Clean Streets: Controlling Crime, Maintaining Order, and Building Community Activism (New Perspectives in Crime, Deviance, and Law, 8) - Softcover

Carr, Patrick J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0814716636 ISBN 13: 9780814716632

Publisher: NYU Press, 2005

Synopsis

With the close proximity of gangs and the easy access to drugs, keeping urban neighborhoods safe from crime has long been a central concern for residents. In Clean Streets, Patrick Carr draws on five years of research in a white, working-class community on Chicago’s South side to see how they tried to keep their streets safe. Carr details the singular event for this community and the resulting rise of community activism: the shootings of two local teenage girls outside of an elementary school by area gang members. As in many communities struck by similar violence, the shootings led to profound changes in the community's relationship to crime prevention. Notably, their civic activism has proved successful and, years after the shooting, community involvement remains strong.
Carr mines this story of an awakened neighborhood for unique insights, contributing a new perspective to the national debate on community policing, civic activism, and the nature of social control. Clean Streets offers an important story of one community's struggle to confront crime and to keep their homes safe. Their actions can be seen as a model for how other communities can face up to similarly difficult problems.

About this title

About the Author

Patrick J. Carr is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University.

Edition details

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0814716636
• ISBN 13: 9780814716632
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 209