The Routine Activities Theory

1025 Words3 Pages

There are many definitions to theory. According to Akers, “theories are tentative answers to the commonly asked questions about events and behavior.” Theory is a set of interconnected statements that explain how two or more things are related, based upon a confirmed hypotheses and established multiple times by disconnected groups of researchers. There are six elements that make a theory sound. These elements are scientific criteria provide whether or not the theories are scientific. The most important of these elements is empirical validity, which uses evidence to confirm or disprove a theory and have criteria for interpreting data as factual, irregular or unrelated. The other major elements include internal logical consistency, scope and parsimony, testability, and usefulness and policy implication. A theory must be logically consistent. In order to be so, it must have clearly defined concepts, have logically stated and internally consistent propositions. If a theory contains pointless ideas or is inconsistent, it can't really explain anything. Scope refers to the assortment of events that it propositions to explain. Routine Activities Theory includes elements from deterrence and rational choice theories. Routine Activity Theory provides a simple and influential imminent into the sources of crime problems. The main idea is that in the lack of valuable controls, offenders will prey upon attractive targets. In order for crime to occur, a motivated offender must come in contact directly or indirectly with a target. The target is a thing or an object if it is a property crime. The target is a person if it is a personal crime. If a target is never in the same place as a motivated offender, the target can never be a victim of crime... ... middle of paper ... ...a motivated offender, and a lack of guardians. The routine activities theory is a logically consistent theory. Cohen and Felson defined the concepts they used, and the proposals they hoped to convey. Their proposal was as they defined that for a crime to occur you needed three elements (motivated offender, suitable target, and lack of a capable guardian), and that when those three elements come together to form routine activities. (Akers, 35). Each element is defined by Cohen and Felson and if one of the elements is not there then a crime will not occur. Although the logical consistency is generally great, the definition of motivated offender is too broad. However, it is not clear about who the motivated offender is. It could be a person who is already inclined to commit a crime or someone who is at the right place at the right time and given the opportunity.

Show More
Related

  • The Routine Activities Theory: John Wayne Gacy

    1778 Words  | 4 Pages

    On March 17, 1942, John Wayne Gacy was born in Chicago, Illinois. When he was younger, he was involved with activities such as boy scouts and odd jobs around his neighborhood. It is said that while Gacy wasn’t popular, he was well-liked by those people who knew him (Taylor, Troy). Gacy’s father was an alcoholic and would often abuse Gacy and his siblings if they were thought to have made trouble. His father would also abuse his mother. When Gacy was playing on a swing set at age 11, he was hit in the head with a swing. After this, Gacy would suffer from blackouts. However, when Gacy was 16, the doctors found that blood clots in his brain were the cause of his blackouts and, with medicine, they were able to stop the blackouts. When he was about

    Read More

  • The Dating Game Killer Research Paper

    775 Words  | 2 Pages

    Crimes are deliberate acts, with the intent of benefiting the offender. 2. Benefiting unsuccessfully in choosing the best decisions because of the risks and uncertainty involved. 3. Decision making significantly varies with the nature of the crime. 4. Involvement decisions are quite different from the commission (event decision) of a specific act. 5. Involvement decisions are divided into three stages: first time involvement (initiation), continued involvement (habituation) and ceasing to offend (desistance), 6. Event decisions include a sequence of choices made at each stage of the criminal act, involvement model, background factors and situational life styles, initiation (of becoming involved in a crime), habituation (deciding to continue with crime), distance (deciding to stop criminal behavior) and event model – criminal even

    Read More

  • Rational Choice Theory: Approach To Situational Crime

    1557 Words  | 4 Pages

    Situational crime prevention is an idea criminologists use in order to reduce the chances of crime initially taking place. This theory does not aim to punish criminals after the crime has taken place like the criminal justice system does, but however the opposite, it aims to reduce the chances of the crime taking place to start with. Ron Clarke (2005) describes this theory as an approach that aims to reduce the opportunities out there for crime, involving rational choice theory. Clark focuses on three methods within this theory, directing at specific crimes, altering the environment we live in and aiming to reduce the benefits of committing crimes.

    Read More

  • Middle Range Theories in The Nursing Literature

    1602 Words  | 4 Pages

    Three types of middle range theories are descriptive, theories that are at the most basic level. These theories classify and may contain one or more concepts that may have many commonalities but do not attempt to explain the relationship to another. Descriptive theories are usually found with discrete observations in associations with individuals, groups, situations or events. An example of a middle range descriptive theory is, Peplau’s theory of interpersonal relations (Nursing Theories, 2013) In Peplau’s theory observations are titled and categorized by what is happening at that moment.

    Read More

  • Laub and Sampson’s Age-Graded Theory of Informal Social Control

    1003 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...presented by Giordano et al. and Kreager et al. that note its limitations. Laub and Sampson’s theory is detailed and extensive in its explanation of why individuals desist from crime.

    Read More

  • The Criminal Justice System: The Consensus View Of Crime

    402 Words  | 1 Pages

    The social world has provided us with multiple perspectives when it comes to various topics. A theory is a system of ideas intended to explain something based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained. All three views of crime were created by theorists as an attempt to explain the causes of human behaviors. Each theory offers a variety of explanations for the multiple perspectives the world has.

    Read More

  • Pros And Cons Of Situational Crime Prevention

    922 Words  | 2 Pages

    Similarly, routine activity theory argues that attention should be focused on the condition in which the crime takes place rather than on the offender. It was devised by Cohen and Felson (1979). They argued that the contemporary society invites high crime by generating illegal opportunities such as public display of expensive portable goods (iPods, iPads, laptops, mobile phones) which are carried out by

    Read More

  • Criminological Theories

    1966 Words  | 4 Pages

    Many of the traditional criminological theories focused more on biological, psychological and sociological explanations of crime rather than on the cost and benefits of crime. More conservative approaches, including routine actives, lifestyle exposure and opportunity theories have clearly incorporated crime rate patterns as a fundamental part of analyzing the economics of crime. Crime statistics are important for the simple reason that they help put theories into a logical perspective. For example, a prospective home owner may want to look at crime rates in areas of potential occupancy. On a more complex level, it helps law enforcement and legislators create effective crime reduction programs. Furthermore, it also helps these agencies determine if crime prevention programs, that have been in effect, have been successful. There are many factors that influence the rates of crime including socio economic status, geographical location, culture and other lifestyle factors. More specifically, Messner and Blau (1987) used routine activities theory to test the relationship between the indicators of leisure activities and the rate of serious crimes. They discussed two types of leisure actives, the first being a household pastime, which primarily focused on television watching. The second type was a non-household leisure event which was consisted of attendance to sporting events, cinemas, and entertainment districts. The focus of this paper will be to study the effects that substantial amounts of leisure activities have on the offender and the victim. Leisure activities not only make a crime more opportunistic for offenders, it may also provide offenders with motivation to engage in criminal activity. On the other hand, it may also be argue...

    Read More

  • Comparison Of Routine Activities Theory And Social Learning Theory

    994 Words  | 2 Pages

    Within routine activities two things can come from it, either it provides for more crime to occur or it prevents crime from occurring. For example if there are two people who live completely different lives, one hangs on the street corner every day and one goes to school and they to work everyday. One is living a life that encourages victimization while the

    Read More

  • The Routine Activity Theory

    874 Words  | 2 Pages

    The theory focuses on the environment where the crime is likely to occur (Branic, nd). To avoid being the victim of a motivated offender one must make changes to their routine. The routine activity theory looks at how someone’s daily activities can become routine, making them an easy target for a criminal. An example is how rush hour traffic and that it is predictable during the

    Read More

  • Parenting And Self Control Theory

    1464 Words  | 3 Pages

    Essentially, through a process of conceptual integration, different aspects of each theory can be used in conjunction to compensate for what each individual theory fails to explain, and thus can further both the scope and policy utility of the theories (Paternoster & Bachman, 2001). For instance, low self-control theory asserts that low self-control is the cause of crime all the time. This may be true for some criminals, but many criminals, like those involved in white collar crimes, do not adhere to the principles of low self-control. In addition, while low self-control theory is useful in explaining why individuals may act in a certain way, it does not explain the situations that must be met for a crime to occur (Brunet, 2002). On the other hand, routine activity theory describes the situational factors that must be present for a crime to occur, but it is more difficult to apply this theory to sexting because the offender and victim do not necessarily have to meet for the crime to occur (Wilsem,

    Read More

  • Situational Crime Prevention Strategies

    2022 Words  | 5 Pages

    Ronald V Clarke originally developed the idea of situational crime prevention in the 1980’s (Brantingham & Brantingham 2005). This particular crime prevention theory addresses techniques that increase the effort required to commit the crime, increase the risks involved with committing the crime, reducing the reward gained by the offender after committing the crime, reducing the provocation between the offender and others and remove excuses (Brantingham & Brantingham 2005). Majority of crime is believed to be committed because there are no high risks of being caught and the rewards outweigh the risks (Brantingham & Brantingham 2005). Increasing the effort by controlling access to locations and target hardening can deflect many offenders, as more effort is needed to commit the crime (Brantingham & Brantingham 2005). Another main technique would be to increase the risks; this may be achieved by extending guardianship, creating natural surveillance or artificial surveillance such as CCTV (Brantingham & Brantingham 2005).

    Read More

  • What Causes Delinquent Behavior

    920 Words  | 2 Pages

    We all use theories in our everyday life. We make assumptions about certain things, that in turn allow us to form a kind of theory or thought. We gather these assumptions very early on in life, by what we have been taught or have learned. Exactly what is a theory and how is it different form a hypothesis? A theory is a set of statements or principles that explain how two or more events are related to each other. A hypothesis is an explanation for an observation, or natural phenomenon that can be tested and retested for further investigation. Theories can be concrete or either abstract. Knowing that when you turn the knob on the fault water will come out or knowing that it might rain if you see clouds in the sky. These theories are relatively simple or concrete. Abstract theories are very difficult to apply to our reality. It is very difficult in testing the concept that the faster you travel the slower time gets. Theories on crime rates in a particular community and the different effects that it has on the different social structures are abstract. When you are conducting your research, there are two methods that you can use Quantitative and Qualita...

    Read More

  • Neoclassical School Of Criminology

    1393 Words  | 3 Pages

    Criminology is the study of criminals and crime, but more importantly, why individuals commit a crime and why they behave differently in certain situations. When this is understood, methods of preventing and controlling crime are discussed and put into practice. There are several different theories explaining why people commit a crime, but the ones that I will be focusing on are the theories in the neoclassical school of criminology: Rational choice theory and the Routine activity theory. The aim of this essay is to attempt to discuss the contribution of the neoclassical school of criminology to crime and crime prevention through the use of explanations and critiques of the different theories.

    Read More

  • Crime, Crimes And The Responsibility Of Crime Prevention

    834 Words  | 2 Pages

    Crime is defined as an omission or an act that violates the set laws in a given jurisdiction, and which is punishable when an individual is convicted (Arrington, 2006). Crimes include offenses concerning drugs, against property or people, offenses as per the provision of the federal statute, and motor vehicle offenses. Some of the disorderly behaviors, which may include public urination, aggressive panhandling, and sleeping in public areas, such as streets, are not necessarily considered to be criminal acts, but such acts always affect the community or the society since it leads to the erosion of the quality of life in the given society or community in which such activities are rampant. Normally, there are three main factors that must be present so that a crime can take place. These include the presence of a motivated offender, who has the intention of performing the criminal activity, The availability of a suitable target, that motivates and arouse the interest of the offender to engage in the criminal activity, and a third part, which either a person or something the either encourages the crime to take place or discourages the criminal acts form being committed by the offender. In essence, this can be put as that, crimes concerns people, situations, and places. These elements are thus the responsibility of crime prevention of crime reduction.

    Read More

More about The Routine Activities Theory

Open Document