Book Review: Carr, P. J. (2005). Clean Streets: Controlling Crime, Maintaining Order, and Building Community Activism. New York: New York University Press, pp. 220

• Author: George E. Capowich
• Published date: 01 December 2007
• Date: 01 December 2007
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016807310654
• Subject Matter: Articles

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Criminal Justice Review
analysis products to manage their tactical and strategic policing efforts. This final chapter
presents potential problematic issues related to CPTED and crime analysis in the form of
critiques, and as such, allows stakeholders to plan to avoid conflict with the citizens of their
communities.
D. Lee Gilbertson
Saint Cloud State University
Carr, P. J. (2005). Clean Streets: Controlling Crime, Maintaining
Order, and Building Community Activism. New York: New York
University Press, pp. 220
DOI: 10.1177/0734016807310654
Patrick Carr’s book presents an analysis of neighborhood conditions and crime in the
best ethnographic tradition that traces back to the Chicago School. Neighborhood-oriented
research in criminology has a long, informative history using both quantitative and quali-
tative methods, and Carr provides an excellent synthesis of this research. The book is well
grounded theoretically, illustrates how solid ethnographic research can extend our knowl-
edge, and is written such that it is appropriate for upper division undergraduate courses as
well as graduate classes in criminological theory.
The first two chapters use Census data, resident and nonresident perceptions, and history
to describe and analyze the community context of Beltway, the Chicago neighborhood that
is the setting for this study. These chapters also provide links to theoretical variables—for
example, the private (family and primary relationships), parochial (friendships, civic rela-
tionships, and voluntary associations), and public (formal institutions/organizations) social
orders—that arise from a range of literature including community and neighborhood studies
as well as in the systemic model of social disorganization. This is essential to link informal
social control and the community-based crime control efforts that flow from these dimensions
of neighborhood social organization. This places Carr’s study firmly within the systemic
model advanced by Robert J. Bursik...