Situational Contexts of Gun Use By Young Males award

Typical research on violence is concerned with identifying the characteristics and predictors of why certain people are more disposed to violence than others. However, these studies do not address the specific conditions that channel such dispositions into violent events. This study addresses this gap in violence research through examining the situational contexts in which violence events occur and the interactive social processes or exchanges that lead to criminal violence. Analyses will be conducted of the process by which a decision is made to commit a gun-related crime in order to better understand the use of guns by young males. This project includes interviews with 80 respondents from three New York City (South Bronx) and East New York (Brooklyn) neighborhoods with high rates of homicide among young males 16-22 years of age. Samples include young males recently released on weapons charges and males from the neighborhood (who have used guns or been victims of gun assaults but were not involved in the criminal justice system). Interviews with respondents will examine the dynamics of gun events, including reconstruction of dialogues of events which culminated in gunshots, and the aftermath of these events. This research will contribute to the development of a framework for analyzing the process of events that lead to acts of gun violence with implications for the development of frameworks to study patterns of interaction that lead to other forms of interpersonal violence. This framework represents a distinct departure from commonly used deterministic models and can be extended and modified to examine different selection processes involved in violent events.