Asian/Pacific Islander Youth Violence Prevention Center: Community Mobilization Efforts to Reduce and Prevent Youth Violence

Abstract

Although youth violence is a serious concern in the United States, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) youth have generally been neglected as a demographic group for scholarly inquiry or community mobilization efforts. This lack of attention in the violence prevention field is indicative of two perceptual impediments with which AAPI communities have struggled for decades: (1) That AAPIs represent a relatively small portion of the United States population, and (2) That AAPIs are stereotyped as “model minorities” who do not encounter serious social obstacles and who lack ethnic heterogeneity. This paper challenges these concerns, and describes two community mobilization efforts to prevent youth violence in AAPI communities. Both of these efforts were carried out from 2000 to 2003 by the University of Hawaii, Asian/Pacific Islander Youth Violence Prevention Center. Findings from these mobilization efforts highlight the need for long-term university–community commitments, in which university entities take a leadership role in disaggregating AAPI juvenile justice data. Another critical need is to work with previously marginalized ethnic groups within the AAPI population.