ABSTRACT
This chapter charts the stripping out of community from crime control within early modernity and its re-emergence as a key tool in the crime prevention armoury in the last quarter of the twentieth century. However, the Chicago School of sociologists, as outlined in this chapter, did much to re-shape research and writing on the problem of crime, shifting the focus away from the individual towards the social environment. The role of community in maintaining social order was considered anachronistic and parochial by 'modernisers' who looked to enlightened philosophers and professional elites to replace the rule of the street by the rule of law. The modernisation of crime control in the UK took place at a time when there was increasing concern over the problem of crime as the numbers committed for trial in England and Wales. Community based crime prevention is an amalgam of the situational and social crime.
