According to current projections, the number of homeless in the United States will continue to swell in the 1990s unless more aggressive efforts to combat the problem are initiated. Based upon a thorough analysis of the underlying social and political causes of homelessness in this country, this study takes a hard look at the realities and misconceptions that surround the victims. Gregg Barak demonstrates how current public service programs inadequately address the issue, and proposes governmental policy changes that could prove beneficial.

In an effort to dispel the myths that stereotype the homeless, this study places their plight within the continuing domestic and worldwide economic emergency and defines their demographics according to such factors as age, sex, race, health, and education. Barak's subsequent focus on the violence and criminality associated with the condition and treatment of the homeless uncovers controversial issues of injustice and constitutionality, and aims the discussion toward possible solutions for this burgeoning problem.

GREGG BARAK is Professor and Head of the Anthropology and Criminology Department at Eastern Michigan University. He is the author of In Defense of Whom? A Critique of Criminal Justice Reform (1980) and editor of Crimes by the Capitalist State: An Introduction to State Criminality, and numerous articles in related journals.