Dr. Sharon Lambert:

It goes back to what I said in reply to Senator Ruane earlier. She said “irrational” and the Chairman has just said “think”. When the Chairman says they “think” they can solve an issue by the use of violence, the problem is that when the violence is occurring, there is no thinking going on because the stress response system has impacted on their ability to think. We all have the ability to lose our temper when we are very stressed, or most people have. The issue is why some people go that far and others do not. There are many young men who do not participate in violence. As I said, it is the cumulative factors. The more stress that is put on the system of the human body, the less ability the person has to think straight. Stress has a cumulative impact.

We might say that somebody thinks that being involved in violence is a way to act because somebody has slighted them and this is how they are going to respond to that. There are other stressors, such as poverty, social exclusion, chronic bullying and so on.

The issue will not have occurred on its own. There will be other stressors. The more we reduce the stressors on people, the more we reduce the number of violent incidents.