources of harm rather than protection. Youth reported family members perpetrating physical violence, harassment, and intimidation, with a subset of 15% reporting family members forcing them to commit criminal acts, physical abuse, and sexual abuse. All the youth reported that child welfare professionals failed to provide any protection and aggravated their endangerment. Youth reported non-family adults who harassed and intimidated them into criminal activities and unwanted sexual activities. Polyvictimization was a problem for about 30% of the youth. While researchers and the (mainstream) lay press typically understand community violence to be primarily youth-on-youth crime, youth themselves report they are equally and often more concerned about adult-on-youth crime, perpetrated by police and other public officials, non-related adults, and family members.

Conclusions and Implications: Whereas youth in privileged environments tend to experience adult authorities as sources of protection and help, youth in high-poverty, high-crime communities expressed mistrust of some adults who were sources of victimization and fear. The loss of community role models the youth could look up to for moral and practical leadership demoralizes youths’ developmental process, and needs to be factored in to understanding how impoverished youth respond to the many traumas they experience. In addition, social policies need to be oriented towards more aggressively and effectively protecting youth from adult-caused violence.