Summary Of Interpersonal Violence

Chapter 3 of “Interpersonal Violence” concentrated on categorizing the different kinds of violence while using statistics to illustrate the magnitude of their effects on society. As criminology minor, I found this particular chapter very interesting because it provided me with a better perception of criminal violence as a whole. The crimes that are labeled as criminal violence include homicide, rape, robbery, and assault. Interpersonal violence, a form of criminal violence, within institutionalized contexts includes things like family violence, school violence, workplace violence, and community violence, such as hate crimes. The kinds of crimes that were defined as criminal violence were activities that I expected to find; as a matter of fact, those crimes are the first ones that come to mind when I hear “violent crimes” or even simply the word “violence.” Surprisingly enough, besides the statistics, I knew a good bit of this information from my previous courses.

This chapter was full of interesting statistics, and some of them were very revealing. For example, I was interested to see the statistics that show men are more likely to be murdered then women; most people would assume the opposite. According to the book, 77.4 % of murders were committed by men between 17 and 34. Another shocking fact, considering all the focus on racism in our society, is that more black men are responsible for murdering other black men, just as more white men are responsible for the murders of other white men. Although, after thinking about it, most of these murders could be done to men because of gang affiliation and gang