Despite this, force is used routinely against juveniles by police. In 1974, the US Department of Justice assumed primary responsibility for delinquency prevention programmes and created the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, which has supported the "Blueprints for violence prevention" programme at the University of Colorado Boulder. Public health
The public health approach is a science-driven, population-based, interdisciplinary, intersectoral approach based on the ecological model which emphasizes primary prevention. Rather than focusing on individuals, the public health approach aims to provide the maximum benefit for the largest number of people, and to extend better care and safety to entire populations. The public health approach is interdisciplinary, drawing upon knowledge from many disciplines including medicine, epidemiology, sociology, psychology, criminology, education and economics. Because all forms of violence are multi-faceted problems, the public health approach emphasizes a multi-sectoral response. It has been proved time and again that cooperative efforts from such diverse sectors as health, education, social welfare, and criminal justice are often necessary to solve what are usually assumed to be purely "criminal" or "medical" problems. The public health approach considers that violence, rather than being the result of any single factor, is the outcome of multiple risk factors and causes, interacting at four levels of a nested hierarchy (individual, close relationship/family, community and wider society) of the Social ecological model. From a public health perspective, prevention strategies can be classified into three types:

Primary prevention – approaches that aim to prevent violence before it occurs.
Prevention
The threat and enforcement of physical punishment has been a tried and tested method of preventing some violence since civilisation began. It is used in various degrees in most countries. Public awareness campaigns
Cities and counties throughout the United States organize "Violence Prevention Months" where the mayor, by proclamation, or the county, by a resolution, encourage the private, community and public sectors to engage in activities that raise awareness that violence is not acceptable through art, music, lectures and events. For example, Violence Prevention Month coordinator, Karen Earle Lile in Contra Costa County, California created a Wall of Life, where children drew pictures that were put up in the walls of banks and public spaces, displaying a childs view of violence they had witnessed and how it affected them, in an effort to draw attention to how violence affects the community, not just the people involved. Interpersonal violence
A review of scientific literature by the World Health Organization on the effectiveness of strategies to prevent interpersonal violence identified the seven strategies below as being supported by either strong or emerging evidence for effectiveness. These strategies target risk factors at all four levels of the ecological model. Child–caregiver relationships
Among the most effective such programmes to prevent child maltreatment and reduce childhood aggression are the Nurse Family Partnership home-visiting programme and the Triple P (Parenting Program). There is also emerging evidence that these programmes reduce convictions and violent acts in adolescence and early adulthood, and probably help decrease intimate partner violence and self-directed violence in later life.