Junk for Code

holes in the net

From the window of my study I can look down on the street below..It is often full of street kids hanging out in a deserted house just down the road from a youth crisis care centre. Violence and aggression is the normal reponse topt he waord around them. The street has the feel of the war zone. The deserted house is continually trashed.

From what I can gather many of the street kids used to be part of,or belong to the crisis care centre, but they are no longer. They have been ejected, presumably because their behaviour transgressed the norms of the centre. The centre now has no responsibility for them. It is only concerned with what happens within its walls.

And the kids?

The kids (14-18) are now outside the welfare net, living on the street, presumably making making money from drugs and prostitution for their booze sniffing and American-style street clothes. The centre becomes a magnet for more and more kids and so they come into conflict with the residents who are encouraged to move into the inner city by the Adelaide City Council.

Instead of welfare services being provided for these street kids they are left to fend for themselves. We have a law and order response by the police. So the trajectory is clear. The more violent of the boys will have a career path of becoming criminals whilst the girls will become pregnant and have a career of prostitutes.

This is the inner city. The emergency community services cannot cope. The State Government does not provide enough funding for the volunteer charity organizations. Its media image is being tough on crime. It plays well in the suburbs.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at June 2, 2003 11:02 PM | TrackBack