Approaches to Understanding Violence

Two strategies dominate the study of crime and violence. The macrosocial or community level of explanation asks what it is about the nature of communities that yields differential rates of crime and its control (Short, 1985). Hence the goal of macrosocial research is not to explain individual involvement in criminal behavior but to identify characteristics of communities, cities, or even societies that lead to high rates of crime. Following the lead of Shaw and McKay's (1942) seminal research in Chicago earlier this century, a host of studies have examined the community-level relationship between crime rates and factors such as low economic status, ethnic heterogeneity, residential mobility, population density, and divorce rates (for detailed reviews, see Byrne & Sampson, 1986; Bursik & Grasmick, 1993; Sampson & Lauritsen, 1994). In this research tradition, the ecological fallacy of inferring individual-level relations based on aggregate data is not at issue because the unit of explanation and analysis is the community itself.

By contrast, the more common research strategy seeks to distinguish delinquents from nondelinquents. Influenced by the hegemony of survey research in the social sciences since the 1960s (especially the predominance of self-report surveys), researchers on delinquency and violence have focused primarily on the individual level of analysis. For example, a large body of research has examined how factors such as broken homes, parental supervision, erratic discipline, and school attachment are related to an adolescent's involvement in delinquency (for overviews, see Rutter & Giller, 1983; Loeber & Stouthamer-Loeber, 1986; Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990).