Reconsidering risk: implications for violence intervention programmes

This commentary critically examines the language of risk in firearm violence prevention research and practice. While federal, state and health system investments have been made to reduce levels of firearm violence, intervention models and broader discourses about gun violence often employ narrow definitions of risk to define the issue. We assess how frameworks used in understanding firearm violence rely on racialised assumptions that obscure the structural conditions which shape people’s lives. Notions of risk in violence prevention research and practice frequently, and in many cases inadvertently, individualise the causes of community violence and may contribute to the racialisation and stigmatisation of those most likely to experience violence. In doing so, researchers and programmes treat risk (a probability distributed across populations) as an attribute of particular people rather than as an expression of the conditions that produce it. Additionally, the dominant discourses of risk have overlooked how those who are most likely to experience firearm violence understand what factors shape the likelihood of being injured. Scholars in the firearm violence research and prevention practice space have emphasised that the language used to describe the issue has real-world implications. We argue that greater conceptual clarity in the distinction between risk and risk factors, as well as transparency in how risk is defined and operationalised, is vital for fostering structurally grounded approaches to prevention.