Currie, Elliott

Describes the dimensions and consequences of violence in black communities, explores its causes, and offers an urgent plea for long-overdue social action to end it.

Interviews with twenty youths between the ages of fourteen and seventeen confined for various reasons in a juvenile hall.

Examines the causes of the rising crime rates involving middle-class adolescents and drug abuse, violence, and suicide and maintains that today's teens live in a culture of exclusion and neglect that has left them with few options among an unforgiving society.