Criminological Theory Choosing Crime in Everyday Life: Routine Activity and Rational Choice Theories Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Introduction These theories are concerned with crime and not with criminality and what is occurring in the present situation Label this approach crime science, which seeks to understand why crime events occur, and is opposed to criminology that tries to understand why people are criminal The theories in this chapter assert that offenders are active, thinking participants in their criminal ventures; they make choices Opportunity theories No crime can be committed unless the opportunity to complete the act is present Traditional criminology has taken opportunity for granted Rational choice theory Offenders are “rational” in the decisions they make They choose crimes that offer immediate gratification, that require little effort to complete, and that expose them to scant risk of detection and arrest Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Introduction Crime occurs in the context of the everyday lives that offenders and their victims lead Emerging from the routines that people—whether offenders or their victims—follow as they go about their daily lives (routine activities theory) These approaches propose very practical methods for reducing crime Situational crime prevention Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Routine Activities Theory: Opportunity and Crime Opportunity is a necessary condition for any specific crime to be committed The distribution of opportunities and individuals’ access to these opportunities explain why certain geographical areas have higher crime rates than other areas and why certain individuals are more involved in crime than other individuals Marcus Felson and Lawrence Cohen developed routine activities theory For them, decrease opportunities for offending and crime will be reduced Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Routine Activities Theory: Opportunity and Crime Focus on aspects of the environment that are most easily manipulated The tendency of this perspective to focus on the pragmatic and to avoid discussing issues of inequality and power—and how they structure criminal opportunities is an implicit ideological decision Uses the term “pestilence fallacy” to describe the tendency of criminologists to treat crime “as one of many evils that comes from other evils in society” Uses the term “the not-me fallacy” to describe the supposedly mistaken assumption that “most individuals would like to think that they are fundamentally different from serious offenders in their willingness to commit crimes Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Routine Activities Theory: Opportunity and Crime Americans have become suspicious of liberal efforts to build a large welfare state and of conservative efforts to create a state that simultaneously imposes right-wing morals on others and gives corporations and financial institutions unfettered discretion The attractiveness of opportunity theories of crime is that they avoid larger discussions of whether the United States is excessively unequal or excessively morally permissive and argue that crime can be prevented meaningfully without a major cultural or social revolution Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Routine Activities Theory: Opportunity and Crime: The Chemistry for Crime Each successfully completed violation minimally requires an offender with both criminal inclinations and the ability to carry out those inclinations Criminal events require a motivated offender who has the opportunity to act on those motivations (See Table 13.1) There must be a person or object providing a suitable target for the offender There must be an absence of guardians capable of preventing violations The ingredients must converge in time and space Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Routine Activities Theory: Opportunity and Crime: The Chemistry for Crime The major determinant of this convergence was the routine activities of people in society The term routine carried two meanings: Everyday activities The mundane in life The amount of crime was influenced not by the pathological features of society but rather but its normal organization A key reason for crime in the US is because since the WWII, the US has experienced a major shift in routine activities away from the home Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Routine Activities Theory: Opportunity and Crime: The Chemistry for Crime Felson argued that poverty areas may increase temptations and decrease controls However, still failed to develop systematically within his theory how the political economy shapes illegal opportunities and shapes the social distribution of crime Research supports that routine activities influence rates of crime across ecological units Routine activities theory has also been used to identify the individuals most likely to be victimized Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Routine Activities Theory: Opportunity and Crime: The Chemistry for Crime There also is a growing body of scholarship showing how routine activities can affect who in society is most likely to be victimized Some individuals are more likely to be victimized than others Explained this differential victimization by a “lifestyle model” in which those whose lifestyles or routine activities are riskier—exposing them to potential offenders—are more likely to experience a higher level of personal victimization (Garofalo, 1987) Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Routine Activities Theory: Opportunity and Crime: View of Offenders Routine activity theory is most compatible with rational choice theory and theories of low self-control Crime is less likely to occur when it is made less attractive In any situation where a crime event could transpire, the decision to offend will be influenced by the ease or difficulty with which the offender’s search for gratification can be satisfied Scholars argue that it is necessary to study not only the routines of the potential victims, but also the potential offenders Offenders play an active role in producing criminal opportunities Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Routine Activities Theory: Opportunity and Crime: View of Offenders Based on a view of offenders as gratification seekers who wish to gain quick pleasure and avoid imminent pain Offender search theory: The study of the routines of potential offenders and how they select their targets to victimize Offenders develop cognitive maps and mental templates and offend in places that are familiar to them Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Routine Activities Theory: Opportunity and Crime: Policy Implications Routine activity theory forgoes any thoughts of how steps might be taken to change the criminality or motivations of lawbreakers The key to stopping crime is to prevent the intersection in time and space of offenders and targets that lack guardianship Make crime more difficult Defensible space Crime prevention through environmental design Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Routine Activities Theory: Opportunity and Crime: Policy Implications Situational crime prevention: Increase the effort needed to commit a crime Increase the risks of attempting to commit a crime Reduce the rewards of crime Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Routine Activities Theory: Opportunity and Crime: Policy Implications Felson argued blocking opportunities can be heightened through three strategies: Natural strategies: Space is designed in such a way that people are channeled to go where they will do no harm or receive no harm Organized strategies: Security guards are hired for the express purpose of making crime difficult Mechanical strategies: Alarms, cameras, and other hardware are employed to control access and provide surveillance Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Routine Activities Theory: Opportunity and Crime: Policy Implications Eck’s controllers or those who discourage crime Sees crime as the intersection of offenders and targets in a particular place Each of these three elements has a potential controller—a person (or people) whose role it is to protect them If a controller is present, then the opportunity for crime either is diminished or vanishes Crime triangle (See Figure 13.1) Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Routine Activities Theory: Opportunity and Crime: Policy Implications Eck’s controllers Offenders have handlers Targets (victims) have guardians Places have managers Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Routine Activities Theory: Opportunity and Crime: Policy Implications Advocates of opportunity reduction usually emphasize the importance of strategies that do not involve the use of police; however problem-oriented policing Problem oriented policing: Police would define a problem, and then devise strategies to make these specific offenses more difficult to commit Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Routine Activities Theory: Opportunity and Crime: Policy Implications Research generally suggests that situational crime prevention and efforts to design out crime achieve reductions in crime Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Criticisms of Routine Activity Theory Few evaluations of crime prevention programs systematically take into account the “displacement effect” The possibility that when crime is made more difficult in one location, offenders will move on and commit their crimes in another location However, unlikely that crimes blocked in one place are displaced 100% to another place When a crime is thwarted, finding a new opportunity to offend often takes time and effort A particular type of crime may have “choice structuring properties” A disruption in a community’s criminal opportunity structure may diminish offending until new routines and cognitive maps are developed Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Rational Choice Theory Derek, Cornish, and Clarke Rational choice leads to a preference to control crime not through state criminal sanctions, but through more informal situational crime prevention Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Rational Choice Theory: Rational Choice and Crime Criminal motivations are important for giving people a taste for crime or in increasing the probability that crime will be subjectively available to people However, crime also involves a concrete choice, or a sequence of choices, that must be made if these motivations are to result in an actual criminal act Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Rational Choice Theory: Rational Choice and Crime Take seriously how offenders think so as to predict when criminal events will occur Decisions that offenders make are purposive Their decisions are based in bounded rationality Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Rational Choice Theory: Policy Implications Every act of crime involves some choice by the offender and he/she can be held responsible for that choice and punished Scare people straight with severe punishments Situational crime prevention: By studying how offenders make decisions, steps may be taken to reduce such opportunities for these offenses to occur The danger in rational choice theory, however, is that offenders will be treated as though they were only decision makers Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Rational Choice Theory: Are Offenders’ Choices Rational? The core of this theory is offenders are rational but making a decision is a complex process Wright and Decker showed that offenders make a series of choices about whether to offend, which targets to victimize, how to complete the crime effectively, and how to avoid detection However, the offending decision did not appear to be independent; rather, it is shaped by the street culture Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Rational Choice Theory: Are Offenders’ Choices Rational? The real qualms about the use of the term rational are scientific Criminologists in this perspective fail to provide any clear criteria that could be used to assess whether or not choices made by offenders are rational Simple rational choice theory—sometimes called “neoclassical economics”—is under reconsideration more generally from “behavioral economics,” which merges the insights of economics with those of social psychology Choices involve not merely incentives, as economists contend, but also social psychological processes Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Rational Choice Theory: Are Offenders’ Choices Rational? People’s decisions are systematically biased by the methods or short-cuts they employ when making choices Rules of thumb or decision strategies that social psychologists call “heuristics” Biases are likely a core reason why harsh penalties that seek to increase the costs of crime are of limited effectiveness Behavioral economics shows us that all decision making is shaped by complex processes that cannot be reduced to the neoclassical view that judgments about utility—costs and benefits—rule human choice Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Rational Choice Theory: Are Offenders’ Choices Rational? Emotion is a factor that adds to the complexity of decision making Hard to test emotion because many students are self-report surveys Emotions shape decision making in three ways: Negative emotions can serve as costs that make the choice of crime less likely Positive emotions about crime can servce as a benefit Emotional states can change the context of crime Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Rational Choice Theory: Are Offenders’ Choices Rational? Emotions can affect actions before a conscious decision can be made Done at the subcortical level Emotions can incite “intrinsic attractiveness” or “aversiveness” and lead us to assign valences to certain lines of action Emotions shape not only individual but also collective decisions through “mimicking and emotional contagion” Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Perceptual Deterrence Theory Perceptual deterrence theory proposes that individuals break the law when the costs outweigh the benefits The decision to offend depends on the perceptions of the costs and benefits and not on actual or objective risks of being sanctioned or gaining rewards Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Perceptual Deterrence Theory Differs from rational choice theory in three ways: Does not assume rationality Traditionally focused more on perceptions of legal punishments The policy proposals from perceptual deterrence theory are often unstated or unclear Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Perceptual Deterrence Theory Arose in large part because of the weaknesses in traditional deterrence theory Instead of actual risks of being caught, what should matter more is what individuals thought were their chances of getting caught (the “certainty” of punishment) and what they thought would happen to them after they were caught Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Perceptual Deterrence Theory Early studies tended to show that there is a deterrent effect, especially for certainty of punishment If the respondents thought they had a high chance of being caught and punished (regardless of how severe the resulting punishment might be), they were less likely to report breaking the law However, these studies were often bivariate Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Perceptual Deterrence Theory In more methodologically rigorous investigations, the effects of perceptual deterrence factors were substantially diminished Perceptual deterrence due to legal sanctions is likely a weak cause of crime Perceptual deterrence needs to develop a richer perspective ho how deterrence is specified Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Perceptual Deterrence Theory Aside from the cost of arrest, there are other perceptions that must be taken into account Non-legal costs: The stigma of arrest Commitment costs Attachment costs Additionally: Socially-imposed costs Self-imposed costs Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Perceptual Deterrence Theory Perceptual deterrence theory has focused disproportionately on the “cost” side of the cost-benefit calculus Potential benefits of crime are unmeasured or are viewed as limited Perceptual deterrence theory needs to explore more systematically how perceptions of punishment are shaped by individual differences among potential offenders The perceived utility and consequences of crime are not judged equally by all potential offenders but rather are filtered through people’s personalities Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Perceptual Deterrence Theory Perceptual deterrence theory needs to take into account the complex ways in which perceptions are formed and influence behavior When people are punished for an offense, it tends to lower their perceptions of the certainty of punishment and to increase their offending (resetting) Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Perceptual Deterrence Theory Warr and Stafford argue there are four potential sources of perceptions: Direct punishment Indirect punishment Direct avoidance of punishment Indirect avoidance of punishment Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Perceptual Deterrence Theory Current perceptions of the risk of punishment are based both on past risk perceptions and on newly acquired information Perceptions thus are not static but dynamic, always being updated as individuals’ experiences with punishment change Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Perceptual Deterrence Theory: Policy Implications – Certainty, Not Severity Kleiman’s When Brute Force Fails discusses how the U.S. has attempted to solve the crime problem with incarceration and severe punishment and it has been ineffective Scholars are now arguing the key to crime control is to emphasize certainty over severity of punishment Project HOPE Custodial sanctions do not specifically deter Police practices that increase the certainty of arrest deter Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Situational Action Theory Per-Olof Wikstrom’s situational action theory (SAT) is complex theory that seeks to explain the likelihood that a person will come to see an act of crime as an action alternative and choose to carry it out Crime is a form of moral action (involves a decision of right and wrong) The decision occurs within a context or setting that has a moral quality Crime is thus a situation Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Situational Action Theory Causal mechanism is: Choice of crime begins with people experiencing the motivation to engage in crime A moral filter arises that affects the action alternatives or possible choices that can occur in response to motivation Consists of a moral propensity and a moral context A rational deliberation then occurs about whether to commit crime Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Situational Action Theory Wikstrom also argues there are systemic factors and life-history factors are important and affect choice of crime to the extent they influence the variables in SAT Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Situational Action Theory SAT’s core construct, moral propensity, only conceives morality as a matter of whether an act is seen as wrong Akers’s definitions in a far more complex factor Self-control may precede morality However, SAT has two important contributions: Choice of crime cannot be reduced to a simple calculation of costs and benefits Illustrates the importance of seeing choices as situational, involving the interaction between individuals and context Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications

Conclusion Concern is largely with the present and with the crime-inducing factors that are proximate or contemporaneous with the criminal act that is about to occur Theories of choice and opportunity remind us that offenders are active and not passive participants in the decision to break the law Need to consider how the decision to offend is affected by perceptions of costs and benefits and by situational factors such as the attractiveness of targets and the presence of controllers The theories have important policy implications – reducing the opportunities to offend Lilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE Publications