ABSTRACT
In the foreword to Saving Our Children, Heymann (1996) asserted that the world of violence has changed very little since the 1970s but identified as new the “burst of youth violence” (p. 8). Similarly, Hawkins (1996) stated, “Since the mid-1980s acts of interpersonal violence committed by and against adolescents have symbolized the crime problem in the United States and have been said to pose a major threat to the public’s health and safety” (p. 1). The increase in juvenile crime includes acts that were described as unthinkable in the recent past but now commonplace. Such incidents as drive-by shootings, gang warfare, in-school shootings, and so on, are still shocking but less surprising (Wright, Sheley, & Smith, 1992). Prothrow-Stith (1995) described the situation as “an epidemic of youth violence” (p. 96).
