J Interpers Violence Violence on Chicago's Southside African American Adolescents Living and Coping...

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2011 26: 2483 originally published online 18 October 2010J Interpers ViolenceDexter R. Voisin, Jason D. P. Bird, Melissa Hardestry and Cheng Shi Shiu

Violence on Chicago's SouthsideAfrican American Adolescents Living and Coping With Community

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Journal of Interpersonal Violence26(12) 2483 –2498

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1University of Chicago2Howard Brown Health Center

Corresponding Author:Dexter R. Voisin, PhD, Associate Professor, University of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration, 969 East 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637 E-mail: [email protected]

African American Adolescents Living and Coping With Community Violence on Chicago’s Southside

Dexter R. Voisin1, Jason D. P. Bird2, Melissa Hardestry1, and Cheng Shi Shiu1

Abstract

This study explores community violence exposures among African American adolescents and whether coping strategies were gendered. In-depth interviews are conducted with a sample of 32 African American high school students. Data are analyzed using a thematic analysis. The primary forms of violence exposures are physical attacks, fighting, and incidents involving police, gun violence, and murders. Boys report more exposure to violence as victims and witnesses, whereas girls are more likely to hear about violent acts. Coping styles range from “getting through,” which included both an acceptance of com-munity conditions; “getting along,” which included self-defense techniques; “getting away,” which included avoidance coping strategies; and “getting back,” which consisted of confrontational coping strategies. Boys report more confrontational coping styles than are girls, who utilized more avoid-ance approaches. Widespread school-based interventions are warranted, given the high prevalence of community violence exposure among these youth and may provide important supports for coping against such trauma.



2484 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 26(12)

Keywords

African American, adolescents, community violence, coping, gender

Community violence exposure (CVE) has been defined as events in the local neighborhood involving crime, weapons use, and violence or potential vio-lence perpetrated by persons outside the immediate family (Bell & Jenkins, 1993). Exposure to community violence in the United States often differs across states. In 2008, violent crimes (i.e., murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) were highest in Illinois (525 per 100,000), surpassing those in New York (398 per 100,000) and California (503 per 100,000; Uniform Crime Reports, 2008). Though homicide rates only reflect one nar-row aspect of community violence it does document that African Americans, especially boys, are exposed to disproportionate rates of such exposures. For instance, African American men are 9 times more likely to be victims of homicides compared to White men, 6 times higher than African American women, and 26 times higher than White women (Centers for Disease Control, 2008).

CVE has been related to a number of problems in ethnically diverse, urban youth, such as psychological distress symptoms (e.g., posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD], depression, anxiety, aggression; Saltzman, Pynoos, Layne, Steinberg, & Aisenberg, 2001; Voisin & Neilands, 2009), low academic functioning (Schwartz & Gorman, 2003), delinquency (Rosario, Salzinger, Feldman, & Ng-Mak, 2003), and more recently, HIV-related risk behaviors (Berenson, Wiemann, & McCombs, 2001; Voisin, 2003). Furthermore, there is compelling evidence suggesting that boys and girls experience community violence in significantly different ways. For example, Foster, Kuperminc, and Price (2004) found that boys are more exposed to community violence than girls are, especially as victims. However, both boys and girls reported equal degrees of distress associated with direct victimization, and girls also reported psychological distress related to witnessing violence alone.

A growing body of literature has identified the factors that may protect youth from violence exposure (e.g., location of home within the community; Richters & Martinez, 1993) or moderate the negative sequelae often associ-ated with such exposures (e.g., guardian support and family stability; Richters & Martinez, 1993; Rosario et al., 2003). However, there is a dearth of studies on how youth, especially African Americans, cope with violence in their communities.

Coping refers to all strategies an individual uses to manage stress (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). The few studies on coping related to community violence



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have been mostly quantitative (Berman, Kurtines, Silverman, & Serafini, 1996; Rosario et al., 2003). For instance, according to one such study of multiethnic sixth graders, behavioral coping approaches typically fall within three domains: strategies to avoid, reduce, or tolerate stress (Rosario et al., 2003). These authors also found that confrontational coping was related to increased delinquency among the overall sample and multiplied the impact of witnessing violence for boys. Berman and colleagues in a multiethnic youth sample found that negative coping (e.g., criticizing, blaming others, wishful thinking) was related to PTSD symptoms. One qualitative study that did examine coping styles among Black women residing in Chicago housing projects found that respondents coped with CVE through avoidance, accep-tance, and self-protection (Wolfer, 2000).

These studies, though highly informative, do not qualitatively address how African American adolescents specifically cope with community violence. This represents an important gap in our understanding because findings based on multiethnic samples may mask important within group differences. In addition, we do not know whether potential coping styles differ by gender. Furthermore, the mostly quantitative studies fall short of providing an in-depth understanding of participants’ perspectives (Fullilove et al., 1998).

The Current StudyUsing a grounded theory approach, the analytic aims of this study were to (a) solicit recent information on the nature and types of CVE experienced by African American adolescents residing within a high-violence Chicago neighborhood, (b) explore approaches to coping with community violence, and (c) explore whether such approaches were gendered.

MethodThe Community

Participants were recruited from a Southside Chicago neighborhood, which is one of the 77 well-defined Chicago community areas. In 2008, it had approx-imately 57,247 individuals with a high population density and a median household size of 2.5 people. The vast majority of inhabitants (94%) are African American, 3% are White and 3% are classified as “Other.” More than half (54%) of all households report someone receiving public assistance and the median annual household income is US$28,211, compared to the median household income in Chicago, which is US$46, 911 (City Data, 2009). Violent




crimes in this community (i.e., murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) is 7 on a scale from 1 (low crime) to 10 (high crime). The Chicago average is 5.5, and the U.S. average is 3 (Uniform Crime Reports, 2008).

RecruitmentWe recruited an even number of boys and girls in order to examine potential gender differences with regards to CVE and coping styles. A convenience sample of 32 high school participants were recruited in Chicago using three approaches: (1) 10 participants were recruited through passive recruitment, where we posted flyers on the community boards at local YMCAs, super-markets, and housing developments throughout Chicago’s South Side; (2) 11 by active recruitment, where two African American recruiters (one man, one woman) distributed flyers outside public venues frequented by adolescents and parents on Chicago’s south side; and (3) 9 by snowball sampling meth-ods, with referrals from study participants. Participants were eligible if they were currently attending regular high school, self-identified as an African American born in the United States, were between the ages of 14 and 17, lived within the target community, obtained written parental permission, provided informed assent prior to being interviewed, and agreed to have interviews audio-taped.

Semistructured, one-on-one interviews were conducted in a private loca-tion accessible to participants. Two interviewers, who were matched to par-ticipants on the basis of race and gender, conducted all interviews. We audio-taped the interviews and transcribed them verbatim. We also collected demographic data on age; grade level; living arrangements; number of people in the household, including the participant; parents’ educational level; and household receipt of welfare benefits. Overall, interviews lasted between 35 and 70 min. Participants were offered US$10 for participation to assist with transportation and remove potential financial barriers to study participation. Study protocols were approved by the institutional review boards at the University of Chicago and the University of California, San Francisco.

AnalysisTo improve the rigor and credibility of the findings, we assembled a work-ing group to discuss the codes, the audit trails, and the interpretation of the findings. Using standard qualitative data analysis techniques, we organized participants’ responses to the research questions by means of a raw pattern



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analysis (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996), which entailed condensing raw data into a brief summary format to establish links between the question and findings derived from the data. Coding was used to summarize segments of data into a smaller number of subsets, themes, or constructs. Two research-ers doubled-checked transcriptions to ensure accuracy, and they reviewed and discussed the final codes and emergent themes to ensure interrater reliabil-ity and agreement. When applicable, descriptive numerical data were ana-lyzed using SPSS version 15.0.

FindingsThe study recruited 32 participants (16 boys and 16 girls) and analyzed responses from 31 individuals. Data from one female participant were excluded because her answers were disorganized throughout the interview. Participants ranged in age from 14 to 17, with a mean age of 15.94 (SD ± 0.93 years). The majority of respondents (N = 21, 67%) lived in woman-headed house-holds, 8 (25%) lived in homes with both parents, 12 participants (38%) reported their mothers had “some college education,” and 4 (12%) reported their mothers had a “college degree.” Another 4 (12%) participants indicated their fathers had “some college education,” and 5 participants (16%) reported that their fathers had a “college degree.” Overall, just more than one third of participants (n = 11, 35%) reported they received or would qualify for free school lunches, and 5 (16%) reported that someone in their house-hold had received welfare assistance during the past 12 months. The vast majority of respondents (n = 24, 77%) indicated they had lived in their com-munities for 1 year or more, and 5 (16%) had lived in their community for a period of less than 6 months. Boys and girls shared similar demographic profiles with regards to age, household composition, parents’ education, and socioeconomic status.

Types of Violence ExposuresParticipants were exposed to community violence by either hearing about it, witnessing it, or as direct victims. The five common forms of violence expo-sures were physical attacks, fighting, incidents involving police officers, and gun violence and murders. In general, boys were exposed to more extreme forms of community violence. For instance, slightly more number of girls (n = 11 vs. n = 10) reported hearing about violence in their communities than boys did. In contrast, more boys reported witnessing (n = 12 vs. n = 6) and being direct victims (n = 11 vs. n = 3) of community violence than girls did.




Physical attacks. As noted, girls were slightly more likely to have heard about physical attacks than boys were. For example, two female respondents heard third-person accounts of “people getting jumped every now and again because of gang wars.” Boys also heard about attacks of people getting jumped; however, the incidents they heard about tended to be in greater detail and more violent. Boys also recounted stories of both boys and girls being raped, with one participant stating,

There’s a couple girls that get raped and stuff . . . someone had got raped down the street from my house. . . . She used to live above me. . . . And there’s a boy that got raped, somebody I know so . . . I never witnessed that, I heard about it.

One girl and one boy also witnessed physical attacks. One girl described how her fellow gang member “clock this one girl, bust her” one day at McDonalds with a padlock wrapped in shoestrings. Although none of the female participants reported direct involvement, 6 boys (38%) reported being attacked by 2 or more people. These attacks included being pushed in front of moving vehicles; having objects thrown at them such as bicycles; and being beaten with baseball bats. Another participant was robbed and stabbed at age 11, an incident that still haunted him.

Fighting. Fighting differed from physical attacks in that the former involved retaliation whereas the latter referred to being “jumped on.” Fighting was more prevalent than physical attacks and was more common among boys than among girls. Interestingly, few of the participants reported hearing about fights, perhaps because it was so common in their communities that they only focused on those they witnessed or in which they were involved. Two girls (13%) and 4 boys (25%) witnessed fights. The fights that girls witnessed were primarily among girls and involved no firearm injuries. Boys who wit-nessed fights reported seeing mostly girls getting into sporadic altercations, ranging from “occasional fist fights” to more extreme violence. Fighting involving extreme violence, such as stabbings, took place mostly among boys, with 4 boys reporting that they were involved in fights individually or in groups. Among the 3 girls who experienced violence directly, 2 involved fights and all 3 involved girls victimizing other girls.

Incidents involving police. Interestingly, 6 boys (37%) identified surveillance measures by police as a form of community violence. This may speak to the historically strained relationships some communities of color have with law enforcement agencies. These boys reported instances with the police where



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they felt “humiliated,” “terrified,” and made to feel “like a criminal.” Several boys had seen police officers chase individuals through the neighborhood, and 1 participant experienced officers entering his home to arrest an older brother, which ended in a fight between the police and several of his family members, including his mother, with the police “just tearing our whole house up . . . fighting.”

Gun violence and murders. Hearing about gun violence and murders were the most pervasive form of violence exposure among all respondents. More than half of girls (n = 9, 60%) had heard about gun violence in their commu-nities. The tension and stress that gun violence evoked was evident in the participants’ descriptions. “When that boy got shot down the street,” said one girl, “. . . it affected me. Like I knew . . . I go to school . . . I do all my work. But then I go to sleep in the class.” Six of the boys (38%) also reported hear-ing about gun violence in or around their neighborhood, with one of these participants reporting that he knew several people who were shot. Others heard about shootings in the park, in an alley, and inside buildings.

Several girls reported hearing about murders but were unsure as to the mode of such killings. For instance, 4 girls (27%) had heard about murders in their communities, with one woman being murdered in her alley and, as a result, 1 of the 4 girls was frightened to go outside. Another young woman appeared to be becoming inured to the violence: “You always spacing out . . . I mean, every time you go around it’s like . . . somebody getting killed.”

Four girls witnessed drive-by-shootings, but the majority of boys (n = 10, 63%) reported seeing people shot at or killed by gunfire, including a young man who saw the manager of a currency exchange shot during a robbery attempt. Another recalled seeing a young man gunned down as his girlfriend and he watched:

These boys shot him . . . he never got to see his baby born . . . he was like, “I love my baby, and tell my baby when it’s born that I tried to stay here to see it, but I can’t hold on no more.” . . . And he left. Because he had been shot so many times . . . he couldn’t take all them gun wounds or anything.

In addition to witnessing gun violence against others, 6 boys (38%) reported having a gun pulled on them or being shot at unintentionally. One young boy reported being shot at 6 times, 2 of which occurred in the previous year. He stated these incidents were due to his being in “the wrong place at the wrong time.”




Coping With CVE

Based on prior empirical literature on coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; Rosario et al., 2003; Wolfer, 2000) strategies employed by these youth to cope with community violence were grouped into four domains, as shown in Table 1: “getting through,” which included acceptance to community condi-tions or trying to do engage in positive behaviors to get out of the community; “getting along,” which included self-defense techniques (i.e., being more careful about your surroundings, about who you talk to and what you say); “getting away,” which included avoidance coping strategies (i.e., avoiding certain places); and, “getting back,” which consisted of confrontational cop-ing strategies (i.e., learning to fight or carrying weapons).

Getting through. This was one most common strategy for coping with vio-lence. An equal number of boys (n = 6) and girls (n = 6) employed this strat-egy. It entailed getting through the violence by accepting the fact that the community is plagued with crime, trying not to think about it, or using school as a way to cope or get out of the community. As illustrated by one boy, “I don’t know what could happen to me. . . . I could probably be walking out the building in the morning . . . going to school, something might happen.” For some respondents getting through the violence meant looking for the

Table 1. Coping Strategies and Types of Violence

No violence reported

Physical attacks

Gun violence and

murders FightingPolice

incidents

Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys

Getting through (acceptance; M = 6, F = 6)

0 1 4 1 6 5 4 0 3

Getting along (self-defense; M = 5, F = 7)

0 0 4 2 3 7 2 2 1

Getting away (avoidance; M = 3, F = 7)

0 1 2 1 3 6 1 1 2

Getting back (confrontation; M = 3, F = 0)

0 0 3 0 3 0 2 0 1



Voisin et al. 2491

“silver lining” behind the violence. For them, violence was a reminder about how quickly life can “be taken away” and that “life is precious.” Finally, one male participant recounted advice his uncle provided:

Just be strong . . . we already got an X on our back for being Black . . . they don’t . . . see us like making it, like going to college . . . they like building jails for us . . . or graves for us . . . to go down in. . . . I’m going to prove them wrong.

Another major technique for getting through the violence was to do well in school in hopes of being able to leave the community. In all, 7 participants (23%) mentioned this strategy, with 3 girls and 4 boys reporting that the violence in their neighborhoods influenced them to do well in school. For example, one young woman explained that doing well in school was a means to “achieve more and get off of Cottage Grove”—the main street demarcating the neighborhood. One boy commented “getting a bachelor’s or a master’s degree . . . would really help you get away.” Finally, one female respondent used school as an outlet to express the emotional trauma she was feeling after being caught in a drive-by shooting, stating, “I expressed myself in what I wrote. So as I wrote, it got deeper and deeper to the point where it made the teachers like, ‘Oh, she really feeling this.’”

Getting along. The second coping mechanism, getting along, was also a widely used strategy among all participants. However, in this case, slightly more number of girls (n = 7) employed the strategy than boys did (n = 5). For some it meant becoming widely known in the community and associating with the “right persons,” which often, but not always, meant associating with gang members who could offer protection. For several boys establishing their standing in the community by getting along with as many persons as possible was one way of circumventing community violence. As one boy describes:

I’m more like an idol on that block. It’s like since I been on that block the longest now. . . . So it’s like everybody look up to me now. . . . I ain’t in no gang or nothing. . . . They just look up to me.

Others opted for the “go along and get along” strategy. This strategy of knowing a lot of people and having a wide network of friends and acquain-tances came in handy when someone was looking to “come at you.”

Getting away. A third strategy, getting away, entailed avoiding situations where violence might erupt, often by remaining isolated from other commu-nity members. This was one of the most common strategies for girls, with 7 of




the 15 girls reporting that they tried to avoid situations where violence was possible. Boys used this strategy less frequently, with only 3 of the 16 boys reporting that they avoided situations or isolated themselves from the neighborhood.

Participants reported that living in their neighborhoods had led them to be more wary of situations that might result in violence. One girl described how she now avoids the park, where she once hung out, “because there be drug dealers up there.” Another girl chose to stay in the house—“. . . most of the time . . . watch TV or read a book.” Boys also echoed similar responses, “I just walk quickly, straight in the house, don’t say nothing to nobody.” Some respondents tried to avoided crowds or gatherings where violence was likely to erupt.

Getting back. The final coping strategy, getting back, represented active resistance, such as learning to fight or defend oneself and carrying a weapon. This was the least used coping strategy, with only 3 boys discussing this option. Learning to defend oneself was almost a rite of passage for several of the boys. “I used to be a little punk,” said one participant:

You know . . . running from all types of fights. But then I got to real-ize that no matter how much I run, I’m a still going get into these things . . . [now] if I have to get into a fight, I’m just ready . . . I’m not going to be scared.

Another participant realized he was stronger than he thought after being attacked by a group, stating, “Hey, it took seven of them to whup me . . . [I] learned how to fight better. . . . Learned how to defend myself more.” Like many boys, regardless of neighborhood, learning to fight becomes a necessity if the boy is small or perceived as weak. Learning to defend oneself is the only way to survive in the community. However, in violent neighbor-hoods, the stakes are much higher and may signal survival.

DiscussionThis study provides a recent investigation of the various types of CVE in the lives of African American adolescents who attend high school. Findings indicated that exposure to community violence was pervasive among the overall sample. There were several notable gender differences with regards to such exposures. Boys were exposed to a greater number of and more severe forms of violence than girls, as both victims and witnesses, especially with regards to gun violence. These findings are corroborated by prior survey



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research (Centers for Disease Control, 2008). In sharp contrast, girls were more likely than boys to report CVE with regards to hearing about violent events. One explanation for this finding might be that girls in violent com-munities are subject to greater parental monitoring. Another is that gender-related activities (e.g., socializing in pairs vs. larger groups for boys) might help girls avoid crowded situations where violence is likely to erupt (Bottcher, 1995). In addition, this notion of gender as a means of social con-trol has broader implications regarding how boys and girls understand how violence is perpetrated and under what conditions one is likely to become a victim of violence. For example, the fact that boys are more likely to be associated with direct exposures of violence may construct them as inher-ently more dangerous to the community than girls are, which exacerbates fears and expectations of violence from male adolescents.

This study is unique in that it evaluated violence exposures through mul-tiple mechanisms, including hearing about violence, witnessing violence happen, and being the direct victim of violence. The findings suggest that hearing about violence was the most prevalent form of violence exposure reported among girls, perhaps because they attempted to cope with CVE by staying in doors and avoiding the streets. This finding may suggest the need to develop CVE measures that cover broad types of exposures, given that current measures assessing victimization and witnessing may not adequately capture the types of violence exposures occurring among girls.

Findings also indicated than gun violence was the most common form of violence exposure reported by both boys and girls, a finding that is also sup-ported by prior surveillance data (Centers for Disease Control, 2008). This finding may suggest a number of things. Young persons are more likely to rush to guns than fighting. Respondents are more likely to remember gun violence, compared to the other forms of violence exposure because it is both dramatic and traumatic. Finally, the availability of firearms may be more accessible in violent communities.

A noteworthy and unique finding, which has not been commonly dis-cussed in prior research, is exposure to police incidents as a form of CVE. This is one aspect of community violence that has not been evaluated or identified in traditional measures of community violence (Stein, Walker, Hazen, & Forde, 1997). This is significant because law enforcement is a primary intervention in violent neighborhoods, yet aggressive police action may subtly enhance experiences of trauma for adolescents rather than increasing feelings of security or safety. Therefore, aggressive law enforce-ment may unintentionally deepen the impact of both experienced and per-ceived community violence and thereby exacerbate the adolescents’ general




concerns about their safety and the negative outcomes associated to community violence. This finding suggests that one target of intervention might be increasing community-building activities between law enforcement and neighborhood residents in order to address community violence through a more nonviolent approach.

The emergent coping themes from this study both extend and corroborate those found in a qualitative study of Black women residing in Chicago hous-ing project (Wolfer, 2000) and a quantitative study of multiethnic sixth grad-ers (Rosario et al., 2003). These prior studies did not identify confrontational coping styles such as “getting back” among their respondents. Perhaps this is related to age and the physical vulnerability of these populations. It may also suggest that physical aggression is more socially acceptable or permissible for adolescent boys. Findings also indicated that many participants utilized mul-tiple strategies. For some participants, these strategies were used concurrently and strategically, such as avoiding dangerous situations while also building supportive personal attachments with important community members. For other participants, there was a progression from what they saw as a less useful to a more useful strategy. For example, one girl initially associated with gang members as a way of keeping safe but over time realized that such affiliations exposed her to more danger “because people get hurt like that . . . so I just keep to myself.”

Furthermore, the findings indicated that many coping styles were shared by both boys and girls. Selecting the “right” persons in their communities “getting along” was a common strategy for both boys and girls. For some, this meant associating with persons who had status and respect within their community, including gang members. For others, it meant becoming more personally established within their communities, gaining respect from other residents and having a network of supportive friends, and acquaintances who generated a less dangerous community environment.

Conversely, there were also important differences between the boys and girls. For example, getting-away or avoidance strategies were one of the most common forms for coping against CVE for girls but not for boys. This find-ing may suggest that girls experience more physical vulnerability than boys do, because of their stature, and also because they are less accustomed to address conflicts with the use of violence than boys are. Therefore, more avoidance coping skills may actually serve to protect girls from coming into contact with more severe forms of violence. Furthermore, the coping strategy of confrontation was only discussed by the boys. This is an especially inter-esting finding because getting back or confrontation has not been viewed in prior literature as a coping mechanism (Rosario et al., 2003; Wolfer, 2000). In fact, what is often looked at as perpetration of violence may be a form of



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self-defense for some African American boys, since a perception of weakness may increase their vulnerability to becoming victimized.

However, it should be noted that some coping strategies, though adaptive in the interim, may have negative, long-term consequences on the psycho-logical and social development of these youth. For instance, the use of physi-cal aggression on the part of some boys to cope with CVE may place them at greater risk for victimization or becoming fatalities, which may provide some important insight into the disproportionate rates of homicides among this group. Alternatively, isolation as a way of coping by girls may advance the likelihood of depression. Findings regarding unique gender differences in coping strategies suggest that community-level interventions need to be more gender responsive, taking into account not only the gender differences in the degree and type of violence but also the mechanisms available to adolescents for managing the risks of community violence.

Whereas few studies have examined the gendered coping strategies of African American adolescents exposed to CVE, researchers have documented that parents of middle-school children have adopted various measures to pro-tect their children from violence, such as facilitating the use of parents as confidents, heightening parental monitoring, and screening their friends (Horowitz, McKay, & Marshall, 2005). However, it is interesting to note for these participants, parents were not mentioned as source of coping. Perhaps adolescents may be less inclined to report experiences of CVE to parental figures out of fear, because it has become so commonplace or simply because they were not asked. In fact, one participant who reported witnessing a murder in an alleyway on his way to school 4 years ago, stated, “I told no one, because I was scared and no one asked me.” Other research has shown that CVE is often unfortunately underemphasized by service providers (e.g., social work-ers, counselors, and others) working with inner-city youth (Guterman, 2002).

The findings from this study have additional important implications for community violence prevention and intervention among African American youth. However, these must be discussed within the context of study limita-tions. The study utilized a convenience sample that was geographically lim-ited and not very socioeconomically diverse. In addition, convenience and snowball sampling may have resulted in some degree of self-selection bias. These preliminary findings, however, may inform the design of a large-scale survey approach to examine coping strategies among African American high school adolescents living in violent communities. Finally, though the rates of CVEs were high among this group, they reflect the experiences of a sample of African American adolescents who were largely not impoverished.

Collectively, these findings have additional important clinical and pol-icy interventions for African American adolescents. Clearly, mounting




evidence documents that increased CVE is associated with increased school failure (Schwartz & Gorman, 2003). Given that African American youth are overrepresented with regards to these social problems, greater attention and intervention need to be implemented within school systems and other sys-tems serving youth to address these interrelated problems. In addition to screening measures, intervention approaches need to include locating men-tal health services in other principal systems such as schools, social clubs, and churches (Voisin, 2007). One such example is the Cognitive-Behavioral Intervention for Trauma in Schools that is designed to reduce youth’ symptoms of distress related to violence exposures and has demonstrated efficacy (Stein et al., 2003). This 10-session school-based intervention utilizes noninstructional times like home room or study hall to teach cogni-tive-behavioral skills in small group format to address symptoms of PTSD, anxiety, and depression related to CVE. The effectiveness of other school-based trauma intervention groups have been documented elsewhere (Saltzman et al., 2001).

Coordinated community initiatives may also be warranted. Such approaches seek to curtail gang activity, reduce the flow of guns to minors, improve the supervision of delinquent youth, and teach alternatives to vio-lence. One example of such a community initiative is the Partnership to Reduce Juvenile Gun Violence in Oakland, California. This intervention provides bedside counseling to juvenile victims of gun violence to prevent further retaliation by the victim or the victim’s friends and family members (Finkelhor & Ormrod, 2001). Such an approach may be especially pertinent to a subpopulation of boys who seek to cope with violence by physical retaliation.

From a policy perspective, the prevalence of exposure to gun violence among this sample suggests the need for aggressive and progressive strate-gies to limit the access to and use of guns, especially among juveniles. Though controversial, such efforts include laws that criminalize firearm possession by minors, call for prosecution of minors as adults in criminal courts, or hold-ing adults responsible when minors gain access to firearms (Finkelhor & Ormrod, 2001).

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

This research was supported, in part, by a grant award to the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies R25 HD045810-02.



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Bios

Dexter R. Voisin, PhD, is Associate Professor at the School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago.

Jason D. P. Bird, PhD, is Administrative Director of Research Howard Brown Health Center

Melissa Hardestry, MSW, is a doctoral student at the School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago.

Cheng Shi Shiu, MSW, is a doctoral student at the School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago.



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