Routine Activity Theory

Summary

Historically, criminological theories have aimed to explain criminal propensity, providing

explanations for why some individuals are more likely than others to commit an offense.

Conversely, less attention has been paid to the other element of a crime event: opportunity.

This trend was radically altered from the 1970s onward, in large part due to Lawrence Cohen

and Marcus Felson’s creation of a “routine activity approach” to understanding crime trends.

The scholars proposed that, beyond the necessity of a motivated offender, crimes occur when

suitable targets are present and capable guardians are absent. The contribution of routine

activity theory increased interest in the role of criminal opportunity substantially, with

various streams of research coalescing into a school of criminological thought known as

“environmental criminology,” sometimes referred to as “crime science.” Routine activity

theory is central to these approaches and is focused on crime reduction through the

prevention and control of chances to commit crime.

Routine activity theory was initially proposed as a sociological perspective, as Cohen and

Felson explored aggregate associations between social trends (such as sociodemographic

changes in household activity and urbanization) and the risk of victimization. Their analyses

suggested that as changes occurred in the routine activities of Americans post-World War II,

crime rates increased. From this original conceptualization, routine activity theory has

evolved into the “crime triangle,” which provides a way of analyzing crime problems. The

triangle depicts that crime events occur when motivated offenders and attractive targets

converge in space and time in the absence of guardianship. Research has further specified

that three crime control actions paired with these elements—handling for offenders, guarding
for targets, and managing for places—can reduce crime events. There are now hundreds of

studies that examine the relationship between routine activities and crime, with many of these

empirical investigations organized around the crime triangle. Theoretical advancements have

outlined the role of targets and guardians, the levels of responsibility of crime controllers, the

attractiveness of targets, the characteristics of (in)effective guardianship, and the social

processes related to the presence or absence of handlers, guardians, and managers.

Considering the combined contributions of this canon of literature, the evidence is clear in

demonstrating the utility of routine activity theory for understanding and preventing crime.

Keywords

crime control, crime triangle, guardianship, offender handling, place management, routine

activity theory

For much of the 20th century, criminologists were largely concerned with explaining why

offenders commit crime. Theorists considered the factors responsible for offender propensity

(that is, why a person is more inclined to commit an offense), focusing on reasons such as

biology, learning and psychology, emotions and strains, families and communities, and social

bonds. Alongside their collective desire to explain offender motivation, these theories share

one thing in common: they cannot specify an easy fix, as the problems are generally deep-

seated and difficult to reverse. Yet a separate class of theories suggests that we might achieve

better outcomes if we consider not what makes a criminal, but rather what makes a crime

event occur (Clarke, 2010). Gaining traction in the 1970s and 1980s, a new group of theories

shifted scholars’ attention away from criminal propensity and toward the other ingredient

necessary for a crime event to occur: opportunity (Lilly, Cullen, & Ball, 2007). These

theories are divergent in their explanatory aims, yet each emphasizes the role of the

environment, which is more or less conducive to crime due to the opportunities for offending
that are present or prevented. Accordingly, theories that call attention to the role of

opportunity form a stream of the discipline known as “environmental criminology.” One of

the central theories that helped to form this camp is routine activity theory. The routine

activity approach continues to play a central role in contemporary scholarship and crime

prevention practices, persuasively demonstrating the utility of opportunity-focused criminal

justice interventions.

A Routine Activity Approach

In 1979, Lawrence Cohen and Marcus Felson published their paper “Social Change and

Crime Trends: A Routine Activity Approach” in the American Sociological Review. The

scholars framed their argument by first introducing a sociological paradox: that crime rates

had increased dramatically in the preceding decades, despite an improvement in the

conditions that were thought to be the cause of crime. In this era, rates of education

completion, employment rates, and the median household income all increased, yet the

reported rates of property and violent crimes also increased. The leading criminological

theories of the time could not easily account for this unexpected relationship, as many would

have predicted that crime rates would fall. Cohen and Felson (1979) thus questioned the

cause of this association, cleverly suggesting that “changes in the ‘routine activities’ of

everyday life” (p. 589) have structured things in such a way as to increase criminal

opportunity. They theorized that routine activity patterns had been structured so as to allow

the convergence of the three requisite elements of a crime event: (a) a motivated offender, (b)

a suitable target or victim, and (c) the absence of a guardian capable of preventing the

offense. This thesis was a revolutionary articulation of the calculus of a crime, with the

authors confidently asserting that the lack of any one of these elements is sufficient to prevent

the crime event from occurring. They proposed that “if the proportion of motivated offenders
or even suitable targets were to remain stable in a community, changes in routine activities

could nonetheless alter the likelihood of their convergence in space and time, thereby creating

more opportunities for crimes to occur” (p. 589).

Cohen and Felson acknowledged that other scholars and theories had considered the

distribution of crime geographically (e.g., Balbi & Guerry, 1829; Glyde, 1856; Quételet,

1842) and the factors that are associated with these crime concentrations (e.g., Park &

Burgess, 1925; Shaw & McKay, 1942). What makes the routine activity approach unique,

they argued, is their consideration of “the fundamental human ecological character of illegal

acts as events which occur at specific locations in space and time, involving specific persons

and/or objects” (p. 589, emphasis in original). The scholars did not examine why a person

may be criminally inclined, instead focusing on how social activities are organized in ways

that convert those criminal inclinations into criminal behaviors. In framing their analyses,

they thus considered that crime events share many of the routine activities of ordinary law-

abiding events, exhibiting a “temporal interdependence.” Accordingly, they suggested that,

because crime is a function of the convergence of offenders and targets in the absence of

guardians, crime trends can be understood as a result of the social conditions that affect the

frequency of such a convergence.

Cohen and Felson (1979) conceded that many other criminological studies had similarly

examined how routine activities impact offending, although they suggested that these projects

relied on descriptive data rather than an analytical framework. One of the potential reasons

routine activity theory has earned its place in history as a beacon within environmental

criminology is perhaps for that very reason: Cohen and Felson organized their theses within a

single framework and subjected their ideas to a large-scale quantitative analysis. The scholars

proposed that, since World War II, the routine activities of the American populace shifted

more household members out of the household (such as for work and for leisure). As a
consequence, this shift in the structure of routine activities increases the availability of crime

opportunities (whereby motivated offenders converge with targets or victims in the absence

of capable guardianship). They hypothesized that these changes in routine activities will

affect the risk of victimization due to changes in target visibility or accessibility and

guardianship.

To empirically examine their proposals, Cohen and Felson (1979) first used existing data

to explore many cross-sectional bivariate associations between criminal victimization and

target suitability (which is associated with the presence or absence of an effective guardian),

finding general support for their routine activity approach. The scholars then compared

changes in the structure of routine activities to changes in crime rates. They showed that the

1960–1970 decade experienced large increases in female college students, female labor force

participation, single-person households, household daytime unattendance, and vacation

periods. These changes in activity patterns corresponded with changes in property trends, as

the demand for automobiles and durable and movable goods increased, and businesses moved

more goods and money. Cohen and Felson showed that the composition of crimes changed as

a function of the alterations of how people and property circulate. The scholars demonstrated

that from 1960 to 1975, the proportion of particular crimes within the total crime counts

changed quite substantially; for example, they showed that the fraction of the total accounted

for by commercial burglaries declined (from 60 to 36%), while daytime residential burglaries

increased (from 16 to 33%). Examining all the descriptive data collectively, Cohen and

Felson argued that these changing crime trends are the direct consequence of the

simultaneously changing routine activities of Americans.

With the basic tenets of their arguments being supported by the data, Cohen and Felson

(1979) then tested their hypothesis that trends in the aggregate crime rate vary in

correspondence with trends in activity that disperse people away from their families and
homes. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of the Census, for each

year from 1947 to 1974, the scholars calculated a “household activity ratio”; this estimate

describes the proportion of the populace that is more highly exposed to personal or property

victimization risk due to movements away from the home or the likely ownership of durables

that are attractive to offenders. Then, after including statistical controls for the proportion of

the populace aged 15–24 and the unemployment rate, they examined the relationship between

this household activity ratio and five crime rates (homicide, forcible rape, aggravated assault,

robbery, and burglary). Cohen and Felson consistently found a positive association between

the household activity ratio and crime, writing that “these results suggest that routine

activities may indeed provide the opportunity for many illegal activities to occur” (p. 604).

Using aggregate longitudinal data to analyze their routine activity framework, Cohen and

Felson (1979) helped to account for the somewhat curious statistical association that was

occurring in the United States at the time. Many of the conditions presumed to cause crime

seemed to be improving, yet crime rates were increasing. Routine activity theory thus

dramatically impacted the collective state of criminological knowledge. Their conclusion that

crime rates can increase without any changes in offender propensity was bold, yet Cohen and

Felson persuasively placed the focus on the routine activities that change crime opportunity

structures. Their routine activity approach for explaining crime rates—emphasizing the

convergence in space and time of motivated offenders, suitable targets, and the absence of a

capable guardian—demonstrated that social trends impact crime trends, but not because of

changes in criminal motivation. Whereas the preceding decades of scholarship and

application focused on what makes a person a criminal, routine activity theory shifted much

of the attention to what makes a crime occur (Lilly et al., 2007). This reimagining of the

calculus of crime has had a tremendous impact on criminological theory and criminal justice

practices (Andresen & Farrell, 2015).

The Crime Triangles

Cohen and Felson’s (1979) routine activity theory initiated a focus on crime opportunities,

and other scholars began to develop ideas that helped to explain why these opportunities

developed and how they could be disrupted. Drawing on these ideas, Eck (2003) depicted the

core tenets of routine activity theory as a triangle, with the three sides reflecting the three

elements that are necessary for a crime to occur: a motivated offender and a suitable target,

coming together in a place and time. This illustration (referred to as the “crime triangle,” the

“crime problem triangle,” or the “problem analysis triangle”) portrays the conditions that

facilitate or stymie crime events. The crime triangle helps to graphically convey that crime

can be disrupted by addressing just one element; by controlling the offender, controlling the

target, or controlling the place, the crime event will not occur. Accordingly, while the tenets

of routine activity theory make up the sides of the crime triangle, Eck (2003) added an outer

triangle that links “controllers” to the elements of a crime event: handlers for offenders,

guardians for targets and victims, and managers for places (see Figure 1). These controllers

were proposed by Eck as part of the solution to recurring crime problems, with each

representing a condition that can be manipulated in order to prevent crime.

[insert Figure 1 here]

In their original articulation of routine activity theory, Cohen and Felson (1979) point to

more than a dozen preceding criminological studies that described how the structure of

human activities affects guardianship and crime, such as the travel patterns of working

homeowners influencing the decision-making of burglars. Their assertion that “guardianship

is implicit in everyday life” (p. 590) has had important implications for our understanding of

how to prevent crime. The suggestion that everyday people going about their everyday lives

disrupt the lead-up to (and completion of) an offense has shifted the responsibility of crime

control away from law enforcement authorities alone. The addition of crime controllers to the
routine activity approach has further helped to identify the many possible actors that have

crime preventive effects. Indeed, if just one of the controllers is present and effective, the

crime event is avoided, as it eliminates one of the elements of the inner crime triangle.

There is an extensive evidence base documenting how all three forms of crime control

can reduce crime events (Felson, 1995; Hollis, Felson, & Welsh, 2013; Hollis-Peel, Reynald,

van Bavel, Elffers, & Welsh, 2011; Hollis-Peel, Reynald, & Welsh, 2012; Reynald, 2011a;

Weisburd & Eck, 2004; Wortley, 2001). There is some disagreement in the literature

regarding the mechanism of action that forms the foundation of effective crime control.

Schaefer and Mazerolle (2017) call attention to distinctions made between intentional and

accidental crime prevention (Hollis-Peel et al., 2011), between direct and indirect crime

control (Bernburg & Krohn, 2003; Rankin & Wells, 1990), between private and public

interventions (Bursik, 1999, 2000; Warner, 2007; Wilkinson, 2007), and between formal and

informal social control (Bursik & Grasmick, 1993; Lambert, Jaishankar, Jiang, Pasupuleti, &

Bhimarasetty, 2011; Sampson, 1986). Other scholars have described the importance of

factors such as the levels of accountability each actor is prescribed (Felson, 1995), the social

process that facilitates action (Schaefer & Mazerolle, 2017), the crime script used by each

controller (Leclerc, 2014), or the importance of presence, ability, and the willingness to

intervene of prospective actors (Reynald, 2010). Despite these theoretical differences, it is

helpful to envision the function of each crime controller according to the element of the crime

event over which it exercises influence. Sometimes the general term “guardianship” is used to

describe anyone that disrupts an offender coming together with a target; this blurring of roles

may occur because one person through one action could be fulfilling several crime controller

roles at once (such as a person locking their door acting simultaneously as a target/victim

guardian and place manager) (Schaefer & Mazerolle, 2017). Still, it is useful to consider
crime controllers in relation to the crime triangles, whereby handlers control offenders,

guardians control targets, and managers control places.

Offender Handlers

Central to the criminal act is the person committing the offense. While much of criminology

is concerned with why a person is more or less inclined to commit crimes, the empirical

investigation of how that individual comes to actually commit the crime is of greater

importance within the routine activity approach. The linking of handlers to offenders within

the crime triangles is not an outright novel association; after all, many theorists have

recognized the importance of interpersonal relationships in crime commission and

prevention, both among individuals (Cullen, 1994; Hirschi, 1969; Sutherland, 1947) and at

the community level (Bellair, 1997; Browning, 2009; Mazerolle, Wickes, & McBroom, 2010;

Pattillo, 1998; Sampson, Morenoff, & Gannon-Rowley, 2002; Warner & Wilcox-Rountree,

1997). Yet the specification of offender handling from a routine activity perspective is an

advancement for crime prevention purposes because it describes why offenders are free to

pursue available chances to commit crime—not as a consequence of propensity, but because

they have evaded handling. Indeed, Eck (2003) explains that since offenders can move on to

other unguarded targets if they so desire, “it is the offender-handler breakdown that facilitates

pure repeat-offender problems” (p. 91). Stated more positively, an offense can be avoided

when handlers are present and effective.

The idea of offender handling was introduced as part of Felson’s (1986) effort to tie

routine activity theory (Cohen & Felson, 1979) to social bond theory (Hirschi, 1969).

Consistent with the central thesis of routine activity theory—that the availability and

exploitation of crime opportunities is patterned according to ordinary behaviors—Felson

(1986) describes “how the structure of social life makes it easy or difficult for people to carry
out” their inclinations to break the law (p. 120), after declaring that “people make choices,

but they cannot choose the choices available to them” (p. 119). Drawing on the insights of

Hirschi’s (1969) control theory, Felson (1986) puts forward the assumption that almost

everyone has a “handle” attached to them, and that members of society can grasp that handle

to prevent rule-breaking. The emphasis for Felson is not on how offenders gain their handles

or the ways in which the handle is grasped, necessarily, but rather how the structure of

activities brings offenders and handlers together or allows offenders with handles to break

free of people that could potentially grasp said handle. Felson (1986) states that offender

handling takes place through a “web of informal control” (p. 122) and that a crime wave can

be caused when “the pattern of daily life and the structure of households, work, school, and

transport” (p. 125) make it easier or more difficult for prospective handlers to prevent the

offender from encountering and taking advantage of crime opportunities. Thus, even if

offender motivations increase or targets become more available and attractive, potential

criminals are still “subject to the irreducible and stubborn facts of the larger environment” (p.

127). Importantly, then, the routine behaviors of people can prevent crime from occurring,

even without an explicit effort to do so.

Although there are few studies that directly examine the roles, actions, and impacts of

“offender handling” per se, there is certainly ample indirect evidence for the crime preventive

effects of incidental handlers. For instance, research shows that unstructured social activity,

particularly among youths that are unsupervised by adults, is frequently criminogenic

(McNeeley & Hoeben, 2017; Osgood, Wilson, O’Malley, Bachman, & Johnston, 1996;

Weisburd, Groff, & Yang, 2013); these studies suggest that the absence of effective handlers

contributes to crime problems, especially delinquency. Additionally, life-course research

demonstrates that certain life transitions alter offending trajectories (such as marriage

resulting in less time spent using drugs or associating with deviant peers) (Laub, Sampson, &
Allen, 2001; Warr, 1998), which may suggest that desistance occurs because handles have

been grasped. While some research hypothesizes that handlers are likely to be most effective

when the handler is known to the offender (Felson, 1995; Schaefer, Moir, & Williams, 2019;

Tillyer & Eck, 2011), other studies find that handlers can prevent crime irrespective of the

relationship (Bernasco, Ruiter, Bruinsma, Pauwels, & Weerman, 2013). Importantly, as

research demonstrates that informal social control agents (such as parents or spouses) are

often more effective at preventing offending than formal social control actors (such as the

police), crime prevention efforts should be organized in such a way as to pair (potential or

actual) offenders with intimate handlers (Schaefer, Cullen, & Eck, 2016). These relationships

thwart crime opportunities through a variety of mechanisms, such as by distraction,

surveillance, or persuasion of potential offenders (Clarke & Eck, 2005; Schaefer et al., 2019).

No matter the process by which handlers grasp offenders’ handles, research indicates that

prospective offenders with strong family and community ties are less likely to (re)offend

(National Research Council of the National Academies, 2008; Pew Center on the States,

2008).

Target Guardians

Target guardians are perhaps the most studied and best understood of the crime controllers,

perhaps because it was included as a feature in the original specification of routine activity

theory (Cohen & Felson, 1979), or perhaps because crime controller actions are often lumped

together under the generic umbrella of guardianship (Hollis-Peel et al., 2011; Wilcox,

Madensen, & Tillyer, 2007). Indeed, there seems to be some disagreement in the literature

about what constitutes guardianship within the routine activity framework. Schaefer and

Mazerolle (2017) suggest that, because some crime controller behaviors have multiple

outcomes, there is a tendency to refer to guardianship as any action taken by someone that
has a crime preventive effect; however, they argue that each crime controller is different due

to its relationship to elements of the crime triangle, whereby “offender handlers prevent a

person from pursuing a chance to commit crime, target guardians block people from

committing crime when the chance is there, and place managers restructure the environment

so that there are fewer chances for offenders to commit crime” (p. 273). Hollis-Peel and

colleagues (2011) try to move beyond guardianship definitions that simply pair a guardian

with the goal of protecting targets, defining guardianship as “the physical or symbolic

presence of an individual (or group of individuals) that acts (either intentionally or

unintentionally) to deter a potential criminal event” (p. 54). This latter definition identifies

guardians as anybody and everybody who is present at the scene of a possible offense,

monitors the situation, and intervenes when necessary (Reynald, 2011a), highlighting the

importance of inadvertent and occasional intervention.

Given the divergent definitions of guardianship, the operationalization of the concept

varies greatly. From a level-of-measurement perspective, while the original articulation of the

routine activity approach relied on a macro-level pattern perspective, other studies examine

micro-level environments and moments (Hollis-Peel et al., 2011; Schaefer & Mazerolle,

2017); these measurement differences have an impact on the effects observed (Pratt &

Cullen, 2005). Reynald and Elffers (2015) demonstrate that self-reported guardianship

intensity differs from the proxies used to approximate guardianship. Yet most frequently,

guardianship is represented by variables such as labor force (non)participation (Cohen &

Felson, 1979; Stahura & Sloan, 1988; Wickes, Zahnow, Schaefer, & Sparkes-Carroll, 2017),

household occupancy (Miethe, Stafford, & Sloane, 1990; Tseloni, Witterbrood, Farrell, &

Pease, 2004), policing levels (Stahura & Sloan, 1988), and the use of traditional security

systems (Coupe & Blake, 2006), although some studies measure direct observation (Garofalo

& Clark, 1992; Hollis-Peel & Welsh, 2014; Lynch & Cantor, 1992; Reynald, 2011a). There is
a confusion in the literature as to whether researchers are actually studying guardianship

behaviors or general target hardening measures (Mustaine & Tewksbury, 1998; Wilcox et al.,

2007). For instance, as described by Ekblom (2005), there are multiple methods that

guardians may use to reduce the attractiveness of potential targets of crime, such as removing

access, concealment, and target hardening; yet these actions make it unclear whether it is

“guardianship” as such, or if efforts taken to make targets less attractive sit outside the “crime

controller” triangle. There is further confusion as to whether someone is a guardian over their

own person, preventing victimization through “self-guardianship” (Ashby & Thorpe, 2017;

Franklin & Menaker, 2018; Tewksbury & Mustaine, 2003), or if this is an example of

reducing target suitability (Hollis-Peel et al., 2011; Wilcox et al., 2007).

Adding to the difficulty of measuring guardianship and its effectiveness is that, most

generally, guardians are effective in preventing crime without their knowledge (e.g., a

potential burglar deciding not to break into a house because he sees the homeowner, or a

potential car thief changing her plans because of a group of pedestrians heading in her

direction); guardianship can occur anywhere by anyone, making it conceptually and

methodologically challenging to study. Cohen and Felson (1979) themselves explained that

guardianship is neglected by researchers because “it links seemingly unrelated social roles

and relationships to the occurrence or absence of illegal acts” (p. 590). Indeed, Felson (2006)

suggests that guardians are often ordinary citizens rather than law enforcement agents, who

look after persons who could be victimized or property that could be targeted. The

capabilities of formal guardians (such as security officers) can be augmented by informal

guardians (Clarke & Eck, 2005; Felson, 1995), who can create the perception among

prospective offenders that an attempt to pursue a target is risky (such that the effort will not

be successful or that they will be apprehended) (Schaefer et al., 2016). Such crime prevention
efforts generally show that guardianship is an effective component of addressing everyday

offending as well as recurring crime problems (Hollis-Peel et al., 2011; Reynald, 2011a).

Place Managers

The routine activity approach (Cohen & Felson, 1979), augmented by the crime triangles

depicted by Eck (2003), indicates that a crime event is possible when a motivated offender

and an attractive target or victim converge in space and time, where there is no effective

crime controller to disrupt such a convergence. While criminology studies have uncovered

many of the features of criminogenic places, the routine activity framework optimistically

demonstrates that we can prevent crimes at places by the simple addition of a manager

(Clarke & Eck, 2005; Madensen & Eck, 2013). The recruitment, training, and (sometimes

coerced) cooperation of place managers can become an important crime prevention tactic,

considering evidence that a small proportion of places contribute to a large proportion of

crime events (Braga, Hureau, & Papachristos, 2011; Weisburd, Bushway, Lum, & Yang,

2004). Given this reality, there are many place-based crime prevention efforts that involve a

physical alteration of the environment, frequently organized under the headings of “crime

prevention through environmental design” (CPTED), “defensible space,” and “situational

crime prevention” (Clarke, 2008; Crowe, 2000; Newman, 1996). The concept of place

management is somewhat distinct in that it describes the actions of the owners (or their

representatives) of places to monitor and control the behavior that takes place therein.

The role of place manager was first developed in Eck’s (1994) study of the decision-

making of drug-dealing offenders, which demonstrated that the offenders were strategically

choosing particular places because of their features. Eck hypothesized that the owners of

smaller buildings were not exerting as much control over their physical place than the owners

of larger buildings, with a later study confirming that interventions with the owners of
apartment buildings can produce marked reductions in crime at those drug-dealing places

(Eck & Wartell, 1998). Madensen and Eck (2013) explain that place managers with various

levels of responsibility (Felson, 1995) can all prevent crime; however, they suggest that

“personal place managers” have the greatest power and interest in controlling crime in their

owned location. Readers may consider that this latter hypothesis is unreasonable, since most

places indeed have owners, yet crimes occur in some of these locations (and indeed, some

places attract a great deal of crime despite having a discernible place manager). Accordingly,

Madensen and Eck (2013) detail that an absent or ineffective place manager can contribute to

a crime hotspot by failing to protect targets (“crime generators”), being appealing to

motivated offenders (“crime attractors”), or failing to control the behavior of the people that

occupy that space (“crime enablers”). Managers are ineffective when they fail to organize the

space, regulate the conduct there, and control access (Madensen, 2007). Importantly, it is the

routine activities that occur in these places that contribute to them becoming chronic crime

problems, so effective place management is critical.

Research demonstrates that offenders choose where to commit crime based on the

physical and social properties of a place (Eck & Weisburd, 1995; Madensen & Eck, 2013).

Crime events that lack such forward planning are still influenced by such properties, as a

place signals to prospective offenders (along with potential handlers, victims, and guardians)

what the behavioral norms of that place are and what the potential costs and benefits of

committing an offense in that place may be (Cornish & Clarke, 2003; Schaefer & Mazerolle,

2018). Recruiting place managers helps to reduce the burden on formal law enforcement

agencies, as the natural owners have the authority to alter the physical environment in crime

preventive ways, but they can also engage in surveillance. Thus, one prescription for

criminogenic places is to identify, train, and motivate owners to better manage their space

(Schaefer et al., 2016), sometimes through legal levers such as in third-party policing
(Mazerolle & Ransley, 2005). Reviews of the research evidence demonstrate that crime

prevention programs that target the owners of crime-prone places can produce significant

reductions in problematic offending (Eck & Guerette, 2011; Madensen & Eck, 2013;

Mazerolle & Ransley, 2006).

Super Controllers

With much learned about how crime controllers can influence crime opportunities, scholars

began to question what influences the crime controllers themselves. Sampson, Eck, and

Dunham (2010) argue that while routine activity theory and the crime triangles explain that

crime events occur when offenders and targets converge in space and time in the absence of a

crime controller, there has been limited effort to explain what makes an offender handler,

target guardian, or place manager absent or ineffective. In response to this shortcoming, they

suggest that “the behaviors of controllers can be understood in the context of their

relationship with super controllers – those who regulate controllers’ incentives to prevent

crime” (p. 37) (see Figure 2). They propose that super controllers take 10 different forms,

organized in three categories: formal super controllers (with the types of organizational,

contractual, financial, regulatory, and courts), diffuse super controllers (with the types of

political, markets, and media), and personal super controllers (with the types of groups and

family). Sampson and colleagues speculate that super controllers control the controllers (by

manipulating the incentives for addressing crime) through five mechanisms, drawn from

situational crime prevention (Clarke, 2008): effort, risk, rewards, excuses, and provocation.

Practical examples of super controllers include police officers teaching place managers how

to better organize their space to prevent crime from occurring there (Madensen & Eck, 2013)

or probation and parole officers teaching their clients’ loved ones to engage in offender

handling (Schaefer et al., 2019). While there are few studies that explicitly study the utility
and impact of super controllers on crime (as an exception, see Townsley, Leclerc, & Tatham,

2016), many scholars have suggested that super controllers could likely be effective in

placing pressure on the actors that can directly address crime opportunities.

[Insert Figure 2 here]

Applications of Routine Activity Theory

One of the central contributions of routine activity theory is its ability to inform practical

responses to crime problems. Compared with more complex theoretical frameworks,

straightforward explanatory models can fulfill multiple functions (Eck & Madensen, 2015).

Indeed, the longevity of routine activity theory may be a consequence of its ability to be

easily understood and utilized (Andresen & Farrell, 2015). As a consequence, it is perhaps

unsurprising that routine activity theory is applied in a variety of contexts. The central tenets

of the theory frequently form the foundation for a variety of criminal justice and other agency

responses to crime problems. While direct evaluations of routine activity theory are rare

(most studies explore the impact of guardianship or target hardening alone) (Madero-

Hernandez & Fisher, 2013), given its proliferation as one of the leading frameworks for

understanding how to reduce crime opportunities, it is reasonable to suspect that the

framework is at least somewhat effective—after all, if it didn’t work well or if it was difficult

to understand and implement, its use would not continue and expand. Although the

applications of the routine activity approach are many, three clear examples are described

here: problem-oriented policing, crime prevention, and corrections.

Problem-Oriented Policing

Routine activity theory specifies the conditions necessary for a crime: a motivated offender, a

suitable target, and a lack of a capable guardian. This approach to criminology emphasizes
opportunity reduction and has led criminal justice practitioners to focus on eliminating some

of the ingredients of the crime calculus to prevent offenses from occurring. A notable

illustration of this shift in attention can be observed in problem-oriented policing. Rather than

utilizing random patrols and reactive responses, the police can proactively interrupt the

conditions that lead to crime (Scott, Eck, Knutsson, & Goldstein, 2008). Under this

framework, the police view crime as a problem in need of a solution (Goldstein, 1990),

developing tools for preventing the conditions that routinely lead to crime events (Braga &

Weisburd, 2010). Law enforcement agencies analyze existing crime problems by examining

patterns of offending and its correlates (Brantingham & Brantingham, 1993; Eck & Spelman,

1987), then crafting preventative solutions uniquely tailored to that problem (Clarke & Eck,

2005). As this approach has progressed, research has begun to clearly establish how crime

hotspots emerge and how to disrupt the recipe for crime that occurs in those places (Braga,

Papachristos, & Hureau, 2014). The problem-oriented responses can sometimes rely on third-

party policing as a way of reducing crime opportunities, using a focused deterrence approach

to apply regulatory threats so that crime controllers become effective (Clarke & Eck, 2005;

Mazerolle & Ransley, 2005). Rather than responding to individual offenses and merely

enforcing the law after violations occur, problem-oriented policing relies on a routine activity

approach to understand the underlying conditions that lead to crime in a particular place, then

developing solutions that minimize the opportunity for crime (Santos, 2015; Scott et al.,

2008).

Crime Prevention

Because crimes predictably occur in particular areas and at particular times as a consequence

of the elements specified in the routine activity approach (Cohen & Felson, 1979), crimes can

be prevented by addressing just one side of the crime triangle (Eck, 2003). Rather than
addressing offender etiology or broad criminogenic community conditions (such as poverty),

crime prevention can be as straightforward as preventing an offender from coming into

contact with a suitable target in the absence of a capable guardian. Practically, such crime

prevention efforts frequently include target hardening measures, CPTED, and improved

guardianship availability and ability. A popular framework for organizing these efforts is

situational crime prevention, which describes techniques that make targets less attractive and

places less conducive to crime (Clarke, 2008). These mechanisms make it harder for a

motivated offender to commit an offense, even if that means simply altering the perceptions

of potential offenders such that their decision-making considers the benefits of crime to be

fewer and the costs of crime to be greater (Cornish & Clarke, 2008). Situational crime

prevention describes techniques for reducing the likelihood that a prospective offender will

take advantage of a crime opportunity, organized around the categories of increasing the

effort, increasing the risks, reducing the rewards, reducing the provocations, and removing

the excuses associated with crime (Cornish & Clarke, 2003). These mechanisms of

preventing crime are frequently utilized as part of an effort to address the elements of crime

events stipulated under a routine activity approach (Wilcox, 2015).

Corrections

Routine activity theory changed the way criminologists think about crime, shifting the

emphasis away from propensity alone and incorporating the role of criminal opportunity

(Lilly et al., 2007). Given the alterations made to policing practices in response to the routine

activity approach, other scholars have questioned whether comparable effects might be seen

within corrections. For instance, research has detailed the utility of opportunity reduction in

preventing problem behavior in prisons (Wortley, 2002). Within community corrections,

Cullen, Eck, and Lowenkamp (2002) have applied opportunity reduction principles to
probation and parole practices. The framework draws directly from Cohen and Felson’s

(1979) theory, working to redesign the offender’s routine activities in ways that reduce access

to crime-conducive situations while increasing exposure to prosocial alternatives (Schaefer et

al., 2016). The approach positions community corrections officers as problem-solvers who

steer their clients away from crime opportunities. In addition to supervision conditions that

reduce offenders’ exposure to chances for relapse, the “environmental corrections” model

also addresses the “motivated offender” aspect of the crime triangle by teaching probationers

and parolees skills in opportunity avoidance and opportunity resistance (Schaefer et al.,

2016). While research into the application and efficacy of routine activity theory within

corrections is largely in its infancy, early studies suggest that the theory is an effective tool in

reducing recidivism (Schaefer & Little, 2019) and recruiting crime controllers (Schaefer et

al., 2019).

Criticisms and Challenges of Routine Activity Theory

It is evident that routine activity theory has transformed criminology; its tenets helped to

establish an independent branch of scholarship focused on offenses rather than offenders,

commonly referred to as “environmental criminology” or more recently “crime science.” The

theory and its components have garnered a moderate level of empirical support (Madero-

Hernandez & Fisher, 2013; Pratt & Cullen, 2005), and applications of the theory’s elements

have flourished (Andresen & Farrell, 2015; Clarke & Eck, 2005). Yet the theory is not

without criticism (Cullen & Kulig, 2018). Methodologically, the theory’s validity has been

questioned due to issues of poor measurement (Madero-Hernandez & Fisher, 2013).

Conceptually, there have been questions about the theory’s generality (such as whether the

theory can explain different types of offending and whether the theory applies to the cyber

world as it does to the terrestrial world). Beyond these issues, the most frequent critiques of
the routine activity approach are outlined here, showcasing the challenges the theory has

encountered to date. The criticisms are organized around three themes, corresponding with

the three elements originally specified by Cohen and Felson (1979): offenders, guardians, and

place.

The Motivated Offender

Although a motivated offender is one of the requisite conditions for crime specified by the

routine activity approach, scholars have criticized the theory’s lack of attention to criminal

etiology. As articulated by Cohen and Felson (1979), “we do not examine why individuals or

groups are inclined criminally, but rather we take criminal inclination as given” (p. 589). It is

unclear whether the routine activity framework sees criminal motivation as universal to the

human condition (in line with control theories of crime) such that any individual can behave

criminally if the situational inducement is compelling enough, or if there are differences

between an “offender” (motivated or not) and a nonoffender. Madero-Hernandez and Fisher

(2013) review the predictive validity of routine activity theory and note that studies do better

in explaining property offending rather than violent offending; they conclude that this is

consistent with the criticism that offenders may not rationally choose to commit crime based

on the presentation of an opportunity, as some offending is purely expressive rather than

instrumental. Cullen and Kulig (2018) explain that this “undertheorizing” of the offender’s

role in crime events comes at a cost, as explanations for the motivated offender could be

useful in detailing how offenders come to be involved in crime events or why they perceive

particular targets as attractive. Although the emphasis on offenses rather than offenders is

what makes the routine activity approach distinct, the failure of the theory to fully address

what makes someone an “offender” or what is at the heart of “motivation” has drawn

criticism from mainstream criminological theorists (Lilly et al., 2007).

The Elements of Control

The routine activity approach specifies that crime can occur in the absence of capable

guardians (Cohen & Felson, 1979). Clarke and Felson (1993) assert that “defining a key

element as an absence rather than presence is surely the ultimate in depersonalizing and

depsychologizing the study of crime” (p. 3). Yet this has posed some problems for scholars

who are seeking to specify the elements of effective crime control. The work of Reynald

(2011a) has progressed the discipline in great strides by demonstrating that effective crime

controllers must be (a) present, (b) capable, and (c) willing to intervene. Unfortunately,

however, there are still questions regarding the processes that guide these steps (Schaefer &

Mazerolle, 2017), and it remains unclear “what level of guardianship intensity is required to

deter the would-be offender” (Hollis-Peel et al., 2012, p. 13). Routine activity theorists

sometimes refer to “informal social control” (Felson, 1986), representing the idea that

everyday people in everyday situations can disrupt crime events. Yet critics argue that this

concept has been poorly specified. For instance, Cullen and Kulig (2018) suggest that

theorists have not articulated how it works to disrupt crime, and that studies rarely measure

whether a “willingness to intervene” actually materializes into action (Wickes et al., 2017). It

is also unclear how this differs conceptually from informal social control and collective

efficacy within community-level studies (Bursik, 1999; Sampson, Raudenbush, & Earls,

1997). Criticized for the concept of guardians occupying a binary position within the theory

(they are either present or not, either effective or not) (Cullen & Kulig, 2018; Schaefer &

Mazerolle, 2017), routine activity theorists will be pressed to identify the mechanism of

action that explains crime controller action and effectiveness.

The Scale of Place

The original articulation of routine activity theory relied on aggregate longitudinal data to test

its assumptions, explicating how sociostructural conditions (such as employment trends)

impact crime. As the theory has progressed, some scholars suggest it has moved away from

this broad scale and as a result has neglected the context that facilitates the criminogenic

nature of places (Weisburd, 2012). For instance, Schaefer and Mazerolle (2017) suggest that

“the link between individual behaviors being conditioned by larger social processes – as

initially stipulated by RAT [routine activity theory] – has been somewhat lost” (p. 268). They

argue that the level of analysis has shifted from a macro to micro perspective, and “that this

inattention to the larger context of crime opportunities has shifted RAT toward explanations

of individual crime events, drawing focus away from the social milieus that facilitate the

divergence or convergence of the elements of crime” (p. 269). Schaefer and Mazerolle (2017)

conclude that routine activity approaches have succeeded in answering why crime occurs, but

that the theory has yet to account for how crimes happen. Cullen and Kulig (2018) suggest

that opportunity theorists’ aversion to “root-causes thinking” has meant that they fail to

consider how factors such as social inequality are instrumental in producing the elements of

crime events, which can have undesirable effects on “spatial justice.” There seems to be a

tension between social disorganization theorists and routine activity theorists, with some

scholars suggesting that their separate ideas of “place” (communities versus micro

geographies such as street segments, respectively) make their explanations incompatible

(Weisburd et al., 2016). There have been some efforts to integrate broad-scale theories with

the routine activity approach (e.g., Smith, Frazee, & Davison, 2000; Wilcox, Gialopsos, &

Land, 2013; Wilcox et al., 2007), and some scholars have suggested that crime controller

actions are a function of the local context (Reynald, 2011b; Schaefer, Mazerolle, &

Kapnoulla, 2017). However, critics maintain that many routine activity theorists have failed
to look beyond micro places to understand how criminal opportunities are structured or

facilitated.

Review of Literature and Directions for Future Research

Cohen and Felson’s (1979) routine activity approach represents a significant shift in the

history of criminological theory, emphasizing the role of criminal opportunity rather than

criminal propensity (Lilly et al., 2007). Their theoretical tenets helped to establish a

criminological truism—that an individual cannot commit crime absent the chance to do so—

that has birthed pragmatic solutions to crime problems, with studies showing that crime can

be prevented by addressing just one side of the crime triangle (Andresen & Farrell, 2015;

Clarke & Eck, 2005; Felson & Clarke, 1998). The routine activity perspective has been

applied to a multitude of offense types, helping to explain property, sexual, and violent

offending as well as street, cyber, and corporate crimes (Felson & Eckert, 2018; Miro, 2014).

Although routine activity theory has faced numerous conceptual challenges, scholars have

expanded and adapted the approach, developing many integrated theoretical frameworks as a

result (Madero-Hernandez & Fisher, 2013).

Yet despite the theory’s popularity in providing an explanatory framework for

criminology studies and criminal justice interventions, there have been few systematic

reviews of the empirical validity of routine activity theory. Three exceptions are worth

noting. First, Pratt and Cullen (2005) conducted a meta-analysis of macro-level predictors

and theories of crime. Based on their estimations (producing a mean effect size of 0.228 for

the household activity ratio and 0.135 for unemployment), the authors concluded that there is

moderate support for the assumptions of routine activity theory. Second, Spano and Freilich

(2009) examined all available findings from studies of routine activity theory, concluding that

there is consistent support for the theory’s hypothesized effects, but that this pattern is
nuanced according to the study’s sample age group, location, and operationalizations of key

constructs. Third, Madero-Hernandez and Fisher (2013) report on evaluations of routine

activity perspectives and conclude that the theory has a moderate level of predictive validity.

They conclude that the theory better explains property offending, speculating that the tenuous

relationship between routine activity theory and violent victimization may be unfairly reliant

on conceptualizations of offenders as rational actors. They also note that the theory is best

supported at lower levels of aggregation, with moderate support for multilevel studies and

mixed support from macro-level studies. Across all three reviews, the authors call for more

methodologically rigorous evaluations to help determine the actual empirical status of routine

activity theory. Specific recommendations include the need for research that uses direct rather

than proxy measures, that relies on longitudinal measures, and that examines the

multiplicative and mediated nature of the theory’s concepts (Madero-Hernandez & Fisher,

2013; Pratt & Cullen, 2005; Spano & Freilich, 2009).

Studies of routine activity theory have certainly progressed beyond its original form.

Schaefer and Mazerolle (2017) have categorized the evolution of routine activity research,

describing three waves of scholarship and proposing a fourth direction for the theory. They

suggest that the first wave of theoretical enquiry stemmed from Cohen and Felson’s (1979)

original stipulation of the ingredients of crime (a motivated offender and suitable target

converging in the absence of a capable guardian), with the perspective that “the structure of

the community may affect the tempo” of routine activities (p. 605). The seminal study

described the sociological structures that influence the routine behaviors of individuals that

go on to impact opportunities for offending, victimization, and guardianship. Schaefer and

Mazerolle (2017) describe the second wave of routine activity scholarship as being outcome-

focused, concentrating not on how crime occurs when conditions merge (Cohen & Felson,

1979), but on how crime events can be avoided by adding an element (such as a controller or
a security device) (Clarke & Eck, 2005; Eck, 2003; Felson, 1995). They argue that this shift

in focus has resulted in dichotomized thinking, with studies falling short of describing the

context and granularity of crime events (such as why no controller is present, why they fail to

act, or why their actions are ineffective). Schaefer and Mazerolle (2017) suggest that a third

wave of routine activity theorizing has focused on the characteristics of guardianship that

influence crime events (Reynald, 2010, 2011a), given the preceding studies’ emphasis on the

importance of crime controllers. They argue that this research still oversimplifies the process

of crime control, such as what facilitates factors such as availability, monitoring, and

intervention (Schaefer & Mazerolle, 2017). In response to the progressions and limitations of

the routine activity approach, they suggest that a fourth wave of scholarship seek to unpack

the “routine activity dynamics” that help to explain crime events and crime control. This call

to consider the processes that guide routine activity theory is part of a broader effort to

understand the micro and macro forces that orchestrate the routines and behaviors of

offenders, victims, and crime controllers (Cullen & Agnew, 2003; Felson, 2008; Weisburd,

2012).

Conclusion

Routine activity theory has revolutionized our understanding of why crime occurs. Shifting

criminologists’ attention away from propensity and toward the role of criminal opportunity,

Cohen and Felson’s (1979) seminal work has inspired a canon of research. An entire stream

of contemporary criminology—environmental criminology or crime science—owes its

foundations to the core precept that a criminally motivated person cannot commit a crime

absent the chance to do so. Routine activity theory and the subsequent crime triangles (Eck,

2003) have clearly communicated the ingredients necessary for crime and the straightforward

mechanisms that can thwart it. Applications and evaluations of the elements of the theory
demonstrate its utility in explaining and preventing crime events. Across offense types and

study locations, the routine activity framework has proven to be a useful theory with real-

world implications, with its underlying tenets informing many contemporary solutions to

crime problems.

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Lacey Schaefer
Figure 1. The problem analysis triangle.

Source: Center for Problem-Oriented Policing (2013).

Figure 2. Nested crime triangles.

Source: Bichler and Malm (2015).