Understanding and Preventing Violence

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

Albert J. Reiss, Jr., and Jeffrey A. Roth, Editors

FROM THE PREFACE: “n some 200 years of national sovereignty, Americans have been preoccupied repeatedly with trying to understand and control one form of violence or another. Most periods of our history bear witness to substantial collective violence. On the road to collective bargaining and peaceful picketing, there was much violent conflict. The more rural settlements around mines were often the scene of bloody conflict, and urban industrial conflict carried with it violence on the picket lines and the destruction of company property. Perhaps the major success story in control of collective violence is the substitution of peaceful for violent means in resolving conflicts between labor and management. Urban riots are part and parcel of our history from late colonial times. In the latter half of this century, ethnic and racial tensions have erupted in urban riots, destroying life and neighborhoods of some of our major cities. Responding to urban riots in the summer of 1967, President Lyndon Johnson appointed the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (known as the Kerner Commission after its chair, Illinois Governor Otto Kerner), which issued its report in 1968. The report focused both on how local community and national action can deal with immediate responses to riot and on long-range prevention through the reduction of inequality in housing, education, welfare…”

NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS. Washington, D.C. 1993. 475p.