The depiction of social experience is most revealing when it considers people in extreme circumstances. The homeless youth who live on the streets of our cities confront desperate situations on a daily basis. Often without money, lacking shelter, hungry, and jobless, they frequently are involved in crime as onlookers, victims, and perpetrators. Yet, unlike homeless adults, who are more visible casualties of the cumulative toll of living on the street, homeless youth are difficult to distinguish from their better protected peers. Their youthfulness frequently obscures the seriousness of their problems. Fictional and media accounts rarely or sufficiently document the experiences of these youth, who are often overlooked in academic writing and research about the urban poor.

North American criminology also neglects street youth. Despite the adversity of street life and the prevalence of crime, contemporary criminology concentrates more extensively on youth living at home and attending school. This focus limits the study of more extreme social and economic situations, implying that the influence of adverse backgrounds is exaggerated and that problems of crime are sufficiently represented by the experiences of more ordinary young people.

In this book, we begin to address this neglect of street youth. We use observational, survey, and interview data gathered in two of the largest cities in Canada, Toronto and Vancouver, to document the family and school histories, living conditions, and, in particular, criminal experiences of youth who live on the streets. Our purpose is to bring into theoretical view the ways in which the background and developmental experiences of homeless youth and the foreground conditions of urban street life influence involvement in crime.