“THE ROUTINE ACTIVITY APPROACH AS A GENERAL CRIME THEORY”

 

Marcus Felson (2000)

 

 

 

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THE ORIGINAL FORMULATION OF THE ROUTINE ACTIVITY APPROACH

 

The routine activity approach began by describing how a direct contact predatory offence occurred (Cohen and Felson, 1979).  Such an offence was predatory because it had, at a minimum, one offender and one target of crime.  Direct physical contact between the offender and target was also required.  The original formulation excluded threats from an distance, suicide, drug sales, and fights in which both participants were offenders.  A direct contact predatory offence in the original formulation had three minimal elements:

 

  • a likely offender;

  • a suitable target; and

  • the absence of a capable guardian against the offence.

 

During the era of its formulation, the routine activity approach differed greatly from other crime theories because it treated the offender as relatively less significant.  The routine activity approach also defined the target of crime distinctly from the victim.  The best guardian against a crime is neither a police officer nor a security guard.  The best guardian is somebody close such as a friend or a relative.  Guardianship against crime depends on someone’s absence.  Two presences (offender and target) and one absence (guardian) make the best crime setting.  The convergence of these three conditions invites a criminal act to occur. 

A suitable crime target might include a wallet, a purse, a car, or a human target for personal attack.  A target’s suitability for attack is determined by four criteria, summed up by the acronym VIVA: 

 

  • Value

  • Inertia

  • Visibility

  • Access

 

The value of the target is defined from the offender’s viewpoint, depending on what the offender wants.  Find out what property someone might like to steal or vandalize or who an offender might prefer to attack or even kidnap.  Usually, the offender would be discouraged if a target were high in inertia.  For example, a heavy appliance is too difficult to carry out of a home, and a large or muscular person is difficult to outmuscle.  Usually, an offender is drawn to a target more visible to him or her such as money flashed in a bar or someone who unwittingly invites an attack.  The offender’s access to a street or building renders its contents and people more subject to his or her illegal action.

The routine activity approach started with crime conditions right there.  It considered how a criminal act occurs or fails to occur at specific times and places.  Without the convergence of minimal elements for crime, a direct contract predatory criminal act would be virtually out of the question.  Such immediate conditions are set in place from the routine activities of the surrounding community.  The transportation system, the structure of work and household, and the technology and production of goods – in short, the everyday macro-level organization of the community and society – lead to micro convergences of conditions more or less favourable to crime.

        Consider how a residential burglary occurs.  A burglar tries to find a suitable household that is empty of guardians or within which the guardians are asleep or indisposed.  The burglar seeks a place containing valuables easy to remove.  Easy access and visibility draw the burglar further.  The larger community structure offers the burglar crime opportunities by producing more lightweight but valuable goods and getting people out of their homes for work, school, or leisure.  While they are out, the burglar goes in.

 

 

APPLYING THE FIVE STANDARDS OF COHERENT SCIENCE TO THE ROUTINE ACTIVITY APPROACH

 

The routine activities explanation for crime holds up quite well when tested against the five standards of scientific coherence.  Following the touch-it standard, the routine activity approach is highly tangible, emphasizes the physical world, and considers physical convergences in its core requirements.  Its image of the offender takes into account  the offender’s use of the five senses to carry out crime.  Following the near-and-far standard, the routine activity approach works at both the micro and macro levels, in different settings and eras, internationally, and for different types of crime (Felson, 2000).  It shows how offenders, targets, and guardians move into and out of potential crime settings.  The routine activity approach also uses a few clear and simple principles.  Simplicity is not the same as simple-mindedness.  Indeed, very diverse findings, difficult problems, and complex information can be absorbed within its few and simple principles.  For example, the many features of home, neighbourhood, and household activities could be summed up in one principle: the offender must find the target with nobody there to stop the offender from attacking it.  Indeed, routine activity analysis brings forth many nuances of criminal acts, still maintaining coherence by deriving all this from a very few rules, in accordance with the few-to-many standard.  It starts at a very simple level before it elaborates.  If one gets lost, one can just go back to the few fundamentals to find his or her way once more.

                The routine activity approach also seeks clear mechanisms, examining which features of daily life lead to more or less crime.  Its adherence to the exactly how standard is well illustrated elsewhere (Felson, 1998).  For example, the old theories state vague and inexact hypotheses, for example, ‘Social disorganization creates crime.’  By contrast, the routine activity approach details mechanisms such as the following:

 

  • Tough guys can seize local abandoned houses for their own illegal uses.  For example, they can set up drug houses.

  • Failed local businesses leave streets unsupervised and dangerous.

 

The routine activity approach also helps us to understand why some forms of ‘social disorganization’ do not give us more crime and might even produce less:

 

  • Shabby paint on buildings might be ugly, but it probably does not itself contribute to more crime.

  • Graffiti on subways probably does not lead to more robberies.

  • Extreme deterioration of a neighbourhood might cause vice crimes to decline by scaring away customers.

 

The fit-the-facts standard of scientific coherence is reflected in the growing convergence between the routine activity approach and several studies of crime specifics, settings, modus operandi, broken windows theory (Kelling and Coles, 1996), and prevention.  Relatively recent work is devoted to such convergences (Clarke and Felson, 1993; Felson, 1998, Felson and Clarke, 1999).

        Burglary offers us many cogent examples of how the routine activity approach follows all five standards of scientific coherence.  A burglar follows the touch-it standard using his or her senses to determine crime opportunities and risks and to put criminal acts into motion.  In accordance with the near-and-far standard, a burglar responds to scientific and local crime opportunities while also benefiting from new transport systems that help the burglar get to additional crime settings.  Specific routine factors assist the burglar (e.g., more lightweight goods, more cash in homes or businesses).  The few-to-many standard is also very relevant; the burglar can consider a few aspects of his or her targets, such as VIVA (discussed earlier), to decide whether or not to break in.  The burglar might seek easy access and lightweight things to carry away.  These minimal elements have elaborate applications when considering what streets lead to a crime target, different types of buildings, the timing of commercial burglar versus residential burglary (weekend for the former and weekday for the latter), and variations among nations varying in how often households are left unsupervised.  The exactly how standard demands that criminologists specify how the burglar gets there and chooses that building; what part of a building the burglar enters; where things are kept; lines of sight for guardians and offenders; and why the burglar overlooks other entries, buildings, or booty.  For example, middle income areas with both souses working, high bushes, and large backyards tend to have high burglary rates.  Finally, the specific settings and modus operandi of burglary and the details of its prevention become central for routine activity analysis of burglary.  To study burglary in scientific terms, we have to consider who, what, where, when, and how.  Because the routine activity approach does not try to divide the population into two groups – definite offenders and definite nonoffenders – this approach can more readily accommodate the details of crime research. 

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EXTENSIONS OF THE ROUTINE ACTIVITY APPROACH

 

During recent years, I have extended the routine activity approach well beyond direct contact predatory crimes (Felson, 1998).  Illegal drug sales depend on the physical convergences of buyers and sellers as well as the absence of those who would prevent these sales.  Nonpredatory fights involve the convergence of antagonists with peacemakers absent and provokers present.  Even suicides depend on absences of those who would prrevent them.  This approach now takes into account supervision of youths and offenders in general.

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