Routine Activities Theory: Macro Perspective To Criminal Behaviour

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.

Victoria Climbie’s tragic death highlighted how children are at the risk of being maltreated or abused. Lord Laming’s report covered the possibilities of what can propose danger towards children. It is not enough just keeping children safe from harm/danger or being bullied, but at the same time they should be able to enjoy their childhood, gain life skills, accept challenges and achieve to make their adulthood successful.

The current legislation is the result of the children’s Act 1989, which is used to ensure that all people who work with children are working together and are clear about their responsibilities and know how to act if allegations of child abuse are made. The children’s act 2004 is a legal framework for “Every Child Matters” and is a direct result of the Laming Report following the death of the Victoria Climbie case in the year 2000. Hereafter an independent inquiry highlighted so many problems with how the reports of neglect and child abuse was dealt with and that vulnerable people in society were not being properly safeguarded. The main points of the 2004 Children’s Act were that every local authority has a director of children’s services who is ultimately responsible for ensuring that children are safeguarded.

516 1.1) The policies, procedures and practices for safe working with children and young people all stem from the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman by Ian Huntley. From this horrific act of evil the Safeguarding Vulnerable Group Act 2006 was born (see evidence ‘6’ – 520 1.3). Another public enquiry was set up to address the failure of the law after the death of Victoria Climbié. Within this enquiry, Lord Laming called for changes to be made in child protection policies. From this there was a new incentive born called ‘Every Child Matters’ in 2003. This became one of the most far reaching policy incentives to be released in the last 10 years. It covers children and young adults up to the age of 19 or 24 for those with

In early 2000 an 8 year old girl, Victoria Climbié, died following abuse and neglect from her great-aunt, and her Aunt’s partner Carl Manning. In August 2007, a 17-month-old boy, Peter Connelly, died following abuse by his mother and two men who were living in their house. These two tragic deaths resulted in extensive public inquiries and major changes were made to the child protection laws.

Routine activities theory or RAT was originally proposed by the classical school of criminological theory. Classical school theorists believe that humans are rational individuals who make decisions based on their own free will. In short, humans oftentimes make decisions after taking into consideration the risk versus reward associated with the behavior. Essentially, routine activities theory draws from Amos Hawley’s (1950) theory of human ecology. This theory explores the terrestrial aspects of human behavior in community environments. Hawley (1950) theorizes that collective life is viewed as an adaptive process. Thus, making the environment the problem with adaptation. Hawley notes that human beings deal with issues through collective action, therefore the approaches of sociology and ecology tend to merge into one another. Hawley establishes three key aspects of collective human activities: rhythm (the normal recurrence of events), tempo (the number of events in a certain period of time), and timing (the coordination and intersection of behaviors in the environment).

This assignment will address how children’s rights are being breached within the UK. Focusing mainly on (The Crime and Disorder Act, 1998) which is an Act currently used within the UK’s society. . (The Crime and Disorder Act, 1998) covers almost all aspects of children’s rights, however the main provisions of the Act are; Antisocial Behaviour order (ASBO), parenting orders and sex offender’s orders. (The United Nations Convention on the Rights of The Child, 1990) became part of the UK’s Law in 1992, it has 54 articles that cover child welfare and safeguarding under ever circumstance. The aim of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of The Child aim is to keep children’s rights intact and do their best to ensure these rights are not

The General Theory of Crime is similar, but is based on the theory that criminals are raised by parents who don't teach self-control skills. Routine Activity Theory shifts away from the sociological aspect of criminology and was developed as a way to explain white collar crimes by saying individuals who commit these crimes are in a convenient position and are susceptible to committing the

Looking at the trajectory of spatial criminology, the focus has been progressively moving towards smaller and smaller units of analysis of micro-places which looks at the discrete location of the crime, street intersections, or street segments. This is exemplified through the several theories of spatial criminology, including routine activity theory, geometric theory, and the rational choice theory. Stating that criminal activities occur when a motivated offender converges at a discrete location with a suitable target is the theory of routine activity theory. When looking at criminal events from the view of routine activity theory, the community can be too broad for the study of certain crimes and therefore, it can be necessary to analyze

The Routine Activities theory was developed by Lawrence Cohen and Marcus Felson and is derived from rational choice theory (Walsh & Hemmens, p. 122). Cohen and Felson claim that crime is the result of “(a) motivated offenders meeting (b) suitable targets that lack (c) capable guardians” (Walsh & Hemmens, p. 123). The Routine Activities theory is used to explain not only crime rates but also risk of victimization. It is closely related to Lifestyle theory and often combined with it.

Every theory of crime has at least 2-3 meta-theoretical levels above it. The fundamental issues are usually addressed at the approach level, and are often called the assumptions, or starting points, of a theory, although the term "assumptions" more strictly refers to the background or domain boundaries one can draw generalizations about. Above the approach level is the Perspective level, the largest unit of agreement within a scientific community, and in fact, the names for the scientific disciplines. Perspectives are sometimes called paradigms or viewpoints, although some people use the term paradigm to refer to untestable ideologies such as: (1) rational choice; (2) pathogenesis; (3) labeling;

This book attempts to conduct research in order to extend the field of criminology, not any other matter. Sutherland was attempting to bring attention to an area of criminal behaviour that criminologists had not previously studied. At this time, theories of criminal behaviour placed a large emphasis on poverty being the cause of crime or on other social conditions and personal traits which

There are three elements of the Routine Activities Theory they are, Motivated offenders, suitable targets, and the lack of capable guardianship. The motivated offender’s element is when an individual routine brings them into contact with a motivated offender, the

In looking at CH offending behaviour, it could be viewed that he fits in to the Rational Actor model. This model explores the idea that young people had the choice to offend; CH woke up and made the choice to go and rob someone in order to obtain money to get cannabis. The benefit of the offending behaviour out weights the consequences; CH’s need to get high out weight the consequences of being arrested for a serious offence which could lead to custody. With this in mind the view of tacking offending behaviour of a young person that fits with the Rational Actor is that the punishment must out weight the benefits of the behaviour and must become harsher, greater and more serious as the offending escalates; options for sentencing was DTO (Detention and training Order) for a significant length of time or Youth Rehabilitation Order with Intense supervision (YRO - 25 hours a week).

The last theory, routine activities, has three variables. The first variable is the availability of target, the lack of guardianship, and the presence of motivated offenders. This means that there are offenders out there and their victim will be those who are unsuspecting and those without any sort of guardianship.