An approach focused on criminal patterns within particular built environments and how those external variables shape offenders' cognitive behavior, developed by Paul J. and Patricia L. Brantingham. Its central formulation, crime pattern theory, holds that crime is not random but follows offenders' everyday movement between the nodes and paths of their awareness space, formalized around 1993.
Facts
Core ClaimSourced to the subject's own accountCrime is not random; it follows the intersection of an offender's routine, awareness space and target opportunity, so mapping where offenders live, work and travel predicts and helps prevent where crime concentrates. 1 Origin YearSourced to the subject's own account1993 marks the Brantinghams' formal statement of crime pattern theory; the broader term environmental criminology was coined earlier, by C. Ray Jeffery in 1971. Standing CritiqueSourced to the subject's own accountAs a branch of situational crime prevention, the approach is criticized by advocates of social crime prevention as doing little to help individuals prone to committing crime, and for focusing on individual events rather than the social groups and conditions that produce them. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Developed By
Informed By
Crime pattern theory assumes offenders exercise a bounded, opportunistic rationality in choosing targets encountered along their everyday routines.
Both approaches explain crime through the convergence of offender, target and setting rather than offender pathology alone.
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