Community Crime Prevention

Community crime prevention refers to actions intended to change the social conditions that are believed to sustain crime in residential communities. Different approaches have evolved, which can be best understood as a succession of policy paradigms emerging as responses to changing urban conditions: community organizing; tenant involvement; resource mobilization; community defense (both intentional organizing and environmental modification); preserving order; and protecting the vulnerable. Prevention in high-crime areas presents particular difficulties for community approaches. Community approaches have foundered mostly because of insufficient understanding of the nature of social relations within residential areas and of how community crime careers are shaped by the wider urban market.