ABSTRACT

Youth Crime and Youth Culture in the Inner City offers an interpretive account of juvenile delinquency within the modern inner city, an environment which is characterized by a long history of social deprivation and high rates of crime. A wide range of topics are explored, such as young people's motivation for, frequency of, and attitudes towards, a variety of illegal behaviors, such as street robbery, burglary, theft, drug use, drug selling and violence. Why do young people commit these offences? Who do they commit them against? How do they feel afterwards? This book attempts to answer these important theoretical questions, utilizing ethnographic research collected over a seven year period and based around the London inner city borough of Lambeth.