Dr. Catherine Gallagher:
Children of Everyday Violence:
A Contemporary Understanding of Society's Obligation to Vulnerable Youth
Date: April 18, 2013
Time: 3:30pm
Location: Barrister Club
Abstract
Our collective psyche suffers from the recent mass shootings of innocent young people. The unspeakable horrors in Norway, Tucson, Colorado and Connecticut have brought US policy makers face-to-face with a public demanding action, and rightly so. But how do we reconcile the crafting of legislation borne from these acute events with the reality that there are exponentially more youth who are lost to a chronic and pernicious cycle of negligence and violence? A brief tour of the past century, exploring how scholars have understood violence and crime and its implications for our youth, provides a portrait of vulnerable children who are invisible and at great risk. A survey of disciplines, laws, and data points from the media and national surveys suggests that an unacceptably large portion of our youth fail to become thriving adults. Some succumb from their own behavior, but many more are victims of their environment. They are lost to murder, suicide, substance misuse, neglect, abandonment, and most often, systematic and predictable marginalization as they pursue stability and safety. Their health suffers early, their productivity is markedly lower, and their ability to contribute to family and community is thwarted. The science of the past century suggests that policy antidotes will have a far greater reach if they are designed to account for all youth touched by violence, especially those whose daily tragedies do not make it to the front page.
The Lecturer: Catherine Gallagher, Ph.D., focuses on improving the intersection between health care and justice agencies to better meet the needs of high-risk populations and the public health of their larger communities. Her work on justice-involved adolescents has appeared in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the Journal of Adolescent Health, Social Science and Medicine and Pediatrics. In addition to her primary research, she develops, monitors and analyzes national statistical programs and provides federal agencies with policy guidance, routinely working with the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Centers for Disease Control, the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality, the Office of the Surgeon General, and the U.S. Bureau of the Census. She led the epidemiological and legal research efforts behind a joint-agency Federal Initiative on Juvenile Justice Health, and currently serves on the Campbell Collaboration's Crime and Justice Steering Group.