The CACP of LEAA and the Urban Crime Prevention Program, initiated in 1977, signals the first major Federal support for a consolidated effort in community crime prevention. The CACP posits that neighborhood residents can be mobilized by community organization to participate in collective crime prevention projects. Involvement in these activities is believed to create a stronger community, because residents will assume greater responsibility for their own protection and local problems, and interactions among neighbors will increase, both formally, through the activities of the crime prevention projects, and informally, as a byproduct of these activities. A stronger sense of community and increased social interaction is projected to produce more effective informal social control. Aside from the direct effects of community crime prevention activities in reducing crime or the fear of crime, these activities may also reduce crime or the fear of crime by rebuilding neighborhood social control. There is much to applaud in this movement away from the narrow law-and-order orientations of previous strategies of citizen crime prevention programs. The community hypothesis addresses broader social conditions that affect crime and the fear of crime at the local level. Thirty-seven references and two notes are provided.