Book Review: Street People and the Contested Realms of Public Space

• Author: Mats Franzén
• Published date: 01 December 2006
• Date: 01 December 2006
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0734016806295598
• Subject Matter: Articles

scientific literature, the study has some serious limitations. First, Hoffman selected on the

dependent variable and included in her study only those youth who had demonstrated a com-

mitment to change. Youths who faced similar life situations but had failed to “mature out” of

crime, were not studied, even though the existence of such individuals was mentioned.

Without such a comparison group, it is impossible to determine whether the behavioral

change reported by her study participations was due to the factors she highlights (e.g., the car-

ing and concern of health care professionals) or to a natural “aging out” of crime that would

have occurred regardless of their injuries, hospitalization, or access to support services (by the

time of the study’s completion, the participants ranged in age from 20 to 32 years).

A second limitation of this study is that it draws mainly on the public health literature

and overlooks important works on continuity, change, and desistance in the field of crimi-

nology, such as Robert Sampson and John Laub’s (1993) Crime in the Making. This is a

major oversight and helps to explain the absence of an overarching theoretical framework.

Lacking such a framework, Hoffman simply discusses a list of factors that appear to be

relevant to change.

Nevertheless, as an exploratory study, Hoffman’s work is still worthy of attention by

criminologists and students. The accounts of the former offenders in this study are gripping

and shed light on the nature of participation in an extremely violent lifestyle. These accounts

also put a human face on a tragedy that continues to unfold in urban America. This book

brings additional attention to the problem and helps to communicate a sense of urgency

regarding the need for a comprehensive, national approach to youth violence prevention.

Timothy Brezina

Emory University, Atlanta, GA

Reference

Sampson, Robert J., & Laub, John H. (1993). Crime in the making: Pathways and turning points through life.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Amster, R. (2004). Street People and the Contested Realms of Public Space. New York:

LFB Scholarly Publishing.

DOI: 10.1177/0734016806295598

Based on a case study conducted in downtown Tempe, Arizona, this book is about street

people and the contested realms of public space. In Tempe, as in several other U.S. cities,

the downtown area has been redeveloped quite recently, socially and economically

upgraded, a development increasingly coming in conflict with how street people are using

public space. Thus, redevelopment interested both privatized space, making use of business

improvement districts (BIDs), and tried to implement a sidewalk ordinance to exclude

street people from downtown Tempe. These people were often recognized as a nuisance for,

if not a threat to, the new, more exclusive, downtown being developed. Now, these efforts

were being resisted, in situ, but also in court. Amster follows this struggle up until the

400 Criminal Justice Review