Although public housing in the United States is often portrayed as crime-ridden, little information from official statistics is available to support this impression. Furthermore, only a few criminologists have done empirical research on crime in public housing, and that research has tended to focus on large public housing authorities in big cities. The author claims that accurate information on the level of crime in public housing is difficult to obtain, and knowledge of the volume and type of crime in public housing and how crime there compares to that found in other neighborhoods is fragmentary at best. However, the preponderance of anecdotal evidence as well as existing criminological research suggests that big-city public housing does have and will continue to have serious crime problems, and criminologists should do more research in these communities. Figure, notes, references