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Routine Activities Approach

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Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice

Overview

The routine activity approach is a theoretical perspective for describing and explaining how crime rates vary over time and space. The approach applies to variations and changes in both large and small areas, over both short and long stretches of time. The approach differs from many other criminological theories because it looks beyond individual offenders to focus on crime events and emphasizes how these events draw upon a much larger set of legal activities.

Basic Theory Described as Stated in 1979

The routine activity approach began by studying “direct-contact predatory crimes,” namely, those offenses in which one person directly attacks another person or takes the property of another. Crime events normally require a physical convergence of three minimal elements: (1) a likely offender, (2) a suitable target, and (3) the absence of a capable guardian (Cohen and Felson 1979). Routine noncrime activities are central for distributing these elements across space and through...

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Recommended Reading and References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Criminal Justice, Texas State University-San Marcos, 601 University Drive, San Marcos, TX, 78666, USA

    Jonathan Allen Kringen & Marcus Felson

Authors
  1. Jonathan Allen Kringen
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  2. Marcus Felson
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jonathan Allen Kringen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Gerben Bruinsma

  2. VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Gerben Bruinsma

  3. Department of Criminology, Law and Society, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    David Weisburd

  4. Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem, Israel

    David Weisburd

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Kringen, J.A., Felson, M. (2014). Routine Activities Approach. In: Bruinsma, G., Weisburd, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5690-2_586

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5690-2_586

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-5689-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-5690-2

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