Violence Rewired Evidence and Strategies for Public Health Action

"Is violence "hard-wired"? Is the tendency to be violent, in other words, a fixed and elemental feature of the human brain which cannot be significantly changed and which will always exert a destructive influence on human behaviour? This is one of the fundamental questions of philosophy which has been debated over the last two millennia. It is also a key topic for the biological, psychological and social sciences and any conclusion has substantial implications for how societies organise and police themselves. A decisive answer to this question is still unavailable and may remain out of reach for many years to come. But the persistent and pessimistic tendency to view some people as born with a predisposition to act aggressively towards others and beyond a "cure" is open to serious challenge. Such a view of human nature can lead to unnecessarily restrictive and punitive interventions which are unjust for the individual and needlessly costly for society. Current scientific research and international policy developments actually suggest that much can be done to prevent and intervene successfully with many kinds of violent behaviour. This supports the idea that violence as a concept can itself be "rewired" to enable new possibilities in constructing a safer and more peaceful world. This book focuses on that major issue and has three main aims. The first is to draw together and evaluate the implications of recently acquired knowledge about human violence from across the full spectrum of scientific disciplines. This knowledge offers fresh perspectives and a new understanding of why violence occurs and what the main approaches to reducing it should be. The second aim is 21 to address the pessimism which often pervades discussions about this problem by emphasising the potential for greater confidence about effectively intervening with violent people and in violent situations. It is true that we are a long way from eradicating violence and we may ultimately never succeed in doing so, but nevertheless we have made much progress in the past few decades in designing new ways of successfully understanding and working with those who act violently. The third aim here is to link the full range of interventions currently being developed and tested around the world to a global strategy for tackling the problem, which has been established by the World Health Organisation. This strategy offers the opportunity to integrate and implement effective interventions on a scale that has not been considered before. Taken together, the potential synthesis of new knowledge, greater confidence and innovative international policy makes it timely for a "new look" at the old problem of human violence and offers the prospect of a major step forward in producing a safer world"--