Based on recent examples from Britain, this article seeks to explore some strategic policy issues involved in developing an approach to `community crime prevention'. The term `community crime prevention' may serve a useful purpose if it emphasizes the importance of the context of crime-preventive action; particularly, as a framework for action which establishes the necessary social preconditions through which individual criminal motivation or behaviour can be changed, or crime-related harms reduced, through everyday, routine practice. The article, first, outlines some ways in which social context affects crime and its control in residential locales and, second, summarizes recent research into the distribution of crime and safety in British communities. Lastly, it sketches three different governmental strategies for crime reduction: the promotion of the private control of crime; the `weeding' of crime from communities; and the building of a new institutional order.
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