The third level, tertiary prevention, describes work undertaken with adjudicated offenders, those already convicted by the courts (usually more than once), that is intended to reduce their subsequent rates of criminal recidivism ( Gendreau & Andrews 1990). This entails work with designated ‘at-risk’ groups, such as children truanting from school, or involved in bullying or other aggression that is not strictly classed as illegal (owing to the perpetrator's age or other characteristics) ( Goldstein 2002). The second denotes any type of intervention that ‘targets individuals who show preclinical manifestations of some types of problem, whether it be physical, psychological or social’ ( Fields & McNamara 2003, p. improved family welfare, education or other social provision that will lower the socioeconomic deprivation associated with some types of crime ( Farrington & Coid 2003). Alternatively it may consist of investment in additional resources, e.g. ‘target hardening’, increased security, improvements in street lighting or other environmental modifications, installation of closed-circuit television, neighbourhood watch or other efforts to make crimes less likely to occur. In criminology, this may consist of situational prevention, e.g. The first of these refers to general-population or community-level initiatives designed to alleviate a social problem. (1994) between primary, secondary and tertiary preventions of antisocial activity in adolescence. This is a classification forwarded by Guerra et al. There is a useful distinction that is often made in studying interventions designed to reduce recurrent problem behaviours such as criminal conduct in general or violent offending, in particular. A fourth objective, addressed later in this paper, is to forward an integrative perspective on the factors that influence the occurrence of violence acts, in a probabilistic causal model. They are as follows: first, to consider some issues that arise in defining violence, in order to obtain a clearer appraisal of the subject under discussion second, to survey the nature of personal violence as a social and public health problem and third, to discuss some difficulties that arise when conducting research in this area, with particular reference to the evaluation of interventions. To facilitate the principal task, three initial but subsidiary objectives will be briefly addressed. The emphasis will be primarily on aggression and violent behaviour among adolescents and adults, and although work with younger children will be discussed it is not the central focus of this paper. The principal objectives of this paper are to survey research on the outcomes of interventions designed to reduce personal violence and to summarize what has emerged from that work with a view to identifying the most effective approaches to the problem that have been discovered to date. Proposals are made for future investigations with reference to the theoretical understanding of causal relationships and the design of experimental trials. Overall, it is concluded that there is sufficient evidence currently available to substantiate the claim that personal violence can be reduced by psychosocial interventions, but that much more research is required to delineate the parameters of effectiveness in this context. This incorporates the preliminary findings of a meta-analysis of controlled trials of psychosocial interventions with that population. Additional results are considered from a systematic review of studies of violence prevention among offenders with mental disorders.
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However, its principal focus is on the findings obtained from a series of meta-analytic reviews of structured programmes for adolescents and adults who have shown repeated aggression or been convicted of personal violence, drawing together the results of studies conducted in prison, probation, youth justice and allied services. It opens with a brief overview of the nature of personal violence and discussion of some key definitional and methodological problems. This paper addresses the question of whether individual violence can be reduced in frequency or severity, if so to what extent and by which methods.