The article begins with an analysis of the youth labor market. This has created high levels of youth unemployment, has dramatically worsened the educational situation of those who seek to leave school without high level qualifications, and has had major consequences for the income available to young people. These forms of economic adversity have direct impacts on the social lives of the early school leavers and create a number of possible friction points with adults, such as conflicts over public space recognizable as the “mall problem.” The article argues that there are particular forms of economic adversity which affect specific groups of young people and these in turn may have consequences in terms of higher levels of recorded youth crime. References