Young People, Community Space and Social Control

THE SOCIAL AND PHYSICAL CONSTRUCTION OF URBAN SPACE IS A CRUCIAL element in the manner in which policing and the criminalisation of young people occurs in Australian society. For it is the conflict over the use of particular urban spaces which in many ways forms the basis of the relationship between young people and the police, and hence the initial phases of the formal processes of the criminal justice system. At one level it could be argued that it is the heavy-handedness of the police and/or the misbehaviour of young people, which is at the heart of "street crime" and the clashes that do occur on the street between these groups. The routine use of violence, harassment and threats by the police has been ably and convincingly documented (Alder 1991; White et al. 1991; Cunneen 1990a; Burdekin 1989); but so too has the chronic disrespect for the law and law officials on the part of many young people (Alder et al. 1992). A focus exclusively on the immediate relationship between young people and the police would, however, beg the question of the wider structural contexts and parameters of the form and content of this relationship. Simply put, while it can be demonstrated at an empirical and descriptive level that young people and the police are each in their own right "at fault" when it comes to the tensions and conflicts at street level, this in itself is not sufficient to explain why and how these are occurring. The recognition and acknowledgment of broad structural forces in the shaping of particular social relationships has important strategic and policy implications. For if the source of conflict is perceived or theorised as lying simply in the immediate antagonism between the "actors" (individual police officers and young persons), then any "remedial" action taken will tend to concentrate primarily or solely on reforming these "actors". In and of themselves, measures such as better training for the police or legal education for young people, while useful perhaps, are nevertheless limited. They will remain so to the extent that they are not linked to significant changes in the context within which police carry out their work and the uses which young people make of the streets (see Youth Justice Coalition 1990).