Children's street connections in a Canadian community

Preteen children's street activities in a small southern Ontario city were examined for understandings about how children on the street affiliate with one another and with adults after school. The everyday connections between children, shopkeepers, and municipal workers demonstrate that the municipal workers and merchants can offer caring, support, and sanctions to children when parents or teachers are not accompanying them. This provides children on the street with a form of guidance from extrafamilial mentors. The findings point to community-based potentials for naturally occurring crime prevention strategies, a significant aspect of Canada's new law: Youth Criminal Justice Act. 2003.     

Crime prevention participation:An exploratory analysis

Most past research on crime and crime prevention has focused on their occurrence in urban settings. Relatively little attention has been given to crime and citizen crime prevention in small town/rural areas. The present study uses secondary data from the National Crime Survey: Victim Risk Supplement, 1983 to investigate citizen participation in five crime prevention domains within large urban areas and small town/rural areas. The results suggest that, while there are some similarities in citizen participation, various factors have different degrees of impact in different locations. Further, differences in crime prevention participation are more a function of the type of crime prevention than of the size of the local population.     

If You Want Affluence, Prepare for War

The economy underlying the way of life taken for granted in Western industrial, affluent-consumer societies is an imperial system involving extreme injustice, oppression and use of terror. After documenting this situation at some length, attention is given to the general issue of affluence, resource scarcity and peace and security in a world of limited resources, severe inequality and obsession with economic growth and ever-rising living standards. It is argued that peace and security cannot be expected unless the rich and over-consuming countries undertake a fundamental, enormous (and improbable) shift away from their commitments to affluence and growth and towards The Simpler Way.