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. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
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 Connections
Associated With
Source Wikipedia: David Weisburd
Source Wikipedia: Lawrence W. Sherman
Developed By
Source Simon Fraser University School of Criminology: Our People
Source Simon Fraser University School of Criminology: Our People
Informed By
Oscar Newman's Defensible Space (1972) argued that physical design reduces crime opportunity, directly informing environmental criminology and situational crime prevention through design (CPTED).
Crime pattern theory assumes offenders exercise a bounded, opportunistic rationality in choosing targets encountered along their everyday routines.
Source Wikipedia: Crime Pattern Theory
Both approaches explain crime through the convergence of offender, target and setting rather than offender pathology alone.
Source Wikipedia: Crime Pattern Theory
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Crime Pattern Theory
Lead section
Crime pattern theory is a way of explaining why people commit crimes in certain areas. Crime is not random, it is either planned or opportunistic.
Criticisms section
This perspective is criticized by social crime prevention for being 'anti-social' because it does little to help individuals prone to committing crime.
View the SourceWikipedia: Environmental Criminology
Opening sectionQuote, Opening section
Environmental criminology focuses on criminal patterns within particular built environments and analyzes the impacts of these external variables on people's cognitive behavior.
Simon Fraser University School of Criminology: Our People
- Developed By: Paul J. Brantingham, Our People page
- Developed By: Patricia L. Brantingham, Our People page
View the SourceWikipedia: David Weisburd
Associated With: David Weisburd, Lead sectionQuote, Associated With: David Weisburd, Lead section
Weisburd is known for his research on crime and place, policing and white collar crime.
Wikipedia: Lawrence W. Sherman
Associated With: Lawrence W. Sherman, Research findings sectionQuote, Associated With: Lawrence W. Sherman, Research findings section
over half of all reported crime and disorder occurred at just 3% of the property addresses in a major city
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