The Ecological Approach to Explaining Delinquency

Abstract

For those who have spent most of their lives in small-town America, it is no longer surprising if a visit to the city brings words of caution from friends about where not to go for an evening stroll. Whether fear of becoming a victim is completely justified by the facts, or is an artifact of the imagination, or a creation of the media, we are warned to avoid neighborhoods in which ordinary street crime is commonplace and which is frequented by persons on the way to prison or just released from prison.