Ideology and violence prevention.

Interpersonal violence is a major problem in US society in terms of the death and destruction it causes, the fear it generates, and the attention it receives. A recent trend has been to regard the problem of violence as an epidemic and to shape ideas of violence prevention according to public-health formulations. This process does not take into account the ideological nature of the proposed violence-prevention measures. Problems arise because this ideology is relevant to the potential effectiveness of violence prevention.This paper delineates several ideological issues involved in violence prevention and discusses how they interact with frequently employed public-health prevention strategies. Based upon this discussion, a general perspective for violence prevention is proposed and guiding principles that emerge from this perspective are presented.