The central thesis of the book is that the U.S. has developed and maintained huge crime rates by encouraging, while sometimes inhibiting, crime in the activities of everyday life. The focus of the book is on crime incidents, rather than on offenders themselves, examining how these incidents originate in communities, the home, schools, and their related enterprises. Everyday activities can also contribute to informal control which, when it works effectively, can reduce the need for police intervention and prisons in reducing crime. To develop ideas for natural crime prevention, emanating from simple and unobtrusive interactions among people, the book draws on perspectives from the fields of situational and environmental psychology, human ecology, biology, and communications and computer technology. The book offers an approach that rejects society's conventional liberal and conservative positions on crime and crime control. Chapter notes and tables, and 250 references