4 The routine activity approach

Marcus Felson

increases in crime rates for the United States after World War II. Those increases

explained by demographic changes alone. Nor were changes in traditional socio-

logical variables (such as poverty) consistent with the massive increases in crime
rates. That impelled me to think further.
First, I realised the need to focus on crimes, not criminals. The conventional
theories were oriented towards persons rather than events. That had to change in
order to solve the problem.
Second, I arrived at a three-component approach to crime analysis. Each crime
event requires a physical convergence of three elements: a likely offender, a suit-
able target and the absence of a capable guardian against a crime. That means that
two presences and one absence were essential in order to understand the crime
event and how frequently it would occur.
Third, I recognised from victim survey results (increasingly available in the
1970s) that crime events were closely related to conventional legal activities,
including patterns of work, school, and household life.
Fourth, it was evident that police and security guards were considerably less
important than ordinary citizens for generating supervision of people and things,
thus for preventing crime.
Fifth, it was evident to me that products were increasingly light in weight and
high in value per pound, providing a major trend in products easy to steal. Thus
guardianship against crime was best explained in terms of the value of crime
targets to offenders, the weight of those goods, their visibility, and whether the
offender could gain physical access to those targets. Moreover, similar ideas
helped understand violent offenses.

approach by emphasising the socio-physical world, rather than the social world
devoid of its physical features. It no longer made sense to understand crime
in terms of bad people while ignoring where people are, what they are doing,
where their property is located, who they are with and whether offending and
88 Marcus Felson
victimisation were likely. Criminology became more physical and less metaphysi-
cal, philosophical, or extra-terrestrial.

Development
Since its emergence a quarter of a century ago, the routine activity approach has

volume. From its inception in the late 1970s, the routine activity approach has
been both a micro and macro theory of how crime rates emerge. On a micro level,
the theory states that ordinary crime emerges when a likely offender converges
with a suitable crime target in the absence of a capable guardian against crime. On
a macro level, the theory states that certain features of larger society and larger
community can make such convergences much more likely.
The theory was written in the simplest and starkest form as a deliberate attempt
to provide an alternative to vague theories about crime (see Cohen and Felson
1979; Felson and Cohen 1980). It was also written to avoid its own ruination.
Many crime theories devise a good idea, but over time that idea is ruined through
progressive retelling. In the childhood game of telephone, a bunch of kids form

on until in the end the message proves to be entirely garbled. So it is with much
crime theory. The routine activity approach largely avoided this process because
it was too simple to ruin. On the other hand, the routine activity approach is on
occasion misunderstood or trivialised by those who read the one-paragraph text-
book version rather than the whole original paper, or who fail to read follow-up
papers and books.
The original routine activity paper in 1979 was clearly both a general intel-
lectual statement and a middle-level theory of crime. In the general intellec-
tual statement, crime was linked to a broad range of legal activities. Crime was
interpreted as part of the broad ecology of everyday life. The theory of human

theory.

Some people who cite the theory seem totally unaware of this general theoretical
basis, or that the original paper presents diverse ideas about how society’s tech-
nology and organisation affect crime. Thousands cite the routine activity approach
but only a smattering of these seem to know more than offender, target, guard-
ian. Indeed, many do not even know that the routine activity approach attributed
America’s massive crime wave to the dispersion of activities away from family
and household as well as technological shifts in goods and services. Fewer real-
ised the linkages to general ecological theory that could apply to other decades
and centuries.
Even in micro terms, not all who quote the theory get it right. A guardian
 The routine activity approach 89
crime is anybody whose presence or proximity discourages crime. Usually
people protect their own property, however inadvertently. Sometimes peo-
ple protect relatives or friends, or even strangers. But in the routine activity
approach the word ‘guardian’ is not meant to be ‘guard’. The term ‘supervi-
sion’ is less ambiguous, and I have since used it more often. But ‘supervisor’ in
English implies a boss at the workplace, and so the choice of words is always
problematical.

The choice of the word ‘target’ rather than ‘victim’ was another interesting deci-
-
ated. But the word ‘victim’ did not distinguish victims of direct physical assault
from those whose homes were invaded in their absence. The routine activity
approach focuses on the offender’s viewpoint, not the victim’s and not society’s.
From the property offender’s viewpoint, your property is interesting, even without
knowing you. To be sure, some property crime is intended as a personal attack,
but the direct physical encounter is between the offender and the crime target –
sometimes a person and sometimes a thing.
The very selection of the term ‘routine activity approach’ was necessary
because some ordinary words had taken on specialised meanings in criminology.
‘Opportunity’ was pre-empted, referring to ‘economic opportunity’. ‘Control’ was
also taken for other purposes. ‘Ecology’ was already used to mean local areas
rather than interdependencies. And so routine activity became the term. It was a
fortunate selection, since it gave the approach uniqueness, while allowing a touch
of irony. A crime is a relatively rare event by many calculations. That a rare event
can be the outcome of routine events adds a twist and challenge, and that’s just
what I wanted.
Others now call it routine activity theory, but I preferred ‘approach’ for one
substantive reason and one tactical. My substantive reason was that this was not
a full-blown theory. My tactical reason was that I felt the ideas were repugnant
enough to conventional criminologists; calling it a theory was like waving a red
cape in front of a bull. Calling it an approach made it seem more modest, but of
course that fooled nobody. The theory was an overt challenge to conventional
criminology, and I had to somehow get it into print. That required sustained effort
to overcome the substantial resistance from journal reviewers.

before it was published. In the process, a new criminology colleague, Lawrence

Cohen, joined our faculty and helped redraft the work to make it more palatable.
That failed, at least initially. Even though the routine activity approach is now
one of the most cited theories in criminology, the original article was rejected
by six leading journals, including the top three sociology journals, the American
90 Marcus Felson
Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology and Social Forces. Review-
ers’ comments included:

‘impressive empirical dribble’

‘falls apart in the section devoted to evidence’
‘far fetched and premature’
‘the human ecology approach . . . goes nowhere’
‘highly questionable’
‘an old theory in new clothes . . . a rehash of . . . Cloward and Ohlin’
‘raises more questions than it answers’
‘a bizarre paper’
‘too cryptic . . . suspiciously glib’
‘a bundle of paradoxes’
‘long and somewhat boring’
‘Can the analysis be saved? I doubt it.’
‘[I] recommend that this obviously talented sociologist turn to a problem . . .
more meaningful.’

At some point in the process, the American Sociological Review moved to our
campus, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Its editor did not like us
or our theory, and made no secret of it. Although that journal had turned it down,
the associate editor very much liked the paper and (without asking the Editor)
allowed us to resubmit. He assigned it to tough but prestigious reviewers so the
editor had no choice but to publish it.
Prior to publication, a version of the paper was presented to the 1978 Annual
Meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences in New Orleans. The ACJS
at that time presented a prize to the single paper of that meeting that was thought
to be most likely to have a long-term impact. The Awards Committee strongly
recommended the routine activity paper for this award, but was overruled by a
committee of higher authority, which then changed the rule to honour the best
paper from the preceding year.

Resisting ‘social disorganisation’ theory

author to subsume the routine activity approach under conventional criminology.

The best way to do that was to ‘integrate’ it with Shaw and McKay’s social disor-
ganisation approach. My co-author and I split. He went back towards conventional
sociology, while I moved farther and farther away from my own origins towards a
new approach and a new set of intellectual friends, represented in this volume.

Evolution of the theory

Over the years, the routine activity approach has evolved in several ways. First, it
has been linked to practical policies against crime (see Felson and Clarke 1998).
Second, it has covered many more bases than the original approach.
 The routine activity approach 91
Linkages to Clarke and the Brantinghams
The original approach stated quite clearly that crime is a function of major
changes in the basic structure of society, and that a high crime rate in the con-

Clarke in London, where he challenged this viewpoint. If increased opportunity

to commit crimes causes the crime rate to rise, the other side of the coin is that
decreased opportunity for crime must push crime rates down. In one sentence he
persuaded me that situational crime prevention and the routine activity approach
were intertwined. About a year beforehand I had been hosted by Paul and Patri-

from different directions, using different terms, were converging on the same
theory (note the other chapters in this volume, including those by Clarke and the
Brantinghams).
To make a theory general, one has to cover a multitude of bases. The original
routine activity approach applied to ‘direct-contact predatory offenses’, namely,
offences in which one person directly harmed the person or property of another
by coming into direct physical contact. Although that is a very broad application,
telecommunications crime avoids direct physical contact. More importantly,
the original routine activity approach considered micro and macro, but nothing
in between. It did not go into the journey to crime, the journey to victimisa-
tion, even though it implied all of that. In addition, the routine activity approach
implied a decisional offender, but did not make the decision process explicit.
Thus it became essential to fuse the routine activity approach with the geogra-
phy of crime, environmental criminology, situational prevention, and models of
offender choices.

Broadening the theory

It also became clear in time that routine activity thinking helps understand non-

Again, links to the work of others in this volume counters claims that the routine
activity approach covers too few bases.
In addition, available crime data and analysis techniques greatly enhanced our
ability to study and understand crime. The routine activity approach gained much
from these advances. I do not know whether or to what extent the routine activity

based and geo-coded. In time, the theoretical and empirical reliance on commu-
nity areas, neighbourhoods and census tracts became obsolete, even though many

great crime variations within so-called high-crime neighbourhoods, with a few

addresses contributing most of the local problem. Moreover, offenders and targets
move across census tracts every day, rendering the old theories and measures
obsolete.
The routine activity theory today has much more to say about offenders than its
original rendition. Offenders often cook up crime together, and so co-offending
92 Marcus Felson
becomes a topic for routine activity theory. Offender convergence settings (‘hang-

The initial routine activity approach did not come to terms with control theory,
and left it largely aside. But in time routine activity theory recognised control on
its own terms (Felson 1997). Rather than viewing control as something internal-
ised, it emphasised the presences or absences of others who might supervise a

when the parents are away. The concept of ‘handler’ was added as a fourth ele-

became central for understanding crime processes.

Eck’s crime triangle

These four elements were elaborated cleverly by John Eck, who devised the
‘crime triangle’ (also called the ‘problem triangle’, and depicted in Chapter 12,

version of the triangle is offered here for reference.

The inside triangle has three elements that must converge for a normal crime
to occur: the potential offender, the crime target and the place or setting for the
-
able place.

HANDLER

OFFENDER

PLACE GUARDIAN
MANAGER B C

PLACE TARGET

Figure 4.1 Eck’s crime triangle

 The routine activity approach
The outside triangle depicts three sorts of supervisors: the handler, the guard-
ian and the place manager. The handler supervises the offender, the guardian
supervises the target and the manager supervises the crime setting. Their absences

targets free from guardians in settings not watched by managers. Once more, the
routine activity approach has grown well beyond its origins.

Crime and everyday life

In Crime and Everyday Life (Felson 2002), I broaden the routine activity theory in
a number of ways. The most important is to include a critique of how many people

• The dramatic fallacy: emphasising crimes that are most publicised, while
forgetting ordinary crimes.
• The cops-and-courts fallacy: overstating the criminal justice system’s power
over crime.
• The not-me fallacy: thinking you are too good to commit a crime; believing
that offenders are from a different population from yours.
• The ingenuity fallacy: over-stating the skill required to commit a crime.
• The agenda fallacy: linking crime reduction to your favourite ideology, reli-
gion, or political agenda.

These fallacies present a general critique of many conventional approaches to

criminology, and explain why modern crime analysis must take a different tack.
Crime in everyday life was interpreted as a kind of social chemistry, depend-
ing on who converged when and where, under what circumstances. The crime
triangle generalises several possibilities. In another general form, interpersonal
violence occurs when disputants converge in the presence of agents provoca-
teurs, and the absence of peacemakers. Such convergences lead sometimes to a
sort of chemical reaction, with disputes emerging and sometimes escalating into
criminal action. This thinking was borrowed from my brother, Richard Felson

chemistry.

Crime and nature

The natural sciences have two broad branches: physical sciences and life sci-
ences. For some time I saw crime in terms of the physical sciences, with offenders
and other crime participants converging in space to produce the chemistry for an
illicit act.
In time I came to realise that the physical sciences, including chemistry, are too
mechanical for understanding criminal behaviour. That does not mean we should
dispense with the physical elements. But it does mean that we should allow for
more elaborate life processes.
94 Marcus Felson
In the physical sciences, every electron is the same as every other and, under the
same circumstances, does the same thing. In the life sciences, not every amoeba
is the same in every way. The life sciences allow much more variation and hence
are more suited to studying crime. Any given stimulus might produce alternative
responses. That does not mean that physical processes are no longer central, or
that living organisms can do anything they want. But it does allow choices and
alternatives, basic to our concept of life itself. In Crime and Nature (Felson 2006),
I linked crime to a variety of life processes. I used the concepts of the life sci-
ences to organise what we know and need to know about crime, in its full variety.
I established that scores of concepts from the life sciences apply very closely in
studying crime.
In so doing, I emphasised that the life sciences are much broader than genet-
ics and richer than the biology courses in high school – the farthest most social
scientists have gone on these topics. I view conventional biology as a subset
of the larger life sciences, with the latter including the study of crime and its
prevention.

Fifteen points
Those using the routine activity approach need not get lost in the details and
elaborations. They can always return to ‘offender, target and guardian’. They can

1 Most crime is ordinary. Crime is dominated by simple thefts, easy break-ins,

simple strong-arm robberies with two or three offenders against one victim
or a weapon to give the offender an edge. Most crimes occur quickly with
simple modus operandi.
2 Crime feeds off ordinary routines. Burglaries occur when homes are empty.

depend on crowds. Confrontational robberies depend on stragglers separated

from the crowd. Theft of vehicles used in commuting depend on work sched-
ules and parking locations.
Illegal acts very subject to policy control
places can be enhanced by design and maintenance of landscaping and other

be scheduled to make workplaces, schools and events more secure.

4 We start with offender, target and guardian. Offenders are not limited to extreme
offenders, and are just one requirement for crime to occur. Easy targets are most

Guardians are seldom police or security personnel but rather are ordinary citi-
zens, whose presences and absences distribute crime risk over space and time.
Small slices of time and space are far more important than larger units.
 The routine activity approach
changes in crowds and activities. Crime risk shifts greatly from one address
to another, from one half-block to the next.
6 Statistical relationships between routine activities and crime risk are very
strong when measurement is highly focused. To see this one needs to relate
precise measures of routine exposures to precise measures of highly relevant
crime. Thus crowds in entertainment districts at night produce crime risk in
those districts at those times.
7
-
ter software allows crime mapping with much greater precision than in
the past. Dramatic concentrations in time and space emerge with these
analyses.
8 Some people do a lot of crime, while a lot of people together do a lot of crime.
The very active offenders deserve attention, but the occasional offenders con-
tribute greatly to crime rates because there are so many of them. We must
consider crimes done by both.
9 Some property targets are especially at risk. Certain items might be stolen
100 or 1000 times more often than other items. Some types of businesses
draw far more risk of criminal attack, particularly when type of crime is

10 Not all crime analysis requires big computers. Small computers and even
hand calculations show very strong crime concentrations and links to routine
activities. No matter what the size of your computer, you should always think
small
interests, taking advantage of routine activities.
11 The routine activity approach can grow. Several other elements have been
added, including John Eck’s ‘place manager’. His ‘crime triangle’ includes
six elements, and other elaborations have been considered earlier in this
paper.
12 Routine activity thinking can be applied to cyberspace. Computers depend
on elaborate temporal structures, including many sequences of code and
streams of data processed by these sequences. Computer routines occur at
great speed. Offenders seek to exploit computer routines to their advantage

Routine activities apply to co-offending and to organised crime. Offenders

converge in space and time, often depending on convergence settings (hang-
outs). Youth hangouts are especially important for explaining how juveniles
drift into unplanned crime situations.
14 Routine activity theory has converged with other theoretical and practical
developments. These include crime pattern analysis and environmental crimi-
nology, situational crime prevention, problem oriented policing, crime geog-

These principles transcend nations, cultures and segments of society. The

same design features that generate crime in poor neighbourhoods also apply
96 Marcus Felson
to rich neighbourhoods. Routine crime opportunities are found by offenders
on foot, in cars, using two-wheel vehicles and public transit.

a third of a century, while reminding us that the fundamentals remain the same.

The routine activity approach can be taught at an elementary, intermediate and

advanced level. The student who starts with the original three elements can then
build up to the full six elements of the crime triangle. The student who begins with
the micro level can then look at macro changes in society. The student can then
move on to study how crime elements converge or diverge, and how to prevent
crime using that information.
Taking into account the many features of situational prevention, environmental
criminology, crime geography and offender choice, and the relationships among
these, the study of crime in tangible terms is quite challenging. Crime’s many

Review questions
1 Map your own routine activity patterns at age 17, for school days and week-
ends. Where and when were you probably most at risk of crime participation
in any role?
2 Why would police and private security guards be less important for prevent-
ing crime than ordinary citizens?

4 What drinking contexts are most likely to generate alcohol-related crimes –

bars, homes, cars, or informal hangouts?
-
ing the legal drinking age and what is their likely contribution to crime?

References
Cohen, L.E. and Felson, M. (1979) ‘Social Change and Crime Rate Trends: A Routine
Activity Approach’, American Sociological Review
Felson, M. (1997) ‘Reconciling Hirschi’s 1969 Control Theory with the General Theory
of Crime’, in S.P. Lab (ed.) Crime Prevention at a Crossroads
Anderson.
Felson, M. (2002) Crime and Everyday Life, 3rd edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage & Pine
Forge Press.

Theory for Practice in Situational Crime Prevention. Crime Prevention Studies, Vol. 16,
149–167. Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press.
Felson, M. (2006) Crime and Nature. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
 The routine activity approach 97
Opportunity Makes the Thief. Monograph. London:

Felson, M. and Cohen, L.E. (1980) ‘Human Ecology and Crime: A Routine Activity
Approach’, Human Ecology

Criminals’, in J.E. Eck and D.L. Weisburd (eds) Crime and Place: Crime Prevention
Studies, Vol. 4
Tedeschi, J. and Felson, R.B. (1994) Violence, Aggression and Coercive Action. Washing-
ton, DC: APA Books.