Introduction

The objective of this concluding chapter is to summarize key findings and recommendations of the previous chapters in this volume. The summary is organized around identified themes that cut across chapters and flow from the general approach described in Chapter 1 - the ecological, life course, developmental perspective. The specifics of these chapters will not be reiterated; the reader should refer to individual chapters for detailed information. Rather, our summary is selective, noting findings and recommendations that illustrate the identified themes. This chapter closes with a summary of recommendations for youth violence prevention policy and practice, drawn from the chapters.

The previous chapters have presented different perspectives representing multiple academic disciplines and research traditions. The task now is to begin integrating these perspectives, often complementary, into a more comprehensive approach to understanding and preventing violence. We offer the ecological, life course, developmental approach as a framework for organizing the perspectives, research findings, and prevention recommendations of the previous chapters. For simplicity, this framework will be referred to subsequently as the ecological-developmental approach. We identify five themes related to the developmental approach and illustrated by the results reported in some, if not all, of the chapters of this volume.

Theme 1: The Interconnectedness of Family, Peer Group, School, and Neighborhood

The first theme bears on the ecological nature of the ecological-developmental approach. Recall that human development does not occur in isolation from other human beings. Instead, people live in social contexts that influence their developmental processes. For example, most Americans are connected to families of some sort living in neighborhoods situated within larger communities. Moreover, as children grow older, they become involved in increasingly larger social spheres of influence, ranging from family and friendship groups to schools, workplaces, and other social institutions within communities. The ecological nature of the developmental approach denotes more than just the interrelationships among individuals in social contexts. It also signifies the overlapping connections among these increasingly larger social spheres of influence. Hence, what goes on in the workplace can influence family relations, for example. These, in turn, can influence neighborhood dynamics and the conditions of school settings serving those neighborhoods.