Traces the development and history of reform of the Massachusetts State Department of Human Services, which departed abruptly from a tradition of institutionalizing young offenders. The Massachusetts approach demonstrates the elements of successful intervention with young offenders through intensive services, community-based programs, small case…

Studied the impact of victimization and fear of crime on 56 Latina teenagers in urban and suburban areas. Fear of crime was associated not only with the variables traditionally correlated with fear of crime, but also with feelings of identity. Also examined were coping mechanisms Latina teenagers used to deal with those fears. (SLD)

Explores the criminalization of young people's alternative cultural spaces as a strategy of social and cultural control, a defense of mainstream cultural space and its boundaries. Contemporary social control, the emerging political economy of urban life, and the evolving connections of youth, crime, and cultural space are considered. (SLD)

Presents and discusses the "street scripts" of five African American urban high school and college students, writings that reflect personal perspectives on urban life and crime. These young people know that their lives, desires, and dreams are quite different from those that have been constructed in the public spaces of politics and the…

Explores how schooling serves to perpetuate the social expectations that criminalize urban Latino youth, following a sample of eight junior high school students. Even more than the racism of individual teachers, institutionalized racism stereotypes these students as doomed to fail or destined to be gang members. (SLD)