Nutshell Studies: Felson and Cohen (1979)
Routine Activities Theory has arguably been one of the most influential crime theories of recent times and this Nutshell Study provides a simple overview for time-starved students who would nevertheless like to understand the basics of the theory. If you fancy looking at RAT a little more critically we’ve got that angle covered for you […]
Crime and Victimisation: 1. Victimology
This section of Crime Notes focuses on a number of different aspects of victimisation with the initial emphasis on the concept of victimology, the social construction of victims and a range of victim-orientated policies introduced into England and Wales in the 21st century. Over the past 50 or so years there has been a growth […]
Explanations for Crime and Deviance: 2. New Right
In the late 1960s and early 1970s there was a general political perception that the ‘fight against crime’ was not only being lost, but that attempts to explain and solve offending behaviours were largely ineffective. The best that could be done was to develop ways that limited the impact of crime on communities and this […]
What Works to Reduce Crime?: A Summary of the Evidence
It’s probably safe to say that a key driver of crime policy in countries like Britain and America over the past 50 or so years has been the notion of situational crime control. The idea, in a nutshell, that there can be no “solution to the problem of crime”, as such. The best we can […]
The Crime Collection
In a previous post I pulled-together all the free crime and deviance films we have available to create a simple one-stop-shop (so to speak) you could browse, rather than have to search individually for these films. I’ve extended this thinking to bring together all the posts we’ve made on Crime and Deviance – and since […]
Relighting the Streets: Situational Crime Prevention
Over the past 50 years an increasingly-influential school of criminology has argued that finding “the causes of crime” or “solutions to the problem of crime” is not possible. The best we can do, they argue, is manage and limit the extent of crime. Situational Crime Prevention, in this respect, involves a range of strategies based […]
Right Realism vs. Edgework: A Short Film
This short Crime Channel film looks at two contrasting approaches to understanding young, male, working-class criminality. The first, Right Realism, is an approach underpinned by the notion of criminals making rational choices on the basis of a “cost-benefit” analysis of crime. If, in short, the potential costs exceed the assumed benefits then a crime will […]
Stealing to Offer: A Market Reduction Approach
While Situational Crime Prevention (SCP) strategies come in many forms, the majority focus on identifying and developing ways to stop an offence taking place. Market Reduction Approaches, however, while sharing a similar crime reduction / elimination objective, are a little different because their focus is on preventing offenders profiting from various forms of economic crime, […]
Rational Choice Theory | 1
This first of two posts on Rational Choice Theory (RCT) provides an overview of a key New Right theory whose central argument about criminal rationality underpins a range of later Right Realist explanations for crime. Rational Choice Theory (RCT) is one of a group of theories – including Broken Windows and Routine Activities Theory – […]
The Crime and Deviance Channel
The Crime and Deviance Channel now offers a wide range of free Text, PowerPoint, Audio and Video resources organised into 5 categories: 1. Theories 2. Social Distribution 3. Power and Control 4. Globalisation 5. Research Methods Each category contains a mix of content: • Text materials range from complete pdf chapters to a variety of […]
Crime Displacement PowerPoint
Over the past 50 years it’s probably fair to say that a great deal of the sociology of crime and deviance in both America and, to a lesser extent, the UK, has been orientated towards situational crime prevention techniques and strategies in terms of both practical strategies and theoretical explanations (such as Routine Activities Theory). […]
Restorative Justice: An Educational Dimension
You may – or as is probably more likely, may not – recall a post a while back that outlined some ideas on Braithwaite and Restorative Justice as they relate to crime and criminal behaviour – a fact I mention only because I came across an interesting short video on how a school in Colorado […]
Situational Crime Prevention: The (New Right) Theory
In two previous posts (Categorising Situational Crime Prevention Strategies and Categorising Situational Crime Prevention: Techniques and Examples) we looked at some examples of situational crime prevention strategies and techniques and this third post examines the theoretical background to situational crime prevention in a couple of ways: Firstly, by looking at the broad background in terms of […]
SCP and the Craving for Hot Products
An important dimension of Routine Activities Theory is the element of target suitability and selection. Even in situations where a motivated offender is somewhere that lacks active guardians, how and why they select one target rather than another is an important question in relation to situational crime prevention. This was directly addressed by Felson and […]
Situational Crime Prevention Video
This is a video version of the Cornish and Clarke Situational Crime Prevention PowerPoint presentation. The film runs for around 3 minutes.