Conclusion

Abstract

In this book I have used a multilevel approach to better understand the nature and extent of intimate violence in a highly susceptible segment of the American population, urban minority gang-associated adolescent females. Findings reveal that females residing in this social environment fail to internalize conventional norms, values, expectations, and behaviors. Instead, they develop norms and values that are adaptative to the social-structural conditions of their communities that further increase their probability of engaging in high-risk behaviors such as sexual and physical violence. What I have emphasized is that in this social setting—isolated from the larger, fragile institutional order—resolving conflicts with violence has become normative. Such circumstances place the adolescent girls beyond risk for behaviors that have more deleterious consequences than for other females in more conventional social environments.