Crime of Opportunity

A crime of opportunity is a crime committed without advance planning, carried out when the perpetrator recognizes an unexpected chance to act and seizes it in the moment, involving little or no premeditation. Routine activity theory explains the likelihood of a target being chosen through four factors: its value to the offender, its inertia, meaning its size and weight since smaller items are stolen more often, its visibility to the offender, and how easily it can be accessed. Crime pattern theory instead emphasizes where such crimes occur, describing the nodes people travel to and from, the paths between them along which offenders and victims meet, and the edges marking the outer boundaries of an area where outsiders often commit crime. The rational choice perspective treats the offender as weighing benefits against risks before acting on a purposeful choice. Group size and physical size also shape violent crimes of opportunity, since larger groups and larger individuals are more likely to target smaller ones. Reducing opportunity is the standard prevention approach, through methods such as problem oriented policing, defensible space architecture, and situational crime prevention. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/