Youth And Violence

By Marvin E. Wolfgang

From Chapter 2: “Trying to unravel the skein of complexity called youth is itself a diffi- cult task. T o understand the meaning of violence, a most elusive and generic term, is equally challenging. To describe the combined concepts is acompounded problem. Even the best of our efforts to understand or to control the relationship between youth and violence is fraught with speculation. But to this imperfect description we still grope for ways to treat, process, handle, and control the youth who are violent or appear headed for violent behavior. Among the problems involved in this combined analysis is the ab. sence of sufficient and valid kinds of scientific data. Operational defini- tions of youth violence are not clear, rigorous, or precise except in official police and juvenile court statistics, and these are subject to sam- pling bias and other limits ontheir validity.”

Social and Rehabilitation Service, Youth Development and Delinquency Prevention Administration. 1970. 95p.