Causes of violence

"Violent developments: disruptive kids grow into their behavior" at Science News is about the complex causation of violent behavior, including gene/environment interaction. No mention of free will, as one would expect from a science magazine. This quote was interesting, connecting forgiveness with understanding causality: "Henry's feelings of rage abated as he grasped that his father struggled with his own deep-seated problems."

And "Home remedy" in the New York Times magazine is about helping violent kids using something called multi-systemic therapy (MST), an evidence-based intervention which operates on the assumption that "all of the causes of anti-social behavior should be attacked at once" and that "behavior is shaped by multiple aspects of the environment." So the emphasis is on changing the environment the kids are exposed to, especially in improving parental and peer influences.

If we put resources into such interventions the way we do into Iraq...