ABSTRACT
Children are at the heart of contemporary debates about public space. On the one hand the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have witnessed increased popular concern in North America and Europe about young children’s vulnerability to sexual assault and murder in public space. This anxiety about children’s safety appears to be profoundly affecting relationships between adults and children in public places. On the other hand, there appears to be a simultaneous rising tide of adult fear about the anarchy and uncontrollability of young people. Moral panics about everything from child murderers, and teenage gangs, to juvenile crime rates are being elided to fuel adults’ fears that public space is being overrun by dangerous adolescents, threatening others’ personal safety and disrupting the moral order of the street.
