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Social Contagion Of Violence, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Deanna L. Wilkinson, Garth Davies
Social Contagion Of Violence, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Deanna L. Wilkinson, Garth Davies
Faculty Scholarship
In this chapter, we assess whether the roller-coaster pattern of homicides in New York City beginning in 1985 fits a contagion model and identify mechanisms of social contagion that predict its spread across social and physical space. This framework for interpreting the homicide trends as an epidemic includes two perspectives. First, the sharp rise and fall are indicative of a nonlinear pattern in which the phenomenon spreads at a rate far beyond what would be predicted by exposure to some external factor and declines in a similar pattern in which the reduction from year to year exceeds what might be …
Context And Culpability In Adolescent Crime, Jeffrey A. Fagan
Context And Culpability In Adolescent Crime, Jeffrey A. Fagan
Faculty Scholarship
This Essay merges the perspectives of context and decision-making to assess the role of contextual factors in the unfolding of violent events by adolescents. The framework for decision-making assumes that context is a dynamic rather than a static feature of the cognitive landscape. Decisions by adolescents to engage in crime or violence are shaped through interactions with features of their environments, are contingent on responses emanating from that context, and are filtered through the unique lens of adolescence. Rather than assuming discrete and independent components in a decision framework, this Essay assumes that decisions are the product of interactions across …
Guns, Youth Violence, And Social Identity In Inner Cities, Jeffrey Fagan, Deanna L. Wilkinson
Guns, Youth Violence, And Social Identity In Inner Cities, Jeffrey Fagan, Deanna L. Wilkinson
Faculty Scholarship
While youth violence has always been a critical part of delinquency, the modern epidemic is marked by high rates of gun violence. Adolescents in cities possess and carry guns on a large scale, guns are often at the scene of youth violence, and guns often are used. Guns play a central role in initiating, sustaining, and elevating the epidemic of youth violence. The demand for guns among youth was fueled by an "ecology of danger," comprising street gangs, expanding drug markets with high intrinsic levels of violence, high rates of adult violence and fatalities, and cultural styles of gun possession …