Understanding youth violence: The mediating effects of gender, poverty and vulnerability

• Violence is symptomatic of deeper-seated needs and most violent young people are vulnerable.
• Household poverty and neighborhood deprivation are both strongly related to violence.
• Boys are more violent than girls, but girls from poor families are at elevated risk of being violent.
• Violence interventions must tackle early victimization, embedded poverty and school exclusion.
• Interventions that empower and de-stigmatize will support a less violent, inclusive society.
• Courageous social and economic transformation is needed to tackle the root causes of deprivation.

PurposeThis article aims to improve our understanding of youth violence in the early teenage years by exploring the mediating effects of gender and poverty in the presence of various risk and protective factors.MethodsThe article draws on data from the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime, a prospective longitudinal study of 4300 young people. We regress a binary measure of violence at age 13 (the peak age of violence) on a variety of risk and protection factors, while controlling for gender and two measures of poverty.ResultsOur findings show that violence is strongly associated with gender and poverty at the household and neighborhood levels. These relationships remain even when controlling for indicators of risk and protection linked to victimization, and relationships between children, their care-givers, and school.ConclusionsThe findings support our theory of ‘negotiated order’, which posits that formal and informal regulatory orders play a key role in the development and sustaining of offender identities (McAra & McVie, 2012). We conclude that violence reduction is best effected by: support for victims, enhancing parenting skills, transforming school-curricula, and tackling poverty. Above all, young people involved in violence should be conceptualized as vulnerable children rather than offenders.