Table of Contents

Introduction.  Masking poverty.  Twenty-four seven society.  Outline  1. A mugger's paradise.  The unusual suspects.  Working poor.  Growing up in a poor community.  Through the looking glass.  Being poor in an affluent society.  Shovelin shit: Nova's local economy.  Ordinary world.  Crime as status.  Welfare and Workfare.  Poverty, culture and crime.  Too much too young.  Social exclusion.  Stitched up: exclusion at school.  Compulsory youth training.  Working in a service economy.  Room 101.  Crime and consumption  2. Nova.  The Project.  Uncle Sean Born and bred.  Spirit of a community.  The rule of the street.  Linden's Nova: it's me, it's who I am.  Survival of the fittest.  Elements of a culture.  Orpheus.  Going under.  Work and leisure.  Working in Nova.  A bit of business.  Fuckin' chaos  3. Work Life or death.  Children under a shadow.  Just Thievin'.  Racism.  Gender and crime.  Youthful aspirations.  Shit.  Street.  4. Respect.  Gangsters.  Drugs and crime.  Poverty and drug use.  Inside out.  Social exclusion in action.  Achieving respect.  Floetry.  Exclusion through style.  Hip Hop culture.  Watching communities.  Risk and defeat.  Maintaining respect.  The enemy within.  Feeling for one another.  Faith in the future  5. Education.  Problem youth.  Ghetto heaven.  One hand doesn't know what the other hand's doin'.  A new initiative.  Learning to labour.  Escape attempts.  You got no hopes: working on Workfare.  Urban regeneration.  The Workfare carousel.  Been here before: repackaging the Project Behind the scenes.  Making history.  The Breakfast Club.  Demonising community  6. Community.  Living with poverty.  Stigmatising poor people.  Changing times.  Thinking about society.  Fatal strategies.  People power.  Township community.  They think you're bad.  War on community.  The last frontier.  Staying alive  7. Society.  A dolls' house.  Heroes and villains.  Imagining crime.  Search and destroy.  Consumer protection.  Faith in the city.  The golden years.  Law and order.  Back to basics.  Intel: crime in an information society.  Being human

About the Author

Robert McAuley studied for a doctorate in Criminology at the University of Cambridge, and was formerly a Research Fellow at London South Bank University. He is currently writing a book about young people's experiences of higher education.