Community violence and children's development: toward a research agenda for the 1990s

The United States is the most violent country in the industrialized world-particularly for young people. Homicide in the United States ranks as the second leading cause of death among those between 15 and 24 years of age (Earls et al. 1991). Males, especially, are at high risk. As indicated in Figure 1, those between 15 and 24 years of age were more likely to be murdered than their counterparts in all 22 other developed countries for which comparable homicide statistics were available during 1986-1987 (Fingerhut and Kleinman 1990). Young males were 4 times more likely to be murdered than their counterparts in the next highest country, Scotland; 7 times more likely than young males in Canada; 21 times more likely than those in West Germany; and 40 times more likely than same-age males in Japan. Moreover, the U.S. homicide rate for Black males (15 and 24 years) was more than 7 times the homicide rate for White males in this age range. These figures are all the more alarming in light of the fact that homicide rates in major U.S. cities have increased steadily since these data were recorded.