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The purpose of this paper is to describe the ongoing data and evaluation strategies being used to document the impact of the Guilford County Family Justice Center, which has been in operation for nearly four years.

There are four primary ongoing data and evaluation strategies used to tell the story of the impact of the family justice center (FJC) on the community: tracking services provided by the FJC, collecting annual data from partner agencies, conducting week-long censuses and doing an annual survey of professionals affiliated with the FJC and its partner organizations. (The current paper reports on the first three of these strategies.)

Methodological limitations of the evaluation strategies used warrant caution in interpreting the findings of the ongoing evaluation of the Guilford County FJC. However, preliminary evaluation findings indicate support for the center’s positive impact on the community it serves, including in the number of clients served, a reduction in domestic violence-related homicide rates and the creation of new community resources that emerged through the FJC partnership.

Each of the evaluation strategies used in this study holds inherent strengths and limitations, which are discussed in the paper. Beyond the future evaluation of local FJCs, a range of rigorous methodologies can be used to further explore the impact of the FJC model. Qualitative methods may be useful for gaining an in-depth understanding of victims’ and survivors’ perceptions of accessing resources through an FJC, as well as for studying beliefs and attitudes toward FJCs among various community stakeholders. Quantitative methods can be used to apply more complex statistical analyses to comparing indicators of the impact of FJCs over time.

The data and evaluation findings from the Guilford County FJC add support to the potential positive impact of the FJC model on communities. These preliminary data suggest that FJCs can impact communities by offering support to victims and coordinating resources among partner organizations. Collaborative partnerships can be leveraged to lead to broader community changes that strengthen community-level responses to interpersonal violence through greater community awareness, opportunities for community members to contribute to solutions and the establishment of new resources that emerge from needs identified through the partnership.

Overall, there is a pressing need for research examining various aspects of the FJC model and identifying factors that contribute to its success at fostering collaboration, supporting victims and survivors, holding offenders accountable and preventing future violence. With the rapid growth of the FJC models, the need for research and evaluation to document the effectiveness and limitations of the model is high.

Designed to serve as a one-stop shop for victims of domestic violence and other forms of violence to seek help, FJCs offer, within a single location, multiple services from a variety of professional disciplines. These services include law enforcement, victim advocacy and prosecution. Although the FJC model is expanding rapidly across the USA and internationally, research to date is limited, and thus, the current paper will add to the research and evaluation basis for the FJC movement.

This paper aims to expose the violence intrinsic to globalization and to suggest a conceptual and practical domain focused on arresting and preventing the structural violence of globalization.

The paper integrates theory, scholarly literature and the author’s fieldwork analyzed through solidarity and liberationist methodologies.

The paper shows that severe, violent and irreparable destruction of formerly thriving and sustainable cultures and communities around the globe is an inherent component of globalization; current notions of “development” and “poverty” provide ideological cover for such destruction; a wide range of mainstream institutions and organizations (including governments, trade and financial institutions and national and multinational corporations) benefit from the destruction and collude in these dynamics, while a passive majority participates through its silence and consumptive lifestyle; and to arrest these dynamics requires awareness of the structural violence of development and globalization, and that those of us living in currently unsustainable societies commit both to re-localize our effects to our own communities and to change the operating rules of the global system.

This paper offers analysis, perspectives and practical considerations toward transformations essential to ending the structural violence of globalization, while inviting broad-based solidarity for further advancements.

Bridging global and local realities, the paper exposes systematic large-scale structural violence endemic to globalization, “development”, mainstream ideas about poverty and practices of “poverty reduction”. The paper identifies some fundamental requirements for arresting the structural violence of the global system.

Much research has focused on the police response to domestic violence; however, relatively little research has considered performance differences of various types of police officers. Although there has been widespread adoption of community policing by police departments across the country, it is not conclusive as to whether units with a specific community policing philosophy perform better than traditional units when handling domestic violence calls. The current study addresses this issue by analyzing the factors associated with victim participation; specifically, do officers and detectives operating under a specific community policing mandate produce higher rates of victim participation? Bivariate and multivariate analyses indicate that victim participation rates did not differ by a community policing orientation; rather, situational factors exert the strongest effect on victim participation.

The purpose of this paper is to present strategies for cultivating internal support, community partnerships and practitioner engagement for Hospital-based Violence Intervention Programs (HVIPs). In response to growing concerns about community violence and calls to engage the community in its solutions, HVIPs have increased in popularity as innovative and transdisciplinary approaches to violence intervention. HVIPs are one strategy under the broad purview of public health approaches to crime and violence – focusing on reaching recent victims of violence in emergency departments and leveraging this “teachable moment” to offer wrap-around services geared toward preventing future violence or revictimization.

This paper uses an autoethnographic and case study approach of Project HEAL (Help, Empower and Lead), a newly established HVIP at Jersey Shore University Medical Center.

While there is no “standard” approach, the importance of strong community partnerships and practitioner engagement prior to and during the HVIP implementation process is second to none.

This case study of Project HEAL’s initial implementation will provide information that can assist other HVIPs in creating and sustaining necessary internal support, community partnerships and practitioner engagement, and potentially help navigate forthcoming statewide and federal efforts.

Development of meaningful community partnerships and achievement of a high level of engagement from practitioners are key to the successful implementation of HVIPs, the processes of which are not always documented in literature.

The identification of network user relationship in Fancircle contributes to quantifying the violence index of user text, mining the internal correlation of network behaviors among users, which provides necessary data support for the construction of knowledge graph.

A correlation identification method based on sentiment analysis (CRDM-SA) is put forward by extracting user semantic information, as well as introducing violent sentiment membership. To be specific, the topic of the implementation of topology mapping in the community can be obtained based on self-built field of violent sentiment dictionary (VSD) by extracting user text information. Afterward, the violence index of the user text is calculated to quantify the fuzzy sentiment representation between the user and the topic. Finally, the multi-granularity violence association rules mining of user text is realized by constructing violence fuzzy concept lattice.

It is helpful to reveal the internal relationship of online violence under complex network environment. In that case, the sentiment dependence of users can be characterized from a granular perspective.

The membership degree of violent sentiment into user relationship recognition in Fancircle community is introduced, and a text sentiment association recognition method based on VSD is proposed. By calculating the value of violent sentiment in the user text, the annotation of violent sentiment in the topic dimension of the text is achieved, and the partial order relation between fuzzy concepts of violence under the effective confidence threshold is utilized to obtain the association relation.

The use of ‘community’ in the governance of minority ethnic groups in the UK is explored in relation to public responses to violence against women. It will be argued that effective prevention requires an understanding of the socio‐cultural contexts women face in negotiating culture and ‘honour’.

Healthcare personnel (HCP) are at high risk of facing violence globally. Their sanctity and respect are threatened by violence in healthcare settings. Mostly, this occurs at the hands of patients and community members. This study explores the reasons for disrespect and violence against HCP by patients and community members in selected communities of two provinces of Pakistan.

A qualitative study design was applied to develop an understanding of the processes that explained the community member's perception of disrespect and violence. A total of 12 focus group discussions (FGDs) with 11 community members on an average in each focus group and eight individual in-depth interviews (IDIs), each lasting for 40–50 min were conducted with community members. Data were analyzed thematically and guided by phenomenology.

The study found that community members perceived HCP as “angels on duty.” However they justified the anger of offenders as a result of shortcomings on the part of HCP and the healthcare settings. Furthermore, they blamed the chaos and ongoing crisis due to illiteracy and corruption within the society with existent poverty as triggers of violence and disrespect. Community members emphasized the role of media and labeled it as the game changer in building the image of HCP. They further stressed upon building competencies of the HCP and bridging the gap between HCP and communities to enhance respect and decrease violence on HCP.

Disrespect and violence against HCP can be minimized through improving competencies of HCP. Furthermore, media should play a positive role in safeguarding the rights of HCP and building their image. A holistic approach is suggested whereby all stakeholders should be actively involved in promoting awareness and respect for HCP.

Community members' perceptions have been taken into account, which is a unique and novel approach towards building inclusive communities.

The purpose of this article is two‐fold. First, it applies the PEN‐3 model to the topic of domestic violence within the Chinese American and Chinese immigrant community. The PEN‐3 model was developed by Collins Airhihenbuwa, and it focuses on placing culture at the forefront of health promotion. It consists of three dimensions: cultural identity, relationships and expectations, and cultural empowerment. The article offers practice recommendations from the PEN‐3 analysis to plan culturally relevant and sensitive domestic violence prevention, education, and services targeted to the Chinese American and Chinese immigrant community.

Using existing literature in the areas of domestic violence and health, mental health, and counseling interventions with Chinese Americans and immigrants, the PEN‐3 model, as an organizing framework, was applied to understand the phenomenon of domestic violence among Chinese Americans and Chinese immigrants in the United States.

How Chinese Americans and Chinese immigrants perceive domestic violence and how they obtain formal assistance are embedded within a larger sociocultural context including a host of factors ranging from personal, family, community, environmental, and structural variables.

The PEN‐3 model reinforces the importance in addressing domestic violence within an ecological and cultural framework. Harnessing traditional Chinese value systems (i.e. emphasis on collectivism, hierarchy, patriarchy) and collaborating with the community are essential in promoting culturally sensitive interventions.

Practice articles examining the application of the PEN‐3 model on domestic violence among Chinese Americans and Chinese immigrants are lacking. More often than not, culture and other social forces are minimized by practitioners who are guided by “Western ways of knowing.”

The purpose of this study was to explore the predictive validity of the revised Problem Identification Checklist (PIC‐R) in predicting inpatient and community violence using a retrospective design. The Historical Scale (H‐Scale) of the HCR‐20 was employed to control for static risk factors. The predictive accuracy between predictors and outcome measures was evaluated using Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) analysis. The PIC‐R significantly predicted inpatient violence (AUC range 0.77‐0.92) over a 12‐month follow‐up period but did not predict community violence. Conversely, the H‐Scale significantly predicted community violence (AUC 0.82) but did not predict inpatient violence over a 12‐month follow‐up period. The findings offer preliminary validation for the predictive accuracy of the PIC‐R for violence in a UK inpatient population. Additionally, the findings suggest that short‐term risk of violence within a psychiatric inpatient population may be more related to dynamic and clinical risk variables rather than to static ones.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to examine the components of a gang culture in conflict with society, and second, to explore how gangs, the community, and law enforcers externalize the gang problem from the vantage point of worldview and worldmaking.

The researcher gathered news articles from the Nexus-Lexis research database system within a one-year period (from February 2012 to February 2013). The data was randomly selected and representative of newspapers published throughout the USA. The news articles were coded based upon the aspects of culture (lens of perception, motives for human behaviors, criteria for evaluation, basis of identification, means for communication, justification for social stratification, and mode for production and consumption). A thematic analysis was also conducted to determine: the aspects of gang culture in conflicts with society; and how the gangs, the community, and the law enforcements externalize the gang conflict.

Results suggest that gang violence is largely due to issues of identity, values, and gang cohesiveness rather than the result of the pathologically based environmental conditions. Criteria for evaluation and issue of identity constituted 66 percent of the violent conflict with society. In the context of worldviews and worldmaking, gang members and law enforcement personnel are more likely to adopt a rigid, win-lose framework while members of the community are more likely to prescribe to a flexible and holistic perspective toward the gang problem. In sum, gang violence is not necessarily a deviant or antisocial act; rather, it is a result of the conflicting narratives between the gang cultures and the culture-at-large.

In dissecting gang behavior from a cultural perspective, it is easy to categorize gangs as a collective subculture. However, gang members may not view themselves as a subculture nor consider themselves as belonging to a subculture community.

By examining the function of culture – in this case, the gang culture – as it conflicts with society at large, one may better able to develop an action plan that emphasize identities, cultures, and values rather than crime and punishment. Also, it may help shed light on how the various stakeholders (i.e. the gangs, law enforcements, and the community) perceive the conflict, which may assist researcher to develop a comprehensive and holistic approach toward intervention. Finally, implementing a culturally based gang violence intervention may reduce cost.

This research is unique in that it analyzes the function of gang violence in relation to the society-at-large. Also, the research addresses the issue as to how the various stakeholders interpret the “gang problem.” Finally, this research is innovative in that it employs news articles as units of analysis rather than the traditional qualitative interviews or quantitative surveys.