Routine Activities Theory

Location of a university is a contributing factor to the safety of the students and campus. The overall crime rating of the university is based on reported crime on campus and in surrounding areas. Colleges with low amounts of reported crime are valued as being safer. Bradley University earns an overall crime rating of C- when comparing on-campus, city, and regional crime against all other schools nationwide. According to the data, Bradley’s campus rated as a D+, Peoria rated as an F+, the region rated as a D (“Bradley University Crime”). In this section, I will be addressing the crime factors related to the city of Peoria and on campus.

Routine activity theory states that for a crime to be committed, three important factors need to be present including: a motivated offender, an accessible target, and the absence of a capable guardian against a violation. Marcus Felson and Lawrence E. Cohen introduced the routine activity theory in 1979, where they believed that an individual who has these three characteristics gives them a greater possibility of committing a crime. Moreover, situational crime prevention is known as strategies of ways for preventing or reducing the opportunities for criminals to commit crimes that derive from the routines of an individual’s everyday life. Ronald V. Clarke introduced situational crime prevention theory in 1983, where he believed that removing the situation instead of removing the criminal could prevent crime. In this paper, I will be discussing what routine activity/situational crime prevention theory is, and apply two peer-reviewed articles from Google Scholar that test the routine activity/situational crime prevention theory by discussing what the authors are trying to figure out and discuss their findings, and lastly, tie the routine activity/situational crime prevention theory articles to our textbook in hopes to fully understand in depth what the theory encompasses.

Situational and social approaches to crime prevention are both proactive where they anticipate and prevent crime but are different in the way on how crime is prevented, each having their own strength and weaknesses. In this essay, I will briefly talk about what is crime prevention and how situational and social approaches are derived, followed by providing a critical comparison of situational and social approaches by first explaining what is situational and social approaches to crime prevention, the differences between the two approaches, their strength and weaknesses and lastly, to show understanding that besides situational and social approach, there are other approaches to crime prevention.

The routine activities theory is based on the concept of the crime triangle. This triangle consists of a “motivated offender a suitable target and the lack of guardianship” (Cohen & Felson, 1979). When Hot spot policing is employed its focus is directed at two of the three elements of the triangle. Those elements are the suitable target and the lack of a capable guardian (Hoover, 2014). Some of the major tenants of this perspective are geographic targeting, focused patrol, saturation patrol, and interactive programs. There are other tenants such as simple visibility and foot patrol but I will focus on the three mentioned above. Geographic targeting uses techniques which address crime based on the “hot spot” theory. Hot spots are another

There are a vast number of issues concerning child exploitation from the actions of the offender and the victim. Child exploitation is a complex issue that does not have one simple solution; this crime is nothing new, but technology is allowing it to evolve. Child exploitation is moving from sending child pornography through the postal service and targeting only children an offender has close proximity to. Technology and the Internet have widened the opportunities for offenders and have allowed for potentially ay juvenile to become victimized. The recommendations will focus on targeting key issues presented in the Routine Activities Theory; limiting a motivated offender, making targets unsuitable, and creating capable guardians online.

Crime is a serious issue in the United States and research shows that it is running rampant, and its effects are felt in all socioeconomic levels. Each economic class has its own crime rates and types of crime.

But, because the buildings are not in good shape, the juveniles find it ok to tear the community apart, and partake in crimes. The buildings need to be newly built and in good shape, to keep crime from happening in the city of Chicago. This testing is found to be true. If one looks around at the different areas with poor building structure, they can see that crime is most prominent in that area. (Johnston,

Crime displacement and diffusion is a major concern in the United States. Crime neither seem to be increasing nor decrease throughout the years. Displacement brings more consequences and can occur when a harm is produced by displacement crime before the intervention. There are three theories that help explain why crime are committed, who are targeted and how to prevent from being a potential target. Being aware of your surroundings is extremely important. Analyzing offenders, victims and location can give ideas as to why crimes occurs. Giving displacement and diffusion central attention should be the center to problem solving in criminal activities.

Shaw and McKay discovered high concentrations of crime in the urban community. Their findings showed that youths involved in crime tended to be concentrated near the central business district, usually adjacent to heavy industrial areas of the city (Thompson and Bynum 2016). They identified areas with high rates of young offenders as high-delinquency areas. This corresponds with the findings of Ernst Burgess’ whose Concentric Zone Theory identified the same central districts of the city as having the highest rates of crime and delinquency (Thompson and Bynum

This report is designed for the City of Topeka, Kansas' Task Force on Crime and Crime Prevention. Under the auspices of a joint effort between the following agencies, the report is designed to look at crime from a micro-cultural perspective in a Midwestern capital city: The Kansas Bureau of Investigation, the Topeka Police Department, the FBI's regional office, and the University of Kansas Department of Criminology. The purpose of the data analysis is to provide a basic understanding of overall trends for Topeka. The following data was collected for the years 2009 and 20010:

Crime will be always present in our society and it will never truly seize. As the years go by, more people take precautions to ensure the safety of their families and themselves, whether it is from getting security at home or to even storing away their valuables in a safety locker. Even though this may be the case, the crime rates for different criminally activities have been gradually declining over the past few years. Furthermore some investigations have illustrated that the south had a higher crime ratio within the United States because it tends to be the poorest states. While northern states tend to have better standing due to better economy, and even more around San Jacinto College South Campus, crime ratio has not increased, but it

Since it appears that the vast majority of the offenders are rational, crimes almost always happen at some specific areas, places or regions and are rarely randomly distributed, if not never. This phenomenon is well introduced in the crime pattern theory (Brantingham and Brantingham, 1981, 1984, 1993) which intersects the rational theory, routine activity theory and crime pattern theory. In crime pattern theory, both offenders and victim have their own behavior patterns consisting of the same or different activity places. Crimes are more likely to happen in these intersected activity places. Iron Law of Troublesome Places (Wilcox and Eck, 2011) simply indicates that few places (roughly 20%) are responsible for most of problems (roughly 80%),

In order for crime to arise according to routine activities theory, there are three necessary components: motivated offenders, suitable targets and the absence of capable guardians. Motivated offenders are simply those who possess the drive to commit a crime. Suitable targets are those items or victims who possess enough attractiveness to a motivated offender to incite crime. Capable guardians are those whose company can protect suitable targets (Cohen & Felson, 1979, p. 588-608). In the overlap where there is a motivated offender, suitable target, and absence of capable guardians, criminal activity will likely conspire (Walsh & Jorgensen, 2018, p. 87-88).

A violent crime occurs every 23.5 seconds in the United States of America. Even though crime has been at a low during the past decade, violence is still prevalent in today’s society. Most of these crimes happen in places that are socio-economically disadvantaged. There then is the debate of whether violent crime is associated with environments struck with poverty. There is a correlation between violent crimes and poverty because of the unemployment rates in major cities, the culture of poor areas, and drugs.

The hypothesis claims that “changes in routine activity patterns can influence crime rates by affecting the convergence in space and time of the three minimal elements of direct-contact predatory violations” and that “the absence of any one of these elements [motivated offenders, suitable targets, and the absence of suitable guardians against a violation] is sufficient to prevent the successful completion of a direct-contact predatory crime.” (1) The authors claim that controls for routine activities, therefore, are essential to maintaining order and keeping the crime rate down. They also note that and understanding of temporal and spatial relationships are key to understanding the changing crime rates. Illegal acts are events that occur in space and time and involve specific persons and/or objects. The spatio-temporal organization of everyday activities is what allows criminals to turn their criminal ideas into reality. Dispersion of activities away from the household has led to a change in the spatio-temporal relationship that increases the opportunity for crime, which in turn increases the crime rate itself.