Why do some blocks have more crime, or their residents have higher fear levels, than other blocks? In an effort to answer this question we proposed a model that incorporated physical defensible space features, local social ties, and territorial functioning. The model was tested using data from a multistage, stratified sample of 687 Baltimore households on 63 blocks. At each household, surveys were completed and on-site physical features were photographed and subsequently rated. Records of police activity on each block were also obtained. Our model explained significant portions of crimes of violence to persons (18%) and block fear (37%). It was also able to predict a significant amount (13%) of the variation in individual-level fear. At the block level: defensible space features dampened crime and fear but not as strongly as expected; and local social ties dampened crime and fear directly, and indirectly via an enhancement of territorial functioning. A model predicting individual fear levels, controlling for block context, was also supported. Our successful modeling of block dynamics suggests that these entities may profitably be treated as small-scale social units or groups. The pattern of findings has also confirmed suggestions made by others that physical factors alone cannot be relied on to preserve local order and feelings of security. Finally, the block-level linkages between local social ties and territorial attitudes clarify how territorial attitudes reflect, and may contribute to, the development of group-based norms regarding appropriate behaviors in on-block settings.

Statistically based risk assessment devices are widely used in criminal justice settings. Their promise remains largely unfulfilled, however, because assumptions and premises requisite to their development and application are routinely ignored and/or violated. This article provides a brief review of the most salient of these assumptions and premises, addressing the base rate and selection ratios, methods of combining predictor variables and the nature of criterion variables chosen, cross-validation, replicability, and generalizability. The article also discusses decision makers' choices to add or delete items from the instruments and suggests recommendations for policy makers to consider when adopting risk assessments. Suggestions for improved practice, practical and methodological, are made.

A series of studies designed to investigate three major aspects of the peer-evaluation system in psychology is presented. Editors and editorial consultants for nine major psychology journals were surveyed for opinions about the desirability of article characteristics. Dimensional structures for evaluation were explored, resulting in a set of prescriptive norms for assessment. Substantial agreement on the desirability of article characteristics is demonstrated, and psychologists heavily involved in the manuscript decision-making processes associated with different journals apparently employ these dimensions in the same way. These results "were used in a second study demonstrating increased reliability of peer judgments of article quality. Finally, it was found that peer judgments of article quality and impact are only very modestly correlated with subsequent citation of the articles,The scientific enterprise in psychology, as in other disciplines, functions as a social system. Determinations of'success, failure, quality, relevance, and prestige are based on a system of peer evaluation. Garvey and Gottfredson (1976) have discussed the importance of peer evaluation and communication to the maintenance of our social system of scientific activity, and Kuhn (1962) offers a theoretical framework within which this process operates. From this perspective, approximations to "truth" are replaced by approximations to the perceived nature of the scientific paradigm; and the author's conviction that his or her view approximates "truth" is of less importance in its evaluation than the peer judgment of its approximation to the paradigm.

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Clinical psychologists have long recognized that people can and do cathect, or get attached to, other persons. In everyday language we speak of persons who are "attached" or "involved" or "invested" in one another. More recently, social scientists have given attention to people's attachment to places. In~Data described here were collected under grant 78-