The neoliberal rhetorical side accepts earlier liberal concepts about the macro-social roots of crime and emphasizes that any real reduction in crime will depend upon addressing its underlying social causes and achieving conditions that will prevent the development of criminal behavior. Clinton's neoliberalism diverges from earlier liberal approaches to crime control, however, insofar as it rejects state-centered solutions that are created and mandated by government to the exclusion of other parties to the equation. The neoconservative policy side of President Clinton's crime-control agenda reiterates a belief in the efficacy of formal control, particularly through more policing and more punishment, including the net-widening effects of boot camps. Thus, Clinton's approach to crime control appears as a hodgepodge of hard and soft strategies that tend more to reconfirm conservative crime-control policies than to address the fundamental social inequalities that generate high-crime rates. At this point it appears that the "velvet tongue" rhetoric has little chance of coalescing into actual social-democratic strategies for reducing crime through rebuilding communities. If anything can be salvaged from the repressive crime-control strategy of the Clinton administration, it will depend on the development of active political coalitions between progressives and liberals within both the middle and working classes. 17 references