Opportunity Makes the Thief
Practical theory for crime prevention
Marcus Felson
Ronald V. Clarke
Criminological theory has long emed irrelevant to tho who have to deal with
offenders in the real world. This irrelevance stems partly from attributing the
caus of crime to distant factors, such as child-rearing practices, genetic makeup,
and psychological or social process. The are mostly beyond the reach of
e v e ryday practice, and their combination is extremely complicated for tho who
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want to understand crime, much less do something about it. In this publication,
we shall show that understanding crime causation is not necessarily burdensome
and that this understanding is relevant to the routine prevention work undert a k e n
by police and others. In brief, we will argue that “opportunity makes the thief” is
much more than just an old saying and has important implications for crime
policy and practice.
Individual behavior is a product of an interaction between the person and the
tting. Most criminological theory pays attention only to the first, asking why
certain people might be more criminally inclined or less so. This neglects the
cond, the important features of each tting that help to translate criminal
inclinations into action.
不得不爱歌词 This preoccupation with criminal inclinations has produced a lop-sided picture of
the caus of crime, but this is being corrected in new work by environmental
criminologists, showing how some ttings provide many more crime opportunities
than others. Yet critics often downplay opportunities or temptations as true caus
of crime. To show why this is mistaken we note that no crime can occur without
the physical opportunities to carry it out. Whatever one’s criminal inclinations, one
cannot commit a crime without overcoming its physical requirements. Since crime于儿
opportunities are necessary conditions for crime to occur, this makes them caus in
a strong n of the word. At the same time, many people from uncaring or broken
homes have never committed crimes, and many people from good families in
comfortable circumstances have become active offenders. No theory about
individuals can claim that it has found the necessary conditions for a person to
commit crime. To be sure, no single cau of crime is sufficient to guarantee its
occurrence; yet opportunity above all others is necessary and therefore has as much
or more claim to being a “root cau”.
To offer an example of our thinking, shoplifting not only varies across individuals
but also among stores. Any store that makes shoplifting easy caus more crime to
occur in two ways: by encouraging more people to participate in the crime and by
黑虹helping each shoplifter to be more efficient as a thief. On the other side of the coin,
s t o res that have thwarted shoplifting with careful design and management reduce
the problem by producing fewer thieves and cutting the efficiency of each offender.
我的青春里有梦想 Individual propensities towards crime and criminogenic features of ttings, while
both important, are not equally simple to analyze. The usual approach –
discovering who has greater personal propensities towards crime and why – is a
more formidable task. Statistical analys to unravel individual caus are highly
complicated and em to go in circles. Articulate essays about the caus of crime
may persuade one group of readers but em to make little headway in persuading
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others. We e no immediate prospect of success in resolving the many
controversies about what caus individual crime propensities.
On the other hand, theories about how ttings cau crime are more successful,
not only in gaining empirical verification but in reaching connsus. For example,
we know that large pubs with many drunken young males jostling one another
produce more fights. We know that the layout of certain parks or streets invites
小班评语prostitution and drug-dealing. We understand some of the design and management
principles that help to make public housing incure or safe. Even when there is
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room for controversy and refinement, theory about crime ttings has thus far
