Violence suffered by Venezuelan immigrant female sex workers: an intersectional view.

OBJECTIVE: To characterize and analyze violence committed against Venezuelan immigrant female sex workers, from the perspective of an intersectional look at social class, gender and race-ethnicity. METHOD: Exploratory study with a qualitative approach. Data sources: interviews with 15 Venezuelan immigrant women sex workers and 37 Brazilian online media reports that addressed the topic. Data were submitted to thematic content analysis, with the support of Qualitative Data Analysis (WebQDA) software. RESULTS: Thematic analysis of data from reports and interviews allowed the emergence of three empirical categories: Structural violence and reasons that led to prostitution: a question of social class; Among the forms of violence, the most feared: physical violence; Violence based on gender and race-ethnicity. CONCLUSION: The study made it possible to recognize that Venezuelan immigrant women who are sex workers in Brazil are subject to different types of violence and exploitation. This scenario is due to a reality of life and work that is based on the exploitation of female workers who experience the consequences of the interweaving of subalternities characteristic of their social insertion of class, gender and race-ethnicity.

Digital media use, depressive symptoms and support for violent radicalization among young Canadians: a latent profile analysis.

BACKGROUND: Despite the prominent role that digital media play in the lives and mental health of young people as well as in violent radicalization (VR) processes, empirical research aimed to investigate the association between Internet use, depressive symptoms and support for VR among young people is scant. We adopt a person-centered approach to investigate patterns of digital media use and their association with depressive symptoms and support for VR. METHODS: A sample of 2,324 Canadian young people (Mage = 30.10; SDage = 5.44 ; 59% women) responded to an online questionnaire. We used latent profile analysis to identify patterns of digital media use and linear regression to estimate the associations between class membership, depressive symptoms and support for VR. RESULTS: We identified four classes of individuals with regards to digital media use, named Average Internet Use/Institutional trust, Average internet use/Undifferentiated Trust, Limited Internet Use/Low Trust and Online Relational and Political Engagement/Social Media Trust. Linear regression indicated that individuals in the Online Relational and Political Engagement/Social Media Trust and Average Internet Use/Institutional trust profiles reported the highest and lowest scores of both depression and support for VR, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: It is essential to tailor prevention and intervention efforts to mitigate risks of VR to the specific needs and experiences of different groups in society, within a socio-ecological perspective. Prevention should consider both strengths and risks of digital media use and simulteaneously target both online and offline experiences and networks, with a focus on the sociopolitical and relational/emotional components of Internet use.

Analysis of the completeness and consistency of records of violence against indigenous women in the health macro-region of Dourados, Mato Grosso do Sul state, Brazil, 2009-2020.

OBJECTIVE: To analyze the temporal trend of completeness and consistency of data on notifications of violence against indigenous women in the health macro-region of Dourados, state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, between 2009 and 2020. METHODS: An ecological time series study was conducted using data from the Notifiable Health Conditions Information System; Prais-Winsten regression was used to analyze the trend of data completeness and consistency, as well as the proportion of completed and coherent fields. RESULTS: A total of 2,630 cases were reported; completeness was found to be very poor in the variable "occupation" (48.9%) and poor in the variables "schooling" (68.3%) and "time of occurrence" (67.9%); in the analysis of temporal trends, only the variable "occupation" showed a decreasing trend (p = 0.045). CONCLUSION: The data analyzed demonstrated the need for improvement in the completeness of the variables "schooling", "occupation" and "time of occurrence" of the violent act. MAIN RESULTS: There was a progressive increase in notifications over the years. Most of the variables showed regular or excellent completeness and consistency. In the analysis of temporal trend, only the "occupation" variable showed a decreasing trend. IMPLICATIONS FOR SERVICES: Care for victims of violence is part of the daily routine of health services, and it is essential for health professionals to provide adequate compulsory notification for a comprehensive understanding of the victims' profile, thus assisting in addressing this issue. PERSPECTIVES: Further studies are needed to understand the factors associated with violence against indigenous women, which could help the development of health promotion actions and violence prevention strategies targeting these women.

Experiences of verbal violence among people with intellectual disabilities in Israel.

BACKGROUND: This study examines the extent of exposure to verbal violence experienced by people with intellectual disabilities and whether it differs based on their housing situation: living in the community, with family, or in a residential facility. METHOD: One hundred and eighty-nine people with intellectual disabilities were interviewed about their experience with verbal violence. RESULTS: Eighty-six percent reported experiencing verbal violence in their lifetime and approximately 77% experienced it the past week. Participants were most likely to be yelled at, and friends were the most common perpetrators. While there were few differences by setting, people living with their families were more likely to be laughed at and marginally more likely to experience rude comments. CONCLUSIONS: Verbal violence is prevalent in the lives of people with intellectual disabilities in Israel. Interventions are necessary to assist people with intellectual disabilities to deal with such incidents, with possible additional supports needed for those living with family.

Police killings of unarmed Black persons and suicides among Black youth in the US: A national time-series analysis.

INTRODUCTION: Suicide deaths among Black youth in the US have increased rapidly over the past decade. Direct or vicarious racial trauma experienced through exposure to police brutality may underlie these concerning trends. METHODS: We obtained nationally aggregated monthly counts of suicides for non-Hispanic Black and White youth (age ≤ 24 years) and adults (age > 24 years) from the National Mortality Vital Statistics restricted-use data files provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, from 2013 to 2019. Monthly counts of Black youth suicides constituted our main outcome. We defined our exposure as the monthly counts of police killings of unarmed Black persons over 84 months (2013 to 2019), retrieved from the Mapping Police Violence database. We used ARIMA (AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average) time-series analyses to examine whether Black youth suicides increased within 0 to 3 months following police killings of unarmed Black persons, controlling for autocorrelation and corresponding series of White youth suicides. RESULTS: Suicides among Black youth increase by ∼1 count three months following an increase in police killings of unarmed Black persons (exposure lag 0 coefficient = 0.16, p > 0.05; exposure lag 1 coefficient = -0.70, p > 0.05; exposure lag 2 coefficient = -0.54, p > 0.05; exposure lag 3 coefficient = 0.95, p < 0.05). The observed increase in suicides concentrates among Black male youth (exposure lag 3 coefficient = 0.88, p < 0.05).

Prevalence of school related violence in seven countries: A cross-sectional survey.

Violence against children in schools harms the affected children, limits their learning and educational attainment, and extends its harms to families and the broader communities. However, to date, comparable cross-country data on violence against children in schools has not been available. We utilize the Violence Against Children and Youth Surveys (VACS) to estimate school-related violence against children in seven countries (Honduras, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia). Leveraging the unique comparability of the surveys, we are able to estimate both physical and sexual violence experienced in childhood and adolescence among youth aged 13-24. Where possible, we also disaggregate by gender and perpetrator type. Overall, within our sample seven countries, we find that 12.11-44.63% of females and 14.28-53.85% of males experienced at least one form of violence. Males experience higher levels of school-related violence and a significant portion of this is due to experiencing physical violence perpetrated by male classmates.

Public health framing of firearm violence on local television news in Philadelphia, PA, USA: a quantitative content analysis.

BACKGROUND: Firearm violence is an intensifying public health problem in the United States. News reports shape the way the public and policy makers understand and respond to health threats, including firearm violence. To better understand how firearm violence is communicated to the public, we aimed to determine the extent to which firearm violence is framed as a public health problem on television news and to measure harmful news content as identified by firearm-injured people. METHODS: This is a quantitative content analysis of Philadelphia local television news stories about firearm violence using a database of 7,497 clips. We compiled a stratified sample of clips aired on two randomly selected days/month from January-June 2021 from the database (n = 192 clips). We created a codebook to measure public health frame elements and to assign a harmful content score for each story and then coded the clips. Characteristics of stories containing episodic frames that focus on single shooting events were compared to clips with thematic frames that include broader social context for violence. RESULTS: Most clips employed episodic frames (79.2%), presented law enforcement officials as primary narrators (50.5%), and included police imagery (79.2%). A total of 433 firearm-injured people were mentioned, with a mean of 2.8 individuals shot included in each story. Most of the firearm-injured people featured in the clips (67.4%) had no personal information presented apart from age and/or gender. The majority of clips (84.4%) contained at least one harmful content element. The mean harmful content score/clip was 2.6. Public health frame elements, including epidemiologic context, root causes, public health narrators and visuals, and solutions were missing from most clips. Thematic stories contained significantly more public health frame elements and less harmful content compared to episodic stories. CONCLUSIONS: Local television news produces limited public health coverage of firearm violence, and harmful content is common. This reporting likely compounds trauma experienced by firearm-injured people and could impede support for effective public health responses to firearm violence. Journalists should work to minimize harmful news content and adopt a public health approach to reporting on firearm violence.

Persecution as stigma-driven trauma: Social determinants, stigma, and violence in asylum seekers in the United States.

OBJECTIVE: Existing literature documents high rates of experienced violence in asylum seekers. Despite this high prevalence, experiences of traumatic stress are neither necessary nor sufficient grounds for claiming asylum, without documented experiences of persecution. The aim of the current study is to better understand the role of co-occurring pre-migratory social determinants, stigma, and trauma on the experiences of persecution among asylum seekers in the United States. METHOD: We conducted a retrospective file review of legal declarations submitted by 25 asylum seekers who participated in forensic mental health evaluations at a pro-bono asylum clinic. We coded de-identified data for co-occurring events of trauma, social determinants of health, and components of "discrimination" from the legal definition of persecution - conceptualizing persecution as stigma-driven infliction of violence. Data was analyzed using a tiered deductive and inductive reflexive thematic analysis. RESULTS: Findings suggest pre-migratory social determinants included demographics, neighborhood, economic, environmental, and social and cultural level disparities across various grounds for seeking asylum, and experiences of stigma were associated with the specific acts of violence and harm. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings - specific to asylum seekers who have obtained legal representation and completed applications for asylum in the United States - describe the co-occurrence of social determinants, stigma and traumatic experiences among asylum seekers. To our knowledge, this study is the first of its kind to bridge the existing legal framework of asylum to a psychological construct incorporating trauma, stigma, and social determinants of health, lending support for the conceptualization of persecution as stigma-driven trauma.

Disparities in behaviors and experiences among transgender and cisgender high school students - 18 U.S. states, 2021.

PURPOSE: Transgender youth (those whose gender identity differs from their sex assigned at birth) experience stigma and discrimination that can place them at increased risk for poor health outcomes compared with cisgender youth (those whose gender identity aligns with their sex assigned at birth). Limited population-based data exist on disparities among transgender and cisgender youth. METHODS: We examined differences in experiences of violence, substance use, mental health, suicide, sexual behavior, unstable housing, parental monitoring, and school connectedness among 98,174 transgender and cisgender high school students using data from 18 states that included an item to assess transgender identity on their 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. RESULTS: Overall, 2.9% of students identified as transgender and 2.6% questioned whether they were transgender. Among transgender students, 71.5% reported that their mental health was not good, 32.3% had attempted suicide, and 29.0% experienced sexual violence. Transgender students were more likely than cisgender students to report experiences of violence, substance use, poor mental health, suicide risk, some sexual risk behaviors, and unstable housing, and were less likely to report feeling connected to others at school. CONCLUSIONS: Interventions that can address the causes of these adverse outcomes and promote the health and wellbeing of transgender youths are warranted.

Homelessness, psychiatric disorders, and violence in Denmark: a population-based cohort study.

BACKGROUND: Homelessness is associated with adverse health and social outcomes. People experiencing homelessness have been found to have a high risk of violent crime victimisation as well as high prevalence of psychiatric disorders. It is poorly understood whether experiencing homelessness is associated with additional risks of violent offending and whether psychiatric disorders contribute to these risks. We examined the association between homelessness, psychiatric disorders, and first violence offence leading to conviction. METHODS: We did a nationwide, register-based cohort study of all Danish residents who were alive at least 1 day during the study period, born between Jan 1, 1980, and Dec 31, 2006, and aged 15 years or older retrieved from the Danish Civil Registration System, which was linked to registers with information on homelessness, health care, and criminality. The exposure was any experience of homelessness, which was defined as having at least one contact with a homeless shelter during the study period. The outcome was first violent offence leading to a conviction. We calculated incidence rates per 10 000 person-years, incidence rate ratios (IRRs) using Poisson regression analysis, and probability of conviction of a violent offence using an Aalen-Johansen estimator. Analyses were stratified by sex and adjusted for calendar year of the study period, age, other sociodemographic factors, and psychiatric disorders. FINDINGS: The study cohort included 1 786 433 Danish residents aged 15-42 years living in Denmark at some point from Jan 1, 2001, to Dec 31, 2021, contributing to 21 336 322 person-years at risk, of whom 57 084 (3·2%) individuals had their first violent offence leading to conviction during follow-up. 10 years after their first contact with a homeless shelter, 22·9% (95% CI 21·6-24·2) of men and 7·7% (6·8-8·7) of women had committed at least one violent crime leading to conviction. The fully adjusted IRRs of a violent offence leading to conviction were 4·8 (4·5-5·1) in men and 6·3 (5·6-7·2) in women experiencing homelessness compared with individuals who had not experienced homelessness. The IRR for a violent offence leading to conviction was highest in individuals experiencing homelessness and having co-occurring psychiatric disorders compared with those not experiencing homelessness and without co-occurring psychiatric disorders, especially drug use disorders (IRR in those experiencing homelessness and having a drug use disorder: 15·3 [14·1-16·7] in men and 40·1 [33·9-47·5] in women compared with individuals not experiencing homelessness and having no drug use disorder). INTERPRETATION: Individuals experiencing homelessness had higher risks of a violent offence leading to conviction than those who had not experienced homelessness. In addition to preventing homelessness, public health and policy should consider how to reduce the risk of adverse outcomes in people experiencing homelessness. FUNDING: Lundbeck Foundation.

Evaluating Firearm Violence After New Jersey's Cash Bail Reform.

Importance: Reducing the pretrial detention population has been a cornerstone of movements to end mass incarceration. Across many US cities, there are ongoing public debates on policies that would end pretrial detention due to the inability to afford bail, with some raising concerns that doing so would increase community violence. Objective: To evaluate changes in firearm violence after New Jersey's 2017 bail reform policy that eliminated financial barriers to avoiding pretrial detention. Design, Setting, and Participants: This case-control study used synthetic control methods to examine changes in firearm mortality and combined fatal and nonfatal shootings in New Jersey (2014-2019). New Jersey was chosen because it was one of the first states to systematically implement cash bail reform. Outcomes in New Jersey were compared with a weighted combination of 36 states that did not implement any kind of reform to pretrial detention during the study period. Data were analyzed from April 2023 to March 2024. Exposure: Implementation of New Jersey's cash bail reform law in 2017. Main Outcomes and Measures: Quarterly rates of fatal and nonfatal firearm assault injuries and firearm self-harm injuries per 100 000 people. Results: Although New Jersey's pretrial detention population dramatically decreased under bail reform, the study did not find evidence of increases in overall firearm mortality (average treatment effect on the treated, -0.26 deaths per 100 000) or gun violence (average treatment effect on the treated, -0.24 deaths per 100 000), or within racialized groups during the postpolicy period. Conclusions and Relevance: Incarceration and gun violence are major public health problems impacting racially and economically marginalized groups. Cash bail reform may be an important tool for reducing pretrial detention and advancing health equity without exacerbating community violence.

Protocol for a nationwide case-control study of firearm violence prevention tactics and policies in K-12 schools.

BACKGROUND: Most U.S. K-12 schools have adopted safety tactics and policies like arming teachers and installing metal detectors, to address intentional school gun violence. However, there is minimal research on their effectiveness. Furthermore, sociodemographic factors may influence their implementation. Controlled studies are necessary to investigate their impact on gun violence and related disciplinary outcomes. OBJECTIVE: The paper outlines the protocol for a case-control study examining gun violence prevention policies in U.S. K-12 schools. The study aims to investigate if there is an association between the total number and type of specific safety tactics and policies and the occurrence of intentional shootings in K-12 public schools, student disciplinary outcomes, and if urbanicity, economic, and racial factors modify these associations. METHODS: We will create a nationally representative dataset for this study and ascertain a full census of case schools (schools that experienced intentional gunfire on the campus during school hours since 2015) through national school shooting databases. Matched control schools will be randomly selected from U.S. Department of Education's national database of all public schools. We will analyze 27 school safety strategies organized into seven key exposure groupings. RESULTS: Supported by the National Institutes for Child Health and Development (R01HD108027-01) and having received Institutional Review Board approval, our study is currently in the data collection phase. Our analytical plan will determine the association between the number and type of school safety tactics and policies with the occurrence of intentional shootings and suspensions and expulsions in a national sample of approximately 650 K-12 public schools. Additional analyses will investigate the effect modification of specific covariates. CONCLUSION: As the first national, controlled study, its results will provide novel and needed data on the effectiveness of school safety tactics and policies in preventing intentional shootings at K-12 public schools.

Association of quality of nursing care with violence load, burnout, and listening climate.

BACKGROUND: Violence against nurses is common. Previous research has recommended further development of the measurement of violence against nurses and integration of the individual and ward-related factors that contribute to violence against hospital nurses. This study was designed to address these issues by investigating the associations between violence, the listening climate of hospital wards, professional burnout, and perceived quality of care. For this purpose, we used a new operationalization of the violence concept. METHODS: We sought nurses to participate in the study through social media which yielded 765 nurses working in various healthcare systems across Israel who volunteered to complete a self-administered online questionnaire. 80% of the sample were hospital nurses, and 84.7% were female. The questionnaire included validated measures of burnout, listening climate, and quality of care. Instead of using the traditional binary measure of exposure to violence to capture the occurrence and comprehensive impact of violence, this study measured the incremental load of violence to which nurses are subjected. RESULTS: There were significant correlations between violence load and perceived quality of care and between constructive and destructive listening climates and quality of care. Violence load contributed 14% to the variance of burnout and 13% to the variance of perceived quality of care. The ward listening climate moderated the relationship between burnout and quality of care. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study highlight the impact of violence load among nurses and the ward listening climate on the development of burnout and on providing quality care. The findings call upon policymakers to monitor violence load and allocate resources to foster supportive work environments to enhance nurse well-being and improve patient care outcomes.

Sexist, Racist, and Homophobic Violence against Paramedics in a Single Canadian Site.

Violence against paramedics is widely recognized as a serious, but underreported, problem. While injurious physical attacks on paramedics are generally reported, non-physical violence is less likely to be documented. Verbal abuse can be very distressing, particularly if the harassment targets personal or cultural identities, such as race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. Leveraging a novel, point-of-event reporting process, our objective was to estimate the prevalence of harassment on identity grounds against paramedics in a single paramedic service in Ontario, Canada, and assess its potentially differential impact on emotional distress. In an analysis of 502 reports filed between 1 February 2021 and 28 February 2022, two paramedic supervisors independently coded the free-text narrative descriptions of violent encounters for themes suggestive of sexism, racism, and homophobia. We achieved high inter-rater agreement across the dimensions (k = 0.73-0.83), and after resolving discrepant cases, we found that one in four violent reports documented abuse on at least one of the identity grounds. In these cases, paramedics were 60% more likely to indicate being emotionally distressed than for other forms of violence. Our findings offer unique insight into the type of vitriol paramedics experience over the course of their work and its potential for psychological harm.

Experiencing violence and other predictors of within-person same-day use of multiple substances in youth: a longitudinal study in emergency settings.

Background: Although experiencing violence is a risk factor for substance use among youth, its association with same-day use of multiple substances (a form of polysubstance use) and mitigating factors is less well understood.Objectives: To identify whether prosocial factors modified the effect of experiencing violence on the frequency of same-day use, and examine gender-specific risk/protective factors for same-day use.Methods: We analyzed longitudinal data from a cohort of youth who use drugs aged 14-24 (n = 599; 58% male) presenting to an urban emergency department between 2009-2011 and assessed biannually for two years. Using Poisson-generalized linear models with person-level fixed effects, we estimated within-person associations between self-reported experiencing violence and same-day use and analyzed gender and peer/parent support as effect modifiers. We adjusted for negative peer influence, parental drug and alcohol use, family conflict, anxiety and depression, and age.Results: Overall, positive parental support corresponded to lower rates of same-day use (rate ratio [RR]:0.93, 95% CI:0.87-0.99) and experiencing violence was associated with higher rates of same-day use (RR:1.25, 95% CI:1.10-1.41). Violence exposure was a risk factor among males (RR:1.42, 95% CI:1.21-1.66), while negative peer influences and parental substance use were risk factors among females (RR:1.63, 95% CI:1.36-1.97 and RR:1.58, 95% CI:1.35-1.83, respectively). Positive peer support reduced the association between violence exposure and same-day use among males (RR:0.69, 95% CI:0.57-0.84, p < .05).Conclusions: Tailored interventions may address gender differences in coping with experiencing violence - including interventions that promote parental support among males and reduce influence from parental substance use among females.

Exposure to neighborhood violence, and laboratory-based and ambulatory cognitive task performance in adulthood.

OBJECTIVE: Exposure to neighborhood violence may have negative implications for adults' cognitive functioning, but the ecological sensitivity of these effects has yet to be determined. We first evaluated the link between exposure to neighborhood violence and two latent constructs of cognitive function that incorporated laboratory-based and ambulatory, smartphone-based, cognitive assessments. Second, we examined whether the effect of exposure to violence was stronger for ambulatory assessments compared to in-lab assessments. METHODS: We used data from 256 urban-dwelling adults between 25 and 65 years old (M = 46.26, SD = 11.07); 63.18% non-Hispanic Black, 9.21% non-Hispanic White, 18.41% Hispanic White, 5.02% Hispanic Black, and 4.18% other. Participants completed baseline surveys on neighborhood exposures, cognitive assessments in a laboratory/research office, and ambulatory smartphone-based cognitive assessments five-times a day for 14 days. RESULTS: Exposure to neighborhood violence was associated with poorer performance in a latent working memory construct that incorporated in-lab and ambulatory assessments, but was not associated with the perceptual speed construct. The effect of exposure to neighborhood violence on the working memory construct was explained by its effect on the ambulatory working memory task and not by the in-lab cognitive assessments. CONCLUSION: This study shows the negative effect that exposure to neighborhood violence may have on everyday working memory performance in urban-dwelling adults in midlife. Results highlight the need for more research to determine the sensitivity of ambulatory assessments to quantify the effects of neighborhood violence on cognitive function.

Comparison of V-RISK-Y and V-RISK-10 for risk of violence: A one-year study from a psychiatric emergency department for adolescents.

There has been a lack of short and simple screening instruments to assess the risk of violence in youth. Many acute youth departments have used the V-RISK-10, a risk screener for adults. V-RISK-Y is a risk screener based on the V-RISK-10 and adapted to youths. Our aim was to compare the predictive validity between V-RISK-Y and VRISK-10 in an emergency psychiatric adolescent ward. Target population were all 92 patients admitted within one year, and study population consisted of 49 (53 %) patients who had completed data. V-RISK-10 and V-RISK-Y were scored at admission and compared with recorded episodes of violence during the hospitalization. V-RISK-Y showed higher AUC values for recorded violence and some of the individual items also showed better results. Most differences were not significant, but results may still be of clinical interest.

Interrupted Time Series Analysis of Bar/Tavern Closing Hours and Violent Crime.

Importance: It is well established that alcohol outlets (ie, places that sell alcohol) attract crime, particularly during late-night hours. Objective: To evaluate the association of Maryland Senate Bill 571 (SB571), which reduced the hours of sale for bars/taverns in 1 Baltimore neighborhood from 6 am to 2 am to 9 am to 10 pm, with violent crime within that neighborhood. Design, Setting, and Participants: This controlled interrupted time series analysis compared the change in violent crime density within an 800-ft buffer around bars/taverns in the treatment neighborhood (ie, subject to SB571) and 2 control areas with a similar mean baseline crime rate, alcohol outlet density, and neighborhood disadvantage score in the City of Baltimore between May 1, 2018, and December 31, 2022. The interrupted time series using Poisson regression with overdispersion adjustment tested whether the violent crime density differed before vs after the policy change in the treatment neighborhood and whether this difference was localized to the treatment neighborhood. Exposure: Statutory reduction of bar/tavern selling hours from 20 to 13 hours per day in the treatment neighborhood. Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary outcome was all violent crime, including homicide, robbery, aggravated and common assault, and forcible rape. Secondary outcomes were homicides and assaults. All violent crime measures summed the monthly incidents within 800 ft of bars/taverns from 8 pm to 4 am. For each outcome, a level change estimated the immediate change (first month after implementation), and a slope change estimated the sustained change after implementation (percent reduction after the first month). These level and slope changes were then compared between the treatment and control neighborhoods. Results: The treatment neighborhood included 26 bars/taverns (mean [SD] population, 524.6 [234.6] residents), and the control neighborhoods included 41 bars/taverns (mean [SD] population per census block, 570.4 [217.4] residents). There was no immediate level change in density of all violent crimes the month after implementation of SB571; however, compared with the control neighborhoods, the slope of all violent crime density decreased by 23% per year in the treatment neighborhood after SB571 implementation (annualized incidence rate ratio, 0.77; 95% CI, 0.60-0.98; P = .04). Similar results were seen for homicides and assaults. Several sensitivity analyses supported the robustness of these results. Conclusions and Relevance: This study's findings suggest that alcohol policies that reduce hours of sale could be associated with a reduction in violent crimes. Given these findings, SB571 may serve as a model for other cities looking to create safer neighborhoods.

Drugs, guns, and violent crime in California.

BACKGROUND: There is evidence linking use of controlled substances with perpetration of interpersonal violence. While the United States constitution protects the right to own a firearm, federal law prohibits firearm purchase and possession by persons believed to be at high risk for violence, including those who use controlled substances unlawfully. METHODS: We report here the results of a 13-year prospective observational study on the risk of violent crime associated with a history of criminal drug charges in a cohort of 79,678 legal purchasers of handguns in California in 2001. The main outcomes were post-purchase charges for any violent crime, violent Crime Index crimes (murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault), and firearm-related violent crimes. The main exposure of interest was a history of pre-purchase charge(s) for drug-related offenses; we examined as a secondary exposure a history of marijuana-related charges. We estimated adjusted hazard ratios (aHR) with 95 % confidence intervals (CI) using Cox proportional hazards multiple events models. RESULTS: We found that legal handgun purchasers in California with a history of drug-related charges, even those with marijuana charges only, had triple the risk of a post-purchase violent crime charge compared to purchasers with no criminal charges (drug charges only: aHR=2.9, 95 % CI 2.2-3.8; marijuana charges only: aHR=3.3, 95 % CI 1.8-6.0). In addition, a criminal history of drug charges only vs. no criminal history was associated with increased risk of one or more violent crime charges after the first post-purchase arrest event (aHR=1.6, 95 % CI 1.2-2.3). CONCLUSION: It is incumbent on researchers and policy makers to understand the nature and causes of this risk in order to take effective steps towards mitigation.

"This might be cliché, but it was a sense of family": Gang involvement among Indigenous young adults and their search for attachment, community, and hope.

Indigenous communities in Canada continue to feel the ongoing impacts of colonialism, including socio-economic disadvantage, high rates of violent victimization, systemic racism and discrimination, overrepresentation in the criminal justice system, and intergenerational trauma. Based on in-depth interviews with 10 gang-involved Indigenous young adults, using attachment theory as a guiding framework, we explore how colonialism continues to negatively impact the attachment these young people have to their families, communities, and social institutions, and leads to their gang involvement which perpetuates violence and trauma. Yet, they exhibit hope for a better future. Drawing on participant experiences we suggest key points at which provision of supports and resources can assist with increasing attachments and facilitating gang desistance. We share these insights while acknowledging the continued structural, embedded violence many Indigenous youth experience today that necessitates a commitment to decolonization at all levels of Canadian society.

Les communautés autochtones du Canada continuent de ressentir les effets persistants du colonialisme, notamment les désavantages socio­économiques, les taux élevés de victimisation violente, le racisme et la discrimination systémiques, la surreprésentation dans le système de justice pénale et les traumatismes intergénérationnels. À partir d'entretiens approfondis avec dix jeunes adultes autochtones impliqués dans des gangs, et en utilisant la théorie de l'attachement comme cadre d'orientation, nous explorons comment le colonialisme continue d'avoir un impact négatif sur l'attachement de ces jeunes à leurs familles, à leurs communautés et aux institutions sociales, et conduit à leurs implication dans des gangs qui perpétuent la violence et les traumatismes. Pourtant, ils gardent l'espoir d'un avenir meilleur. En nous appuyant sur les expériences des participants, nous suggérons des points clés où l'apport de soutien et de ressources peut contribuer à renforcer l'attachement et à faciliter la désistance des gangs. Nous partageons ces idées tout en reconnaissant la persistance de la violence structurelle et enracinée que subissent aujourd'hui de nombreux jeunes autochtones et qui nécessite un engagement en faveur de la décolonisation à tous les niveaux de la société canadienne.