Risk Factors in Action: Unexpected Consequences of Actuarial Approaches to Gender-Based Youth Violence

• In Event: 158 - Regular Session. Social Policy

Abstract

Risk factors are statistically derived markers that predict future harm or danger based on data on past events. Increasingly, public health efforts use risk factors to design programs intended to prevent violence and deploy them on individuals labeled at-risk. This manuscript, drawn from a larger research project on violence prevention programs in Los Angeles, explores two unexpected byproducts of the mobilization of risk factors in the prevention of gender-based youth violence. Using participant observation, interview, and content analysis, two ways of mobilizing risk factors are discussed: curricularization, whereby risk factor data is converted into educational curricula, and at-risk labeling, whereby risks are used to target specific populations. In the translation from risk data to action, inequality is re-inscribed and an ethic of empowerment and personal responsibility is constructed as structural forces and lived experiences are obscured.

Author

• Max A. Greenberg, University of Southern California