James F. Short Jr. is professor emeritus in the Department of Sociology at Washington State University at Pullman and president of the American Society of Criminology.

• Introduction -- Measuring Violent Crime: Trends and Social Distributions -- "Levels of Explanation" of Violent Crime -- Community and Neighborhood Contexts of Violent Crime -- The Role of Unsupervised Youth Groups in Violence -- Levels of Explanation of Violent Behavior Committed in Groups -- Explaining Violent Crime: The Macrosocial Level of Explanation -- The Individual Level of Explanation: Biobehavioral Influences and Control -- Explaining Violence: Learning, Personality, and Social Contexts of Poverty, Race, and Ethnicity -- Controlling Violent Crime