The past 25 years have seen a major paradigm shift in the field of violence prevention, from the assumption that violence is inevitable to the recognition that violence is preventable. Part of this shift has occurred in thinking about why violence occurs, and where intervention points might lie. In exploring the occurrence of violence, researchers have recognized the tendency for violent acts to cluster, to spread from place to place, and to mutate from one type to another. Furthermore, violent acts are often preceded or followed by other violent acts. In the field of public health, such a process has also been seen in the infectious disease model, in which an agent or vector initiates a specific biological pathway leading to symptoms of disease and infectivity. The agent transmits from individual to individual, and levels of the disease in the population above the baseline constitute an epidemic. Although violence does not have a readily observable biological agent as an initiator, it can follow similar epidemiological pathways. On April 30-May 1, 2012, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Forum on Global Violence Prevention convened a workshop to explore the contagious nature of violence. Part of the Forum's mandate is to engage in multisectoral, multidirectional dialogue that explores crosscutting, evidence-based approaches to violence prevention, and the Forum has convened four workshops to this point exploring various elements of violence prevention. The workshops are designed to examine such approaches from multiple perspectives and at multiple levels of society. In particular, the workshop on the contagion of violence focused on exploring the epidemiology of the contagion, describing possible processes and mechanisms by which violence is transmitted, examining how contextual factors mitigate or exacerbate the issue. Contagion of Violence: Workshop Summary covers the major topics that arose during the 2-day workshop. It is organized by important elements of the infectious disease model so as to present the contagion of violence in a larger context and in a more compelling and comprehensive way.

Understanding and Reducing Prison Violence considers both the individual and prison characteristics associated with violence perpetration and violent victimization among both prison inmates and staff. Prison violence is not a random process; rates of violence vary across prisons and the odds of perpetrating violence or experiencing violent victimization vary across inmates and staff. A comprehensive understanding of the causes of prison violence therefore requires consideration of both individual and prison characteristics. Building on large dataset comprising 5,500 inmates and 1,800 officers across 45 prisons located across two of the United States (Ohio and Kentucky), this book showcases one of the largest and most comprehensive studies of prisons carried out to date. It considers both the implications of the study for theories of prison violence and the implications of the study for preventing violence in prisons. It will be of interest to academics, practitioners, and policy makers alike.

The first joint survey of prisoners held in state and federal prisons. Interviews were conducted among inmates housed in 53 federal and 273 state prisons. Samples consist of about 14,000 state prisoners and about 6,600 federal prisoners. They were queried about their social and criminal histories. Represents the single largest collection of information on prisoners ever undertaken in the U.S. Covers: current offense, sentence length, criminal history, drug and alcohol use, weapons, personal and family characteristics, HIV, and activities since admission.