Proximal predictors of gun violence among adolescent males involved in crime.

Abstract

The growing public health and legal concerns regarding gun violence has led to a call for research that investigates risk factors for gun violence across a variety of domains. Individual and sociocontextual risk factors have been associated with violence more broadly, and in some instances gun-carrying, however no prior research has investigated the role of these factors in explaining gun violence using longitudinal data. The current study utilized a subsample (N = 161) from the Pathways to Desistance Study, which is a longitudinal sample of serious adolescent offenders to evaluate interindividual and intraindividual differences in relevant risk factors of gun violence. Results suggest that there are a few key proximal individual-level and sociocontextual predictors for gun violence, including witnessing nongun violence, future orientation, and perceived personal rewards to crime. Findings demonstrate the salience of exposure to violence in contributing to gun violence and identify levers of action for public policy.

A Within-Individual Examination of the Predictors of Gun Carrying During Adolescence and Young Adulthood Among Young Men

“…An adolescent boy who is unable to consider the long-term consequences of his actions or control antisocial impulses may be more likely to carry a gun because he is not thinking (or does not care) about the potential danger he could inflict or the legal troubles he could encounter. While many prior studies have found significant associations between components of psychosocial maturity (e.g., impulsivity) and serious offending in general (Bechtold et al, 2014;Fine et al, 2016;Monahan et al, 2013), only a few longitudinal studies have looked at psychosocial maturity specifically in relation to firearm usage (see Lee et al, 2020;Pardini et al, 2020;Rowan et al, 2019). For example, one study with a relatively high-risk community sample found that future orientation may mediate the between-person associations between exposure to violence and subsequent gun carrying (Lee et al 2020).…”

“…While one study included prior gun carrying as a covariate, this study utilized between-individual models to examine perpetrated gun violence and did not control for future orientation, exposure to gun violence, or parental gun carrying and non-gun offending (Pardini et al, 2020). Another longitudinal study with the same sample of serious adolescent offenders as Pardini and colleagues (2020) examined the predictors of gun violence (not gun carrying), but did not control for prior gun carrying, exposure to gun violence, peer gun carrying, impulse control, or parental gun carrying and non-gun offending (Rowan et al, 2019).…”

“…For example, one study with a relatively high-risk community sample found that future orientation may mediate the between-person associations between exposure to violence and subsequent gun carrying (Lee et al 2020 ). Furthermore, a study of serious adolescent offenders found that low future orientation was a robust predictor of gun violence in between-individual models but not within-individual models, suggesting that selection effects or omitted confounding variables may have accounted for the between-individual effects (Rowan et al 2019 ). As such, it is not clear whether changes in psychosocial maturity would relate to within-individual changes in gun carrying.…”

“…Additional support for the self-protection/retaliation hypothesis has been found in a variety of studies with justice-system-involved and community youth. For example, prior studies with within-person and between-person models have found that exposure to gun violence (Beardslee et al, 2019 ; Sumner et al, 2016 ), exposure to non-gun violence (Rowan et al, 2019 ), and exposure to general violence (Pardini et al, 2020 ; Reid et al, 2017 ; Spano, 2012 ; Spano & Bolland, 2013 ) are significantly related to gun carrying and gun violence among adolescents and young adults.…”

Good Lives Model: Importance of Interagency Collaboration in Preventing Violent Recidivism

“…In areas with high rates of youth violence, community members report decreased feelings of safety, normalization of violence and increased community stigmatization which, in turn, reduces education and employment opportunities [9]. Critically, this leads to a cyclic pattern of violent behavior, whereby younger members of the community perceive violence as an acceptable and readily available option [10,11]. Those that engage in youth violence are also more likely to perpetrate IPV and child maltreatment than their non-violent counterparts [12,13].…”