Focus is on crime in Great Britain's inner cities, particularly Birmingham. Ethnographic fieldwork in culturally diverse, racially heterogeneous working-class neighborhoods is interpreted with reference to local and national crime surveys, exposing the human consequences of crime and fear of crime against a background of economic decline, political impotence, and social isolation. It is shown that the social significance of crime varies locationally not only because opportunities for crime and the economic circumstances of offenders vary in space, but also because crime and fear are bound up with the distribution of power and its realization in the form of social relations among differently positioned social and economic groups. Among policy issues examined is the role of the police in multiagency approaches to crime prevention and management of fear. 23 tables, chapter footnotes, index, and approximately 530 references. (Publisher abstract modified)