ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the mismatch between the policy landscape and the evidenced association between public spaces and young people's experiences of peer-on-peer abuse. It shows that relocation is positioned as a means by which young people can be removed from the abusive public-space environments. The chapter outlines young people's use of violence on the streets that can be in response to a fear for their personal safety — fears that can be further aggravated by the process of relocating their peers. Parks and streets provide public areas where young people can form relationships and friendships without the adult supervision that they experience at home or in school. In some neighbourhoods, violence, criminality and abuse appear to have become routine to the point of fatalism for some young people. Although young men's accounts of street-based victimisation have been documented in qualitative research over decades, the scale of these experiences has been notoriously difficult to establish — largely because of under-reporting.
