Description

Safe Spaces: California Children Enter a Policy Debate

Sandra Meucci and Jim Redmon discuss how the teenagers involved in their pilot projects are defining their need for “safe spaces” in ways that usefully inform the current policy debate about community safety. Rather than the focus on prohibition and incarceration implicit in current policies, these adolescents are interested in the multi-generational effects of toxic pollution and in preserving public spaces and youth programs for safety’s sake. They offer a fresh analysis on the causes of youth crime that do not further instantiate community policing, youth curfews, and tougher sentencing as the only solutions, and provide compelling reasons for bringing policy analysts together with youth and community constituencies to define and explore policy issues from young people’s perspectives.

Asian Americans, California, Latina-Latino youth, maps, safety, social policy, space, geographical, urban policy, youth and violence, youth programs and projects

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 24, No. 3 (1997): 139-151