This paper analyses the pedagogical relation between the category of “the juvenile offender” and the street or the neighborhood. This is done on the basis of police archives from the 1930s and recollected police memories from the 1960s. Cases related to a growing working-class neighborhood in Copenhagen are chosen as empirical ground for an analysis of how the “juvenile offender” was constructed and how it became a pedagogical category to be “handled” and “intervened”. Special attention is given to the ways in which the street is governed and how signs of dangerousness and delinquency are constructed and given meaning through police practice and pedagogical work. This way the street is analyzed as a socio-symbolic battle-field intersecting pedagogical relations of identity, territory and state practice.

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