Safety and Risky Behaviors
Youth violence refers to a variety of harmful behaviors that youth can experience as victims, witnesses or offenders and that can cause emotional harm, injury, disability or death. Violence and the threat of violence can impact the well-being of youth, families, schools and communities, and can generate high social and economic costs.
The Youth violence indicator is the number of arrests of youths under age 18 in Rhode Island for assault and weapons offenses and the percentage of high school students who report “ever experiencing violence at school.” These two measures of youth violence are used to account for violence that leads to arrest as well as violence between youth that may not come to the attention of the police.