Description
Violence has been common in the past, and it is common in most contemporary societies today. Collective violence in the form of wars and civil riots, as well as in political upheavals, may involve thousands of individual acts of assault, murder, and arson. The origin and the nature of collective violence on the whole, however, differs markedly from individual acts of violence such as criminal homicide, assault, and forcible rape, all of which involve the accomplishment of a personal objective through a violent act, whether it is an argument, personal dispute, or sexual intercourse. Criminological research on crimes of violence has been carried out primarily in the developed countries, particularly in the United States, Great Britain, and Italy. From this research we have learned that most acts of violence grow out of an interaction situation in which the act comes to be defined as requiring violence and in which the victim plays a part in precipitating the resulting action.
