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Mean Streets: Youth Crime and Homelessness

NCJ Number
172925
Author(s)
J Hagan; B McCarthy
Date Published
1997
Length
311 pages
Annotation
This volume covers the role of social programs in dealing with youth crime and homelessness, based on a field study of young people who left home and school and were living on the streets of Toronto and Vancouver, Canada.
Abstract
The volume includes personal narratives and explanatory accounts of some of the more than 400 young people who participated in the study. The study looks at why young people returned to the streets, struggles to survive on the streets, victimization and involvement in crime, associations with other street youth, contacts with the police, and efforts to leave the streets and rejoin conventional society. The volume also analyzes major theories of youth crime in the context of a new social capital theory of crime. Volume chapters focus on such topics as street and school criminology, street youth and street settings, adversity and crime on the streets, criminal embeddedness and criminal capital, street youth in street groups, and street crime amplification. An appendix describes the field study methods. References, notes, tables, figures, and maps