ABSTRACT
In the last two decades and current post-industrial economy, US youth have experienced ‘the most rapid deterioration in economic and social conditions since the Depression’ (Males, 1993:18). Since 1973, youth poverty has increased by 51 per cent, one in four young people now live in poverty, and violent crime and drug deaths among youth have doubled. These worsening conditions and a deepening youth unemployment crisis have generally been met by denial and a ‘blaming of the victims’. Negative images of young people perpetuated by the media disproportionately impact upon non-white low income youth and severely compromise the quantity and quality of social programmes available to urban youth in general (Gooding-Williams, 1993). These images are often used to justify punitive rather than socially supportive policies, resulting in reductions in physical recreation amenities, the defunding of youth organisations, curfews and other restrictions on young people’s free access to public space (Rose, 1994; Medoff and Sklar, 1994; Jennings, 1992; Dawsey, 1995; Nauer, 1995).
