The former has the advantage of permitting the researcher to look for general relationships among many community variables, but the nature of interactions occurring within communities cannot be discerned. The latter has the advantage of permitting the researcher to describe street-level interactions in a neighborhood and relate them to neighborhood characteristics. By its nature, however, ethnography can only investigate such interactions in a limited interval of time and space. Another means of studying the relationship between communities and crime is explored, one based on archival data maintained by public agencies such as schools, welfare departments, and juvenile courts. Data from these agencies can "tell a story" about the relationship between neighborhood characteristics and crime. 58 references, 13 notes, and 6 figures