While youth violence has always been a critical part of delinquency, the modern epidemic is marked by high rates of gun violence. Adolescents in cities possess and carry guns on a large scale, guns are often at the scene of youth violence, and guns often are used. Guns play a central role in initiating, sustaining, and elevating the epidemic of youth violence. The demand for guns among youth was fueled by an "ecology of danger," comprising street gangs, expanding drug markets with high intrinsic levels of violence, high rates of adult violence and fatalities, and cultural styles of gun possession and carrying. Guns became symbols of respect, power, identity, and manhood to a generation of youth, in addition to having strategic value for survival. The relationship between guns and youth violence is complex. The effects of guns are mediated by structural factors that increase the youth demand for guns, the available supply, and culture and scripts which teach kids lethal ways to use guns.Adolescent violence has been part of the urban landscape in this country since its origins. From the colonial period (Sante 1991), to the waves of immigration in the early nineteenth century, to the formation of ethnic street gangs in the 1890s (O'Kane 1992), to the rise in delinquency and violence rates in the 1950s, fighting has been an integral part of adolescence. Beginning in the 1970s, rates of nonlethal adoles-

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An evaluation was conducted to estimate the effects of a well-funded community policing demonstration program in Joliet, Illinois. Using a nonequivalent pretest-posttest control group design, changes in officers' perceptions and behaviors were examined over a 2-year period, during which time they were exposed to new training programs, organizational restructuring, and problem-solving activities. The results showed few changes in officers' perceptions of management practices or job satisfaction, but documented positive gains in attitudes and knowledge about community policing and some street-level behaviors. Alternative explanations for the results are discussed.

In 1983, sociologist Donald Black proposed the theory of “Crime as Social Control,” in which he argued that for the socially disadvantaged, crime is commonly moralistic and can be characterized as self-help in the pursuit of justice when legal protection fails. This article uses Black's theory as a framework to assess the role of violence among African American male youth in disadvantaged urban communities in New York City. Using in-depth interview data for 416 young violent male offenders, the authors analyze youths' perspectives on their personal safety; access to legal, governmental, and communal protection from violence; the effectiveness of the criminal justice system and police in addressing crime and violence in their neighborhoods; and the need to rely on self- and group/gang-protection as a means of social control. The implications for self-help theory are discussed.