The way I think about violence has to do with the importance/tractability/neglectedness framework: I see it as very important but not all that tractable. I do see a lot of its importance as related to the indirect harms it causes. What does it do to a person’s family when they are assaulted or killed, or when they go to prison for violence? How does it affect their children and other children around who are forming a concept of what’s normal? As a social worker, I saw a lot of people harmed by the violence they themselves had carried out, whether as soldiers, gang members, or family members. (I think about indirect effects with more typical EA causes too—I suspect parental grief is a major cost of child mortality that we don’t pay enough attention to.)
My understanding is that the most promising interventions on large-scale violence prevention are around preventing return to war after an initial conflict, since areas that just had a war are particularly likely to have another one soon. Copenhagen Consensus considers the most effective intervention “deploy UN peacekeeping forces” which isn’t easy to influence (though there are also some others listed that seem more tractable.)
http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/sites/default/files/CP%2B-%2BConflicts%2BFINISHED.pdf
The way I think about violence has to do with the importance/tractability/neglectedness framework: I see it as very important but not all that tractable. I do see a lot of its importance as related to the indirect harms it causes. What does it do to a person’s family when they are assaulted or killed, or when they go to prison for violence? How does it affect their children and other children around who are forming a concept of what’s normal? As a social worker, I saw a lot of people harmed by the violence they themselves had carried out, whether as soldiers, gang members, or family members. (I think about indirect effects with more typical EA causes too—I suspect parental grief is a major cost of child mortality that we don’t pay enough attention to.)
My understanding is that the most promising interventions on large-scale violence prevention are around preventing return to war after an initial conflict, since areas that just had a war are particularly likely to have another one soon. Copenhagen Consensus considers the most effective intervention “deploy UN peacekeeping forces” which isn’t easy to influence (though there are also some others listed that seem more tractable.) http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/sites/default/files/CP%2B-%2BConflicts%2BFINISHED.pdf