Lives of Street Kids

Child, Youth Issues
Environmental Studies > Environmental Problems
Sociology > Welfare

A comparison essay that contrasts "Youth Gangs and Moral Panics in Santa Cruz" by Tim Lucas and "Living on the Street: Social Organization and Gender Relations in Australian Street Kids" by Hilary Winchester and Lauren Costello.

1,390 words () | 2 sources | APA | 2002 Canada

Paper Summary:

Discussing how gang activity is on the rise throughout the United States, along with the poverty that is the root cause. Comparing two articles that deal with this issue - Tim Lucas' article focuses on the general panic across America concerning the presence and spread of gangs. It explores the barriers built between the white majority and the impoverished Hispanic minority in Santa Cruz's Beach Flats area, and discusses how these barriers have affected the rise of gangs. The second article details a study in which Australian street kids were observed and interviewed. This study focused on gender relations between street kids as well as social organization and moral conduct. These two articles are compared on several grounds, this first being an assessment of the main points of each, second is an evaluation of their contributions to the literature on this subject. Next, the differing approaches to research are contrasted, as well as the results of this research. Finally, the strengths and weaknesses of each article are compared.

From the Paper:

"The issue of urban poverty, homelessness and gangs is a very serious one, and will only continue to gain importance as more and more of the world develops. These two articles both deal with this issue but in very different ways. Lucas tries to develop a model that can be universally applied to urban gangs, and does this through the example of the Beach Flats area of Santa Cruz. It's main conclusions are that although youth crime is increasing, there is an over inflated fear of this increase, and that it is the boundaries formed in the midst of this moral panic that the problem of youth gangs is exacerbated. Winchester and Costello's article is at the opposite end of the spectrum, in that it focuses solely on a single group of homeless children, in an attempt to understand their nature more thoroughly, but with no attempt made to provide deeper insight into the problem of homelessness as a whole."