Mean Streets

Mean Streets is a field study of young people who have left home and school and are living on the streets of Toronto and Vancouver. This book includes the personal narratives and explanatory accounts, in their own words, of some of the more than four hundred young people who participated in the summer-long study, which featured intensive personal interviews. The study examines why youth take to the streets, their struggles to survive on the street, their victimization and involvement in crime, their associations with other street youth, especially within 'street families', their contacts with the police, and their efforts to leave the street and rejoin conventional society. Major theories of youth crime are analyzed and reappraised in the context of a new social capital theory of crime.

"Hagan and McCarthy show in an evocative new way why social programs to combat homelessness, hunger, and child abuse; active labour market programs; and resorative justice, rather than stigmatizing punishment, are the policy prescription that should occupy our attention. Homeless youth are found not to be alone and untouchable, but touched in destructive ways that might be repaired. Through making the shift from school criminology to street criminology, Hagan and McCarthy suggest how the field might shake off its current nihilism. Mean Streets reframes criminology's great debates with data of a most illuminating sort." John Braithwaite, The Australian National University, "Transcending the qualitative-quantitative divide, Hagan and McCarthy achieve a milestone in criminological research with the publication of Mean Streets. Based on a seamless blend of qualitative interviews with state-of-the-art quantitative analysis, Mean Streets provides criminology with an exciting new understanding of crime on the streets. This is `must' reading at its best." Robert Sampson, University of Chicago, "This unlikely combination of sensitive ethnography, sophisticated sampling and data analysis, and subtle theoretical argument yields a sensational outsome. Hagan and McCarthy revive and update the Chicago school of urban sociology with this brilliant account of street youth, homelessness and crime. Sterile debates about individual pathology vs. harsh environment are dissolved and transcended by their complex and lucid account of real individuals in their real social contexts. A landmark achievement." Mark Granovetter, Stanford University, "A pathbreaking study of street youth that sets admirable standards of inquiry on a major social problem. In the voices of youth and field reports over time, we discover the harsh conditions that lead young people to life on the city streets, the human cost of their survival strategies, and the way some manage to escape. A truly innovative account of troubled lives in motion that should inform policy debates." Glen Elder, University of North Carolina, "This is a masterful study of an important, but neglected population of youth: those who reside on the streets. I believe their study will have a fundamental impact on the field, moving us beyond our almost exclusive focus on school-based populations, reemphasizing the importance of adverse experiences in the explanation of crime, and providing a model of theoretical integration that takes account of both macro- and micro-factors. Their skillful blend of qualitative and quantitative analyses makes for a most riveting book." Robert Agnew, Emory University