PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Western, Bruce
TI  - Lifetimes of Violence in a Sample of Released Prisoners
AID  - 10.7758/RSF.2015.1.2.02
DP  - 2015 Nov 01
TA  - RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
PG  - 14--30
VI  - 1
IP  - 2
4099  - http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/1/2/14.short
4100  - http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/1/2/14.full
AB  - Men and women who go to prison are poor and involved in violence. This article explores the connection between poverty and violence for a sample of former prisoners who left incarceration and settled in the Boston area. Analysis of life history data indicates that violence arises in poor contexts across the life course because they are often chaotic and lack informal sources of social control; under these conditions, violence often comes to be positively valued. This situational perspective on violence diverges from the criminal justice perspective, in which offenders and victims represent distinct classes of people and punishment involves the assessment of individual culpability.