Opportunities, Precipitators and Criminal Decisions: A Reply to Wortley's Critique of Situational Crime Prevention, Study notes of Criminology

Download Opportunities, Precipitators and Criminal Decisions: A Reply to Wortley's Critique of Situational Crime Prevention and more Study notes Criminology in PDF only on Docsity! OPPORTUNITIES, PRECIPITATORS AND CRIMINAL DECISIONS: A REPLY TO WORTLEY'S CRITIQUE OF SITUATIONAL CRIME PREVENTION by Derek B. Cornish Wichita State University and Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science and Ronald V. Clarke Rutgers University Abstract: Clarke's classification of situational crime prevention tech- niques is designed to provide a conceptual analysis of situational strategies, and to offer practical guidance on their use in reducing criminal opportunities. It has developed in parallel with a long program of empirical research, conducted by many researchers, on the situ- ational determinants and the prevention of a wide variety of crimes. For this reason the classification has been subject to constant revision and updating, of which Clarke's (1997) version, which lists 16 such techniques, is the latest. Recently, Wortley (2001) has suggested the need to augment the existing classification, which deals with the analysis of situational opportunities, with a complementary analysis of situational precipitators. These are factors within the crime setting it- self that may prompt, provoke, pressure, or permit an individual to of- fend. The present chapter examines the assumptions underlying the development of situational crime prevention, and offers some views about the theoretical and practical significance of Wortley's suggested additions and revisions. It concludes by proposing a revised classifica- Crime Prevention Studies, vol. 16 (2003), pp.41-96. Derek B. Cornish and Ronald V. Clarke tion of 25 techniques to take immediate practical account of some of the concerns raised above. A NEW CRITIQUE OF SITUATIONAL CRIME PREVENTION Until recently, Clarke's (1992, 1997; Clarke and Homel, 1997) classification of situational techniques has been seen as providing a systematic and comprehensive review of methods of environmental crime prevention, and has served to guide practical efforts to reduce offending. Such criticism as has been made of situational techniques has tended to concentrate on their alleged failure to tackle the root causes of crime — that is, to address issues of criminal motivation, and to support programs of social and individual crime prevention — or on the putative threats they pose to civil liberties. These issues have been exhaustively explored elsewhere (von Hirsch et al., 2000) and will not be further examined in this chapter. Recently, however, in a series of carefully argued papers (1996, 1997, 1998, 2001) and in his book, Situational Prison Control (2002), Wortley has offered a challenge from within the field of environmental psychology itself to the theory and practice of situational crime prevention. Wortley1 s critique centers on what he views as the undue and po- tentially damaging preoccupation with opportunity variables when discussing offender decision making and situational prevention. He contrasts this with the relative neglect of other situational forces (termed "precipitators") within the crime setting that serve to moti- vate offenders. He identifies four types of precipitator — prompts; pressures; permissions; and provocations — each of which may pro- vide situationally-generated motivation to the hitherto unmotivated. He goes on to offer a two-stage model of situational crime prevention that views offending as the outcome of two sets of situational forces: precipitating factors and regulating factors. Temporal priority is given to the influence of precipitators in motivating the offender, these be- ing followed by the influence of opportunities in regulating whether or not offending actually occurs. He concludes that controlling pre- cipitators is just as important as regulating opportunities, and pro- vides an additional and complementary set of situational crime pre- vention techniques to control precipitators, claiming that these sup- ply the missing half of a new and more comprehensive situational approach to crime prevention practice. Lastly, he suggests that the development of such a situational framework might better explain and minimize the iatrogenic effects of situational measures in some circumstances. - 4 2 - A Reply to Wortley's Critique of Situational Crime Prevention Provocations Features of situations can sometimes produce adverse emotional arousal, which provokes a criminal response. As Wortley puts it: "Situations can induce stress and provoke an anti-social response, particularly some form of aggression" (2001:73). Aversive emotional arousal can be generated by: • frustration (e.g., lack of options and choices; failures of equipment and services); • crowding (public transport; housing; leisure settings); • invasions of privacy (intrusions into personal space; lack of privacy); and • environmental irritants (e.g., excessive noise and adverse weather conditions). According to Wortley, then, there are very many features of situa- tions that may precipitate offending in the absence of pre-existing motivation on the offender's part. (They may also enhance existing motivation, but this is not the crucial point of Wortley's argument.) Since these situational factors create motive rather than opportunity, they open up new prospects for theory and practice in situational crime prevention. However, as Wortley acknowledges, in practice some current situational techniques are already engaged in what could be regarded as precipitator control. What is at issue here, then, is not so much practice itself, limited and sporadic though its focus on precipitators may be. Rather, it is the limitations of the theory underpinning practice that is the issue: whether, instead of fulfilling its role of developing practice, it may be stifling it. Since this raises questions about the theoretical status of precipitators, and the sig- nificance of their place in situational crime prevention, we will come back to these points later. Wortley's Two-Stage Model of Offending and Prevention Wortley argues that consideration of situational sources of moti- vation takes us "...beyond the concept of opportunity as it is usually employed in the situational crime prevention literature" (1997:74). Instead, the role played by situational factors has to be reviewed and extended: "Situations are conceived as not just enabling crime to oc- cur, but as playing an active role in psychologically readying the in- dividual to offend" (1997:74).' The temporal order in which precipitators and opportunity factors come into play is significant, too. According to Wortley "...readying events occur prior to cost-benefit analysis and may significantly af- - 4 5 - Derek B. Cornish and Ronald V. Clarke feet that analysis, but do not necessarily determine the behavioural outcome" (1997:75). Precipitators, then, may provide the motivation to offend (i.e. aim the gun, so to speak), but — except in the cases of the "highly deindi- viduated" or "extremely frustrated" individual, perhaps — "opportu- nity" still pulls the trigger. Whether or not offending occurs depends upon the situationally-motivated offender's subsequent assessment of the opportunities in that same situation. As always, both motiva- tion and opportunity are required. Wortley's two-stage model of situ- ational crime prevention (1998, 2001) builds on this view of the deci- sion-making processes of situationally-motivated offenders to suggest points at which situational measures aimed at precipitator control and opportunity regulation, respectively, may be initiated: The first stage of the model involves situational forces that pre- cipitate criminal conduct. Behaviour may be entirely avoided if relevant situational precipitators are adequately controlled. In the event that behaviour is initiated, then, in the second stage of the model, performance of that behaviour is subject to con- sideration of the costs and benefits that are likely to follow (2001:64). Later in the same paper Wortley comments that: "Behaviour is first initiated before the likely consequences of action are considered" (2001:75). Since Wortley's two-stage model raises issues for the ways that some multi-stage models of criminal decision making handle motiva- tion and opportunity factors (e.g., Clarke and Cornish, 1985, 2001; Cornish and Clarke, 1986), we will return to this issue, as well, later. Controlling Precipitators and Classifying Techniques As a result of his critique, Wortley suggests that there is a need systematically to address and develop situational techniques that can have an impact on criminal motivation as well as on opportunities. In a recent paper Wortley (2001) brings together his work on precipita- tors and on his two-stage model to offer a classification of strategies and techniques for controlling situational precipitators of crime that complements Clarke's existing classification of opportunity-reduction techniques: The new classification is based on the argument that there are two distinct situational forces acting upon potential offenders — the perceived costs and benefits of intended criminal acts (the basis of Clarke's classification) and the factors that may induce individuals to commit crimes that they would not have otherwise considered (the basis of the present classification) (2001:63). - 4 6 - -Jp- Table 1: Classification of Precipitator-control Strategies Controlling Prompts Controlling Pressures Reducing Permissibility Reducing Provacations Controlling triggers: * gun contrel * pornography restrictions * environmental self- Reducing inappropriate conformity: * dispersing gang members » screening children’s Rule setting: + harassment codes « staff inductions + “shoplifting is stealing” Reducing frustration: * inmate control of comfort settings * improved wet playtimes management associates signs ° efficient road design + bolstering independence Providing reminders: Reducing inappropriate Clarifying responsibility: Reducing crowding: * warming signs obedience: * server intervention ¢ limiting nightclub patrol * symbolic territorial * support for whistle- * assigning discrete tasks density markers blowers * encouraging sense of * regulating nightclub patron + litter bins * participatory management ownership flow * semi-independent units * use of colour, windows, light, etc. Reducing inappropriate imitation: * rapid repair of vandalism * controls on television content * supervisors as exemplars Encouraging compliance: * persuasive signs * fairness of request * participation in rule- making Clarifying consequences: * copyright messages * public posting * vandalism information brochures Respecting territory: * identifiable territories for residents * privacy rooms for residents « avoiding intrusions into inmates’ cells Setting positive expectations: * pub gentrification + domestic prison furniture Reducing anonymity: * restricung uniform use {perpetrators} Personalizing victims: * victum co-operation * humanising conditions for Controlling environmental imtants: * smoke-free nightclubs » fixing “broken windows” = school dress codes prisoners * air conditioning + low-profile crowd * concer with employee * noise control management welfare Reprinted with permission (Wortley, 2001-66). Derek B. Cornish and Ronald V. Clarke influence of contrasting assumptions about the nature of criminal behavior. We will go on to argue that Wortley's contribution, while innovative and theoretically important, imposes quite restrictive as- sumptions about the nature of offending. These assumptions, we will suggest, do not apply to most criminal behavior, most sources of mo- tivation, or most situations. This may limit the practical significance of precipitators for situational prevention to particular settings, crimes and criminals. Common Ground When responding to critiques there is always the danger that ba- sic shared assumptions will be overlooked in favor of exploring differ- ences of view. It is important, then, to list what the debate is not about. First, there seems little disagreement about the importance of addressing the interaction between the offender and his or her envi- ronment — commonly referred to in criminology as the interaction between motivation and opportunity — when trying to understand the circumstances under which individuals offend or refrain from offending. Nor is there disagreement about the general value of situ- ational crime prevention as a way of controlling crime by trying to understand and manage aspects of this interaction. For example, we strongly agree with Wortley (1998) that even counter-productive ex- amples of situational measures show situations to be important con- trollers of behavior. Nor is there any disagreement on the funda- mental role that motivation plays in readying the individual to offend. This is clear from the attention given by the rational choice perspec- tive's involvement models (Clarke and Cornish, 1985, 2001; Cornish and Clarke, 1986) to the nature, development and channeling of common motives and desires by way of background factors, current circumstances, routines and lifestyles. And although situational crime prevention, with its selective attention to the process of crime commission itself, tends to treat the offender's motivation as a "given," this is only because these other and earlier choices and deci- sions in the offender's life have traditionally been considered to be the major factors responsible for readying the individual to offend.2 In both Wortley's and our approach, there is also agreement about the value of existing situational methods for stopping the motivated offender from realizing his or her criminal objectives. Whether the offender enters the crime setting ready to offend, or whether readi- ness is precipitated by the setting itself, changing the cost-benefit analysis that the motivated offender engages in when deciding whether or not to commit the crime in question is an important as- pect of criminal decision making in both Wortley's and our analyses. - 5 0 - More generally, offending is seen as a multi-stage decision process, of which selecting and evaluating means to achieve desired goals are important components. In a very Humean way, reason is a slave of the passions in both approaches: as with Freud's ego, the job of rea- soning is to secure desired objectives at least cost to the offender. And we are in close agreement over the importance of investigating any and all situational cues likely to have an influence upon criminal decision making and crime commission. As we saw earlier, the debate is not strictly even about the status of precipitators, or the value of trying to control them. As Wortley points out, there have been many scattered references to their role throughout the history of the theory and practice of situational pre- vention, and recently some systematic attention has been given to incorporating a class of these ("removing excuses") in the current version of Clarke's classification of techniques (Clarke and Homel, 1997; Clarke, 1997). As Wortley himself comments, the immediate practical implications of his work in terms of increasing our store of available techniques may not be great: "The argument for separating crime-precipitating situations from opportunity-related situations is based more on the need for conceptual clarity than on the assump- tion that there necessarily will be a resultant dramatic increase in available techniques" (Wortley, 1998:183). And, indeed, we agree over the value of many of the actual tech- niques, over the fact that there is much overlap between the content of the two classification systems (as noted in Wortley's earlier [1998] Table 1; and Wortley, 2001:75) and on the "...potential for debate about the appropriate categorization of particular interventions" (2001:75). It is also clear that some techniques of situational prevention are less noticeable to offenders or potential offenders than others and, hence, less likely to provoke counter-productive reactions. Wortley makes a strong case for arguing that, under certain circumstances, some forms of situational prevention may be counter-productive. As- suming that they will always be positive courts the tyranny of good intentions; and trying to provide systematic accounts of the circum- stances under which counter-productive outcomes may arise is an important endeavor. Points at Issue With so much apparent agreement over fundamentals it might seem that any differences must be relatively trivial ones, and ac- commodation easy to reach. But in fact the formal identification of a new set of situational variables ("situational precipitators") raises - 5 1 - A Reply to Wortley's Critique of Situational Crime Prevention Derek B. Cornish and Ronald V. Clarke questions that seem quite fundamental to the theory and practice of situational prevention. These questions can be grouped into six main categories, with some illustrative examples: Kinds of Offenders and Kinds of Crimes: • To what kinds of offender are opportunity-reduction and pre- cipitation-control, respectively, most suited? • For what kinds of crimes are these situational techniques more appropriate? Motivation: • What are the sources of offender motivation? • Under what circumstances is offender motivation likely to be purely "situational"? Criminal Decision Making: • How can Wortley's two-stage decision-making process be rec- onciled with rational choice involvement and event models of criminal decision making? • How typical is Wortley's two-stage decision-making process of most criminal behavior? Situation: • Under what circumstances is the setting alone more likely to contribute to offender motivation? i • Under what circumstances is this less likely to be a factor? Situational Cues: • Under what circumstances are situational cues likely to elicit offender motivation? • Under what circumstances are such cues likely to be used by motivated offenders? - 5 2 - A Reply to Wortley's Critique of Situational Crime Prevention As new situational techniques have been developed to deal with an ever-wider range of crime problems, the price of growth has been an increasing uncertainty about how to assess the relative importance, power and applicability of these newer strategies, as compared with the older ones, to the full range of crime problems. Moreover, some of the assumptions made by these newer techniques have tended to qualify, if not directly challenge, many of the earlier default assump- tions made by traditional situational crime prevention. Since neither the original nor later contrasting assumptions have for the most been made explicit, conceptual confusion and loss of practical benefits are likely to follow unless the differing perspectives on situational pre- vention that they represent can be reconciled within one overall co- herent conceptual framework. Assumptions about matters fundamental to the theory and prac- tice of situational prevention have emerged at three particular stages in the development of situational techniques. Since these assump- tions seem to us to flow from distinctive views about the nature of the offender to whom situational techniques are to be applied, we will begin by examining what we consider to be the default position on these matters, and then go on to consider ways in which later dis- cussions of situational measures have departed from these defaults in their depictions of offenders and associated matters. At each of these three important points in the development of situational tech- niques, we will also look at the impact of prevailing assumptions about the nature of the offender on a number of corollaries: the types of crime examined, and the roles assigned to motivation, setting, situational cues, decision making and preferred situational tech- niques. As well as trying to make explicit the assumptions underlying successive stages in the development of situational techniques, our purpose in doing so will be to provide the basis for an alternative to Wortley's proposal for reconciling his views with our own. Phases in the Development of Situational Crime Prevention The development of situational techniques has tended to proceed pragmatically on a crime-by-crime basis. Early attempts at classify- ing techniques were based on examples of existing practice, such as the effects of steering column locks on car theft, and on studies of crimes to which, it was hoped, situational methods might prove to be applicable. As well as car theft, these included other high-volume offenses such as burglary, robbery and vandalism. Detailed studies of some of these high-volume crimes also shaped initial views about criminal decision making and these, in turn, influenced the rational - 5 5 - Derek B. Cornish and Ronald V. Clarke choice perspective and its conceptualization of the interaction be- tween motivated offender and facilitating environment. Although situational crime prevention is about preventing or reducing crimes, its links to choice, and later rational choice models of offender deci- sion making, have inevitably generated implicit assumptions about the likely nature of offenders responsible for the particular crimes with which situational prevention was largely concerned during the first two decades of its development. Over the past 10 years or so, situational crime prevention practice has continued to develop within an overall rational choice framework, but some of its specific working assumptions about the nature of crimes and offenders have subtly changed in response to an increase in the range of crimes being tackled and in associated preventive techniques. At least three phases in the development of situational crime prevention can be identified, each linked to a particular but often unexamined set of views about the nature of the crimes and criminals under investigation. The following descriptions attempt to capture salient aspects of the contrasting sets of assumptions that underpin these "ideal types" of offenders, and the development of techniques intended to address the special problems they pose for situational crime prevention. There is a danger in introducing the notion of what might be re- garded as "a typology of offenders" into a field that explicitly confines its attention to situational determinants of offending. But although situational crime prevention applies its techniques to unidentified offenders, there is an equal danger in ignoring assumptions about their nature that might lie hidden behind this activity. As early as 1980 (Clarke and Mayhew, 1980), situational analysts were discuss- ing the potential of situational techniques to target different types of offender — and, indeed the following "ideal types" are not unlike those identified at that time as committed, part-time, or opportunis- tic. The Anti-social Predator This is, as Wortley (1998:185) rightly suggests, the model or ideal type of the offender that has long driven efforts at opportunity- reduction. It is worth noting that Cohen and Felson's (1979) initial statement of the routine activities approach was based upon similar talk of direct-contact predatory acts. Since situational analysts study crimes rather than offenders, it may be the case that assumptions about an anti-social predator as the archetypal actor in these kinds of crimes have arisen from a consideration of what the "choice- structuring properties" (Cornish and Clarke, 1987, 1989) of these - 5 6 - offenses demand in the way of characteristics from successful of- fenders — and of what type of offender would tend to choose them. This model of the offender makes a number of assumptions about offending. Crimes and Criminals The early crimes studied by situational analysts and used illus- tratively by the rational choice perspective tended to be predatory ones in which offenders roamed hunting-grounds on the lookout for victims or targets, whether to rob, burgle, or vandalize. In keeping with an early implicit rational choice formulation, offending was re- garded as goal-oriented and offenders as rational actors seeking to obtain a variety of satisfactions from their crimes at least risk and effort to themselves. Offenders were assumed to be anti-social, mostly free from moral scruples,3 and committed to particular types of crime as simply the most satisfactory means to achieve their goals. The road to predatory offending follows — and, indeed, underpins — the standard rational choice account of offending which developed during the latter part of the 1980s. Many of these assumptions about the nature of predatory offenders are also consistent with those made by traditional control theories of crime (Hirschi, 1969; Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990): and this is how the psychopathic offender is of- ten depicted. As well as having these attributes, the predatory offenders whom situational crime prevention wanted to deter were (unsurprisingly) those who were currently successfully committing the predatory crimes in question — that is, those with knowledge, skills and expe- rience enough to minimize risk and effort, and maximize payoffs. Situational techniques directed at this notional group of offenders were expected to be able to disrupt the intentions of a wide variety of offenders, from novices to "professionals" — even if, in the latter case, reduction of offending rather than prevention was the goal. Motivation For predatory offenders, the motivation to contemplate offending arises out of the usual commonplace human desires (see Clarke and Cornish, 2001, Table 1). The particular nature of these wants and needs are shaped by the individual's basic physiological drives; by personal priorities and preferences acquired during the course of de- velopment; and through those generated by the pleasures and vicis- situdes of his or her current lifestyle. In the case of novice offenders, living or contact with marginal lifestyles may selectively expose indi- - 5 7 - A Reply to Wortley's Critique of Situational Crime Prevention Derek B. Cornish and Ronald V. Clarke to opportunities to carry out crimes successfully. The cues in ques- tion are those of risk, effort and reward, and these will be the infor- mational aspects of situational cues to which predatory offenders attend. While situations may possess different or additional mean- ings for other ideal types of offender, it is for the information they provide about the presence or absence of opportunities to commit a particular type of crime that they are important to predatory offend- ers.4 As Crime as Opportunity puts it (Mayhew and Clarke, 1976:7), however, there are differences between the "objective, material condi- tions necessary for an act to be committed" and "the conditions sub- jectively perceived as favourable to action." Although opportunity cues are grounded in objective facts (a window is either open or it is not), perception of opportunities and their use or rejection is a sub- jective one and depends upon the offender's skills, experience and degree of involvement in a criminal lifestyle. These will determine the extent to which cues signaling opportunities are noticed, seized, sought, manipulated, or manufactured by the predatory offender. The relationship between predatory offenders and the opportunity cues they utilize, then, is usually not determined simply by the im- pact of single situations on them, but also by any prior experiences they may have of committing that particular offense. As to whether opportunity cues are ever more than simply in- strumental to the task of crime commission, Wortley has suggested that "prompts" — the class of precipitators having most in common with opportunity cues — may also motivate offending. However, al- though this seems a reasonable assumption, it is probably true only in limited circumstances. It is certainly possible that a blatantly tempting opportunity to steal, a badly vandalized fence, viewing a pornographic movie, or gaining sudden access to a firearm during a fight, may all put the idea of offending into an individual's mind, or even seem to bring about an offense. After all, there has to be a first time for everything. But in rational-choice terms, when opportunity cues act in this way, they are best seen as feeding into the processes of initial involvement — that is, of providing graphic information about possible criminal solutions as part of the process of becoming ready to offend for the first time. For the most part, however, such cues are utilized in the context of a standing decision to offend, and under these circumstances they simply indicate circumstances more or less propitious for offending. By the same token, the fact that the involvement and crime- commission decisions may occur quickly and almost simultaneously should not be taken — as it sometimes is — as evidence of the power of situational cues to motivate offending. So-called opportunistic - 6 0 - crimes are either necessarily impulsive, spur-of-the-moment nor situationally-motivated. Where they seem so, it is often because the observer sees only the moment seized and opportunity taken, and remains ignorant of any earlier decisions that might have led to this event or, indeed, of the circumstances that might have made it op- portune at that time. And in any case, whatever the issues that "prompts," first-time offenders, and telescoped decision-making proc- esses may pose for theory, as issues for crime prevention practice they are typically dealt with by the same techniques that regulate the basic opportunity cues (those of risk, effort, and reward) themselves. Applicable Situational Techniques Given the nature of their motivation, and their lack of concern for the effect of their behavior on others, the only situational techniques with much chance of preventing the criminal behavior of predatory offenders will be those that attempt to disrupt instrumental aspects of the crime-commission process: that is, those that increase per- ceived effort, increase perceived risks, and reduce anticipated re- wards. The techniques associated with these general strategies have been itemized by Clarke (1992, 1997), and also include some of those described by Wortley (2002) as "controlling prompts" (see Table 1). The only other requirement is that situational techniques will be ap- propriately tailored to the degrees of competence and determination exhibited by the predatory offender; but this is usually achievable via the procedures of crime-specific analysis that are an integral part of effective situational prevention practice. The Mundane Offender Alongside the predator, who carries out serious volume crimes with commitment and lack of scruple, another more ambiguous fig- ure has recently emerged in the crime prevention literature (although something of the type had been present in situational crime preven- tion thinking from the earliest days: cf. Clarke, 1980). These offend- ers have been characterized in various ways to distinguish them from the predator. They have been termed "occasional offenders," "oppor- tunistic offenders,"5 or "everyday offenders," each in an attempt to get at the quality of "common-or-garden" offending they display. We have termed them "mundane" offenders in an attempt to describe both their nature and the type of offending in which they tend to engage. They are mundane also in the sense that moral considerations tend to have some influence on their criminal decision making. - 6 1 - A Reply to Wortley's Critique of Situational Crime Prevention Derek B. Cornish and Ronald V. Clarke Crimes and Criminals A significant aspect of the crimes committed by mundane offend- ers can be gleaned from Clarke's (1997) discussion of the situational techniques concerned with "removing excuses" (see also Clarke and Homel, 1997). A salient aspect of most of the offenses in question might be termed their ambiguous criminality. This may be because their criminal status is still widely contested in practice by a majority (e.g., speeding), or a significant minority — usually male — of the population (e.g., drunk-driving; sexual harassment); because the of- fense in question is considered anti-social rather than strictly crimi- nal (e.g., littering; urinating in a public place); because it is an of- fense by reason of the offender's status (e.g., under-age drinking); or it is an offense that many us may have committed at one time or an- other — even if only on a single occasion (e.g., fiddling expenses; "forgetting" to return library books). As well as being ambiguously criminal, some of the offenses in question are also generally consid- ered trivial — or, at least, refer to broad offense groups, some in- stances of which are considered trivial. Similar aspects of these crimes are implied by some of Wortley's (2001) precipitator-control strategies to reduce permissibility.6 These are crimes that are characteristically only intermittently defined as criminal. The situations in which they occur either lack "moral mark- ers" or have so many that they paradoxically reinforce a view that the behaviors they warn against are excusable, and they are often poorly policed and inconsistently sanctioned. These are crimes that preda- tory offenders will commit alongside their more serious ones (see, for example, Chenery et al. [1999] on violations of disabled drivers' parking bays), as and when convenient and safe to do so and without moral scruples. But since these crimes may be considered excusable on occasion by people with such scruples, they are crimes also likely to be committed by a broader group of offenders: "people like us," many of whom we might be reluctant to consider offenders in the strict sense of the term, and who would themselves be reluctant to commit more serious offenses. Mundane offenders, then, are ordi- nary and basically law-abiding people with consciences and a stake in society who from time to time commit certain types of "minor" crimes, from pilfering at work, to driving home drunk from the pub, smuggling prohibited items through customs, and making improper sexual advances to employees or co-workers. They are ambivalently criminal people committing ambiguously criminal acts. Although it is tempting to view these people simply as occasional or opportunistic offenders, neither of these terms adequately or accu- rately defines the characteristic nature of their criminal behavior, - 6 2 - intrusion of moral considerations into instrumental decisions about crime commission. Situations If its effect is temporarily to release mundane offenders from moral reservations and permit them to "seize" opportunities to offend, then the mundane offender's relationship to the situation may be less straightforwardly instrumental and proactive than that of the preda- tory criminal. The state of being provisionally ready to commit a crime is one that may preclude more clearly predatory activities such as the conscious search, manipulation, or invention of opportunities to offend. Instead it suggests a rather more nuanced relationship to criminogenic situations that is attuned and receptive to their moral ambiguity — one where the offender may experience such situations as being encountered rather than deliberately sought out. But al- though they may label the experience in this way, it is quite possible that they may, in fact, be selecting situations for their enabling role in "allowing" offenses to happen. Given their ongoing provisional readiness to offend, and the self-serving uses to which permissibility cues may be put by mundane offenders, we should not neglect the possibility that, like predatory criminals, they may simply be taking advantage of situations, rather than allowing situations to take ad- vantage of them. Such prudential calculations would make mundane offending merely a rather more complex version of the predatory one. As mundane offenders seek to commit excusable crimes, the view most consistent with the rational choice approach would be to sug- gest that in most cases, excusability merely adds an additional re- quirement to the basic decision-making task. Situational Cues Both permissibility and excusability cues signal in their own ways an absence of moral structure within particular settings. These are places that help to release the offender from the influence of a variety of moral proscriptions against bad behavior, and bolster any existing neutralizations that the offender may be inclined to use. When Wortley discusses how these cues operate, what he has in mind is that they can precipitate criminal behavior on their own. It seems unlikely from the foregoing discussion, however, that permissibility or excusability cues achieve their effects by increasing the offender's motivation to offend. More probably, they merely permit him or her to do so. This account of the way that permissibility or excusability cues operate is, then, somewhat at variance with the one given by Wortley, - 6 5 - A Reply to Wortley's Critique of Situational Crime Prevention Derek B. Cornish and Ronald V. Clarke although their influence is still a situational one (Wortley's other pre- cipitators, such as pressures and provocations, play a more ostensi- bly motivational role). Nor is it likely that such cues could act on their own to permit otherwise prohibited behavior. After all, it is clear from the list of cognitive distortions or neutralizations mentioned by Wortley as permitting offending that these are more likely to be pre- existing habits of thought, susceptible to being strengthened by per- missibility cues, than new modes of thinking brought about by one- off situational factors alone. This issue of how permissibility or excusability cues work is com- plicated by the fact that cues often relay more than one type of in- formation about a setting — and it may not always be clear to which attributes of the cue the offender is responding. This is often referred to as the difference between nominal and functional cues. Crimes that are widely viewed to a greater or lesser degree as excusable or permissible tend to take place in settings with few clear moral mark- ers and poor relevant situational controls. As well as conveying in- formation about permissibility or excusability, then, such cues may also transmit varyingly subtle instrumental cues relating to risk, ef- fort and reward factors. The lack of roadside speed display boards may suggest that other methods of monitoring may also be absent; time-consuming library checkout procedures may suggest that staff may be too busy to monitor suspicious behavior. This is to say that when permissibility or excusability cues appear to be affecting the behavior of either mundane or predatory offenders, this may in both cases be simply because of the instrumental information they convey — or because each type of offender is responding to different func- tional cues. Applicable Situational Techniques The general strategies involved in tackling the criminal behavior of mundane offenders have been variously described as those of "re- moving excuses" (Clarke, 1997), "reducing permissibility" {Wortley, 2002) or "inducing guilt or shame" (Clarke and Homel, 1997), al- though there is considerable agreement over the techniques covered by these labels. What they have in common is the attention they draw to the influence of ostensibly non-instrumental factors on criminal decision making — although, as we have hinted, many of the proposed techniques may also have some impact on the of- fender's perceptions of risk, effort or reward. What is less clear is the exact nature of the mechanisms involved in these techniques, how they might achieve their effects, and how powerful those effects might be. - 6 6 - A Reply to Wortley's Critique of Situational Crime Prevention According to the rational choice perspective, the influence of moral scruples is likely to be greatest when questions of readiness to offend are being determined (the involvement stage of criminal deci- sion making). It is not immediately apparent, therefore, how moral considerations could be brought to bear with much force at any later points. In particular, the crime-commission process itself — the focus of traditional situational crime prevention efforts — is, after all, the stage by which, again according to rational choice assumptions, de- cision making is primarily guided by the instrumental considerations of risk, effort and reward, and not by moral ones, which have already been disposed of. If we consider the nature of the crimes and crimi- nals with which we are concerned here, however, there are ways and means whereby non-instrumental considerations might achieve their impact at a later point. First, we suggested earlier that, unlike the predatory offender whose readiness for crime is assumed to take the form of a standing decision, mundane offenders exist in a condition of "qualified readiness" that relates both to the quality of their stake in society, and to the ambiguous status of many of their crimes. This is likely to render them continually sensitive to situational cues de- noting the inexcusability or impermissibility of any contemplated ac- tion even when in the crime situation itself and on the point of of- fending. If so, then situational techniques that prod conscience, or remove excuses, may cause the mundane offender to abandon his or her criminal undertaking before it has started — although, of course, the likely effectiveness of these techniques will be determined both by the extent of the offender's readiness to offend, and by the strength of the techniques in question. As well as challenging the readiness of the offender, such re- evaluations of readiness are also likely to affect any instrumental de- cision making that is being carried out at the same time. They will do this, however, not by directly feeding into tactical decisions about when and where to offend, but by intruding upon and disrupting these decision tasks. Since these methods make somewhat restrictive assumptions about the nature of the crimes, offenders, and decision making in- volved, their effects are likely to be limited to particular groups of of- fenders and offenses — that is, in the main to mundane offenders and others who may be ambivalent about their readiness to offend, and may prefer to commit ambiguously criminal offenses. Beginners, for example, whose readiness to offend may be qualified (at first) by practical as well as moral concerns about the advisability of becom- ing involved in committing a particular crime, may be especially vul- nerable to these approaches. But predatory offenses and predatory offenders may be quite unaffected by such techniques. Indeed, - 6 7 - Derek B. Cornish and Ronald V. Clarke Crimes and Criminals Wortley has drawn attention to a further set of crimes brought about by offenders' exposure to motivating stimuli in particular set- tings. He suggests (1998:174) that "there are a variety of psychologi- cal processes by which individuals may be actively induced to engage in criminal conduct which they may not have otherwise undertaken." Or, as he put it recently, there are "...factors that may induce indi- viduals to commit crimes that they would not have otherwise consid- ered..." (2001:63). Confining the factors in question to those of the pressures and provocations encountered in some criminogenic situa- tions, Wortley's view calls for a model of the offender quite opposed to that implied by traditional situational techniques. Instead of an ac- tive purposeful offender responding to, seeking and creating oppor- tunities, or a mundane offender freed to offend by permissibility cues, we have one whose offending may be evoked by immediate pro- vocations and pressures. Because of the implication that no prior motivation need be involved in these crimes, it is tempting to regard them as typically spur-of-the-moment offenses — crimes of violence that erupt in the heat of the moment; or impulsive ones committed by offenders overcome by temptation, or a temporary failure of self- control. But although a quality of abruptness may often apply to the circumstances under which these offenses emerge, this feature is clearly not primarily what Wortley has in mind. The important qual- ity is, rather, that of reactivity: the responding, or feeling of being required to respond to situational cues not of the individual's own choosing. And, as Wortley has pointed out, while the motivation may arise from situational stimuli alone, the offender's response need not be an unthinking one: it will typically still be moderated by a rational calculation of the costs and benefits of actually committing the crime in question. While the mundane offender's salient characteristics are those of moral scruples from which he or she has to be freed, it is not imme- diately easy to identify either a type of offender or crime to which the idea of the provoked offender uniquely applies. In its strong form, the notion could apply to any person as long as he or she was unmoti- vated to offend before exposure to the precipitators in question; and to any crime as long as it was instigated by situational cues alone. Given that provocations vary considerably according to their nox- iousness, dosage and duration, this would suggest that these would have to be quite strong in character. In a weaker, and perhaps more easily defended form, it demotes the role of situational motivation to that of precipitator in the chemical sense, referring to the power of such provocations and pressures to invoke, augment and "precipi- - 7 0 - A Reply to Wortley's Critique of Situational Crime Prevention tate" already-existing brews of motivation and readiness into offend- ing behavior. The offense in this case would be one "waiting to hap- pen," and the offender, someone already primed to respond to the trigger in question.8 This would allow for the operation of quite weak situational provocations, so long as they were enough to tip the bal- ance into offending. The stronger and weaker forms of the notion rep- resent rather different scenarios for the operation of provocations, the strong form placing most of the burden of explanation upon the situational cues themselves (a question of circumstances), and the weak form placing most emphasis upon the offender (a question of character). In some of Wortley's own examples, both forms seem to be in operation simultaneously — as when inmates are provoked by prison conditions. Motivation As in the cases of the other ideal types, there is no reason to sup- pose that the basic motivations of provoked offenders are any differ- ent from those of predatory or mundane criminals. The main differ- ence is not in the type of motivation involved, but how it becomes invoked. For predatory criminals the motivations for offending are assumed to arise from the demands and constraints of their life- styles; given certain motivational demands, these offenders explore possible solutions and, as a result, become ready to offend in a par- ticular way. The process is a proactive one, driven by offender needs, choices and decisions. For provoked offenders, the processes involved are depicted as largely reactive: a previously unmotivated offender becomes ready to commit an offense as a result of exposure to situ- ational precipitators. As we have seen in the case of permissibility cues, however, the above differences may be more apparent than real. In order to exert their power to precipitate, these situational cues have to be perceived as pressuring or provoking: an aggressive re- mark may be perceived differently by a therapist than by a homeboy, and the outcomes are likely to differ, too. As we will argue, the con- text within which cues are perceived and understood is usually pro- vided by an individual's lifestyle. It is this that is largely responsible for the way in which basic needs and wants are expressed and ad- dressed, and for sensitizing and alerting the individual to the situ- ational cues associated with these needs. Just as the degree of per- missibility required for an offense to happen will be related to an in- dividual's prior degrees of moral rectitude, so the amount of provoca- tion experienced by the individual from cues of overcrowding, lack of privacy or personal space, environmental irritants, and other frus- - 7 1 - Derek B. Cornish and Ronald V. Clarke trations or social pressures will be largely determined by the context in which they occur. If they are one-off events within a lifestyle for which they have little significance, then the individual's response will be minimal. If they touch on motives that are central to the individ- ual's lifestyle (such as challenges to reputation), the response is likely to be swift and severe. Two tentative conclusions about situational motivation can be drawn from this discussion. First, the concept of an unmotivated of- fender to whom motivation is supplied is probably not a helpful one. What provocations help to do is ready the offender for action by pro- viding cues that cherished goals or expectations may be under threat. In certain very limited circumstances (for example, threats to life and limb) the very existence of a provocation may be enough on its own to provoke extreme biologically programmed reactions. But by and large the process is more interactive. Offenders are not clock- work toys waiting to be motivated; they already have long-standing needs and desires which they bring with them to each new setting. And it is these existing motives that will generally determine the sali- ence of situational provocations — that is, whether they are noticed at all and, if so, how the offender chooses to react to them. If this is so, then — to come back to the distinction between proactive and reactive offending — the motivation generated by lifestyles may be seen as taking two broad forms: one involving the proactive seeking out of ways to maintain and enhance current lifestyles, the other a more reactive concern to conserve and defend them. The point can be made by a simple example: on one occasion an offender may deliber- ately pick a fight in order to increase his reputation, and seek out opportunities so to do; on another occasion he may have to respond to a challenge not of his own seeking in order to defend his social standing. In both cases, choices and decisions will have to be made; only the source of the instigation is different. Second, the sense in which situational cues are motivating is also an issue. As we will see later, the power of such cues to instigate offending is drawn not just from the impact of the situation itself, but from the relationship of that setting to the offender's wider environment and lifestyle. It is this wider context that modifies or augments the power of precipita- tors. This is to say that a broader context of both person and situa- tion variables is required if the influence of precipitators is to be gauged. Criminal Decision Making Although Wortley's model implicitly recognizes the importance of criminal decision-making processes (see, for example, his discussion - 7 2 - and environments are more central to an individual's lifestyle than others. People may choose where they shop, eat or drink, but they may have less choice over where they work or sleep, or the particular route that they take to get to those locations. This will depend upon the mode of transport available and the influence they have over its routing. These comments suggest that situations do not exist in a vacuum; they exist in relation to other situations, to environments and to in- dividuals' lifestyles. The notion of the stand-alone "situation" may be a relatively harmless shorthand when discussing the way that of- fenders choose, use and discard situations in their search for tar- gets.10 But when situations are imposed, their context becomes cru- cial in determining how the individual will be affected. This context is supplied by the individual's lifestyle and the salience of the situation in question to that lifestyle. A provocation may be welcome to an of- fender who has entered a setting with the express purpose of looking for a fight; it may be a threat where perceived by the offender as a challenge to his status — especially if delivered repeatedly along with other provocations under constraining circumstances that offer few choices of effective response, avoidance, or escape. Context is everything when talking about the impact of provoking situations on individuals — and, hence, their significance in precipi- tating criminal behavior. It is perhaps significant that a major source of understanding about such situations has come from Wortley's work on issues of prison control (Wortley, 2001, 2002, this volume). Prisons are essentially aversive examples of "capsule environments" (Suedfeld and Steel, 2000) — places where noxious stimuli abound, options for their avoidance or control are limited, and repetitive expo- sure is common. Prisons are also places where the angry, anti-social and socially unskilled are congregated, where one's place in the in- mate hierarchy is a vital source of material and psychic satisfactions, and where the maintenance of crucial aspects of the individual's life- style, therefore, becomes dependent on the individual's reaction to the circumstances of prison life. Under such constraints the power of provocations can be expected to be at their highest. The foregoing suggests that when situational preventers talk about the power of situations to provoke, what they often have implicitly in mind is not the power of a one-off freely entered setting to precipitate offending but, rather, that of aversive, long-term inescapable environments and their nested settings and associated aversive cues so to do. Although the provocations concerned are undoubtedly situational ones, then, they are the persistent and repetitive products of ongoing lifestyles which determine both the offender's exposure to them, and his or her perceptions of their significance. - 7 5 - A Reply to Wortley's Critique of Situational Crime Prevention Derek B. Cornish and Ronald V. Clarke The notion of the provoked offender departs even further from that of the predatory criminal, whose ideal type so closely incorporates the guiding assumptions of the rational choice perspective. Never- theless, although the offenses of provoked offenders may be charac- terized as reactive rather than proactive crimes, so long as the re- sponses of offenders to provocation can — like other types of offend- ing — be given an intelligible and reasonable explanation in decision- making terms (Tedeschi and Felson, 1994), there seems no good rea- son to exclude them from the purview of the rational choice ap- proach. The fact that the rational choice perspective is wary of expla- nations that assume an unmotivated offender may, in fact, even be of benefit. Indeed, locating these offenses within this framework may enable such accounts to be developed more fully for situational crime prevention purposes. Situational Cues At first sight, the frustrations and irritations of everyday life hardly seem likely to be an important influence on offending. But what may be perceived as a quite trivial provocation in relation to one context or when only a single exposure is involved may be a source of (or pretext for) disproportionate responses on other occasions.11 Ear- lier we mentioned extreme environments as contexts likely to en- hance the power of such provocations. Social pressures, too, may be harder to evade in such environments, and the two groups of pre- cipitators, especially if repeated in concert over long periods of time, may have additive or multiplicative effects. Such effects are not con- fined to prisons and prison-like environments: conditions of acute poverty and social isolation (for example, homelessness [McCarthy and Hagan, 1992]; or living conditions involving prolonged exposure to overcrowding, noise and other irritants) may provide similar set- tings. ' Outside these settings, the significance of provocations for invok- ing criminal behavior is less easy to evaluate. In daily life they are probably not an important source of criminal behavior for most peo- ple, who can (or can learn to) either avoid them or deal with them. This suggests that although provocations and pressures can un- doubtedly be responsible for criminal behavior, they will only be im- portant influences under a rather limited set of conditions. In par- ticular, they will achieve their efforts not by motivating the unmoti- vated, but by their ability to trigger reactions in those who are al- ready primed by existing motivation to respond. Where provoking cues work, it is because they build on or augment the needs and concerns that the offender brings into the setting. The same expla- - 7 6 - A Reply to Wortley's Critique of Situational Crime Prevention nation applies to social pressures: if bar-room brawlers fight longer and harder when in the company of friends, this is precisely because their friends and their reputations have traveled with them into the setting in question. To summarize, provocations and pressures become most salient under five conditions: • When they involve threats to life and limb and invoke reac- tions of self-preservation; • When they occur in capsule environments, especially aversive ones; • When they challenge or threaten the maintenance or fulfill- ment of needs and desires associated with core aspects of an individual's lifestyle; • When they are repeated; • Or where a single exposure provides the final stimulus that tips an already motivated individual into action. At other times they may provide opportunities or pretexts to of- fend rather than provocations to do so (see, for example, Graham and Homel, 1996). Applicable Situational Techniques Wortley (2001) has suggested a range of techniques for addressing the control of situational precipitators. As we mentioned earlier, many of these techniques are already in use under other names; so, as Wortley himself notes, the additional practical payoff to situational prevention may not be great at this time. As to the importance of controlling pressures and provocations, there is clearly great benefit from doing so under certain circumstances. It is particularly impor- tant — a case which Wortley has made excellently in a number of publications (e.g., 1998, 2002, this volume) — to explore and control the various precipitators at work on individuals living in capsule en- vironments such as prisons, and other like settings. These are rela- tively inescapable environments within which individuals have to live, construct a lifestyle, and (if only at the most basic level) address its needs and requirements. The impact of precipitators is likely to be at its greatest, and the issue of their control most pressing, under these circumstances. The value of precipitator-control becomes more debatable — at least considered against the claims of traditional situational tech- niques — when applied to everyday environments and settings, many of which are entered as a matter of choice or, if imposed, from which - 7 7 - Derek B. Cornish and Ronald V. Clarke Clarke, 1980) that culminated in the rational choice approach. We have termed the "predatory offender" the default mode for a number of reasons. First, it conveys the notion of being guided by the original assumptions made by early research and identified by its theorists: these are situational prevention's "factory settings." Second, it sug- gests that these settings may arguably be regarded as the standard and most generally useful ones. Third, it hints that when playing with the situational prevention "program," it may sometimes be helpful to go back to first principles (switch back to the defaults). But fourth, it cautions that such basic assumptions are inevitably "best guesses" that may need modifying in the light of new understanding or special circumstances. As we have seen, the default or "predatory offender" mode of situ- ational prevention makes simple and parsimonious assumptions about offenders. These are that they are ready to offend, and that this readiness is determined by a straightforward cost-benefit analy- sis that occurs prior to entering the crime setting, and during crime commission itself, where the instrumental considerations of risk, ef- fort, and reward dominate decision making. In "mundane offender" mode the defaults are amended by setting the "moral scruples" switch ("off in the default mode) to "on": this has the effect of keep- ing the readiness decision as a prudentially provisional one, open to being challenged or firmed up by situational cues. If permissibility or excusability cues are present, these will allow offending to occur; if inexcusability or impermissibility ones are there instead, they can abort or disrupt crime commission, or may even prevent it from being considered. The latest, or "provoked offender" mode offers further modifications to the default settings. Here, the offender is assumed not to be ready to offend; but he or she may be made ready by as- sorted pressures and provocations. Once readied, crime commission will proceed on the usual instrumental basis. If provocations are not present or are removed, then the offender will remain or become un- ready to offend, and no crime will occur. The crudity of these characterizations does some violence to the subtleties of real-world offending, where cues come in different strengths and in complex bundles, where offenders vary in their readiness for crime, and in their prior experience of it. They also de- liberately ignore the influence of more complex "settings" that involve the simultaneous operation of more than one precipitator at a time — for example, the offender with scruples who is pressured and pro- voked into offending. But discussion in terms of these three simple "types" of offenders does at least direct attention to some of the points at issue, and at the inferences for theory and practice that can be drawn from them. - 8 0 - The Demise of the Motivated Offender The traditional (default) approach to situational prevention as- sumes a motivated — or, more accurately, readied — offender. This assumption is a useful one on a number of counts. While recognizing that offending is a product of person-situation interactions, it sug- gests that more attention needs to be given to the situational side of this equation. It brings to mind the old adage that crime requires motive and opportunity — criminology's own version of the person- situation interaction — and establishes a division of labor between those whose interest lies in one or other area. In so doing, it clarifies the task of situational prevention as one concerned primarily with the situational side of this equation. This helps to hold the line against those who would dilute the concept of situational prevention and, incidentally, helps to rally the troops under its banner. The value of this division is also underwritten by the rational choice ap- proach, which separates involvement decisions from event ones and treats them as relatively compartmentalized sets of activities. This provides the theoretical justification for a division of labor: involve- ment processes take care of motivational issues, and event ones handle the technicalities of the crime-commission process, which deals in purely instrumental decisions. The assumption that the of- fender is a motivated one is also of pragmatic value to the practice of situational prevention. In rational choice terms, it is shorthand for an offender who is not only motivated but also ready to commit a par- ticular type of crime — that is, one who, having the motives, has looked at the means available for their satisfaction, evaluated them, and chosen a criminal over a non-criminal method. This assumption also tends to imply an individual who has some commitment to of- fending and who will display a reasonable degree of "good practice" in crime commission. Crime-control strategies are then less likely to underestimate the task of trying to prevent or disrupt the offender's activities. The newer situational strategies work under more complex and restrictive assumptions. The offenders targeted by these strategies are less than fully committed to offending, and only become ready to offend if situational factors are brought to bear on them. This raises problems for the default model which can subtly undermine it in a number of ways. The need for additional conditions before readiness is achieved weakens its core assumption of a motivated offender. This, in turn, risks diverting attention away from the instrumental situational determinants of offending, and of encouraging criminol- ogy's (and psychology's) perennial preoccupation with the develop- ment of offender motivation — the very perspective that the situ- - 8 1 - A Reply to Wortley's Critique of Situational Crime Prevention Derek B. Cornish and Ronald V. Clarke ational approach was developed to counterbalance. Making readiness dependent upon non-instrumental factors in the immediate situation also has the effect of suggesting a vacillating offender whose readi- ness to offend may change with every fortuitous event. And this overly contingent state suggests someone who might be as easily dis- suaded from offending by attending to motivational factors — albeit by avowedly situational techniques — as by opportunity ones. This further undermines the default view that changing the motivation of offenders is a difficult task that is beyond the scope of situational prevention. The mode of operation of these newer situational factors is also problematic. In addition to suggesting that one-off immediate situ- ational cues may be enough to create readiness, it also places the whole involvement-event decision-making process within the crime setting itself. This invites a view of the offender as typically not only reactive to immediate situational demands but also as involved in a hasty, confused or even irrational decision-making process. Not sur- prisingly these subtly conveyed notions find their apotheosis in the type of offender most clearly suggested by these later models: the be- ginner in crime — unskilled, inexperienced, ambivalent, weakly moti- vated, easily influenced and easily dissuaded, morally equivocating, impulsive, poorly equipped to make decisions, and full of excuses. Although this may be a psychologically correct view of many offend- ers, these may not be among the more serious or persistent ones. And a failure to recognize this possibility may foster unrealistic ex- pectations about the promise of the newer situational approaches. Situations and Situational Cues In the default model of situational prevention, the situation plays a relatively narrow role, confined as it is to the presentation of op- portunity cues to readied offenders. In the more rbcent approaches, the belief that situations may, under certain conditions, deliver moti- vating cues as well as facilitating (i.e., instrumental) ones is central to their new techniques. However, the qualification about "certain conditions" is crucial, since the nature of the interaction between situational motivation and offender readiness is not a simple one. As we have argued, there are likely to be only two circumstances under which a precipitator could become strong enough on its own to create a condition of readiness in an offender where one did not exist before. In the cases of provocations and pressures, for example, either the cue would have to be of life-threatening severity, or it would have to be presented on more than one occasion over time. The former con- dition fulfils the condition of being a situational precipitator in the - 8 2 - ational prevention may be somewhat limited. How, then, can we rec- oncile this conclusion with the assertions about the wide applicabil- ity of these new techniques? One way, as we have already mentioned, is to concede that they may be successful with some subgroups — particularly mundane offenders, or beginners, whose readiness is provisional and easily disrupted. Reducing situational provocations and pressures may also discourage those who seek them out, as well as ceasing to augment any such motivations brought by the offender into the settings in question. The susceptibility of much offending to being accounted for in both proactive and reactive terms, and according to the theoretical orientation of the observer, makes the task of determining why a particular technique worked a difficult one. It was noted earlier that situational cues are capable of conveying multiple meanings and that different offenders may be responding selectively to the information broadcast by such cues. To take the example of permissibility or ex- cusability cues, for some offenders the information they provide may be used to supplement their evaluation of the risks, effort and re- wards available in particular situations. For others, however, they may function, in addition, to excuse the crime and free the individual from moral scruples. Situational techniques, and especially the newer kinds, can suffer from similar difficulties. The issue of exactly which situational cues they are manipulating, and how they are ob- taining their effects may not be easy to resolve empirically,12 and re- mains the bane of attempts to classify situational techniques defini- tively. The Value of Default Settings Given some of the above arguments, assuming that crimes are committed for the most part from choice rather than being precipi- tated might be a useful default strategy. While its voluntaristic ori- entation has its own dangers (see below), it also has a number of ad- vantages. First, it seems best fitted to offer solutions for dealing with the immediate problems posed by predatory offenders. These often involve serious offenses and repeated offending by individuals with few moral scruples and a commitment to a criminal lifestyle. The value of situational methods in these instances is that it takes the offender's readiness, and the difficulty of changing this, for granted and concentrates instead on foiling the offender's attempts to realize his or her criminal intentions. Sticking with the default assumptions offers the standing decisions that provide researchers with built-in defenses against straying into the traditional black hole of trying to reduce motivation to offend in these cases. The assumptions under- - 8 5 - A Reply to Wortley's Critique of Situational Crime Prevention Derek B. Cornish and Ronald V. Clarke lying the newer situational models of offending, however, free the re- searcher from these constraints and may encourage unrealistic ex- pectations about the power of situational methods to control motiva- tion as well as opportunity. This danger is especially present in the case of the provoked-offender model which, instead of recognizing the long-term nature and embeddedness of the provocations and pres- sures that may drive some offenders to crime, may suggest to the unwary that these motives can be as easily induced or changed as opportunities can be presented or controlled. Two-stage models like Wortley's also run the risk of mistaking the part for the whole — that is, of assuming that, because precipitating cues may help to bring about offending in some cases, their effect must be equally important in all. But, as we have seen, precipitators do not play the same role in relation to readiness as opportunities do to crime commission. While the offender may well be ready enough for offending without the intervention of supplementary precipitating cues, the crime could not occur without the presence of opportuni- ties. Instead of Wortley's two-stage model, which only comes into op- eration under special circumstances, a more conventional involve- ment one, such as that provided by the rational choice perspective may offer a more generally applicable picture of how motivation and readiness are usually constructed — that is, outside the immediate situation and based on the requirements of the offender's lifestyle. It is true as Wortley comments (2001:75) that, "Controlling situational precipitators of crime and reducing opportunities for crime can be understood not so much as competing prevention approaches, but as approaches directed at different stages of the person-situation inter- action." But as well as representing differences in approaches to situational crime prevention, attempts to control precipitators may also signify its limitations — and, in doing so, highlight the difference between situational prevention and other approaches to preventing crime. Problems with the Default Approach As mentioned earlier, traditional situational prevention is based on the rational choice perspective, one that is more comfortable with the notion of a choosing, proactive offender than with someone to whom "things happen." These are the necessary simplifications of a policy-oriented "good-enough" theory — one designed primarily as a theory for practice. The advantages of this decision-making approach are the attention that it pays to how individuals become ready to of- fend, and to how crimes are committed. It is especially useful for de- picting aspects of the person-situation interaction — that is, the role -86- of opportunity in offending — which are important for the design of situational crime prevention measures along the lines of the default approach. This is no small benefit. But the rational choice perspec- tive has little to say about the construction of motives, desires and preferences, except to indicate that current circumstances, routines, and lifestyles — and their associated needs, motives and opportuni- ties — are the outcome of lengthy developmental processes and per- son-situation interactions (Clarke and Cornish, 2001). Given this as- sumption, it is concerned more with the way that such given motives are translated by individuals into purposes, means and actions — and how, where these actions are criminal, they can be frustrated. To some this may suggest a prudent acknowledgment of its reach; to others, a failure of imagination. As Wortley has commented: "The inclusion of precipitating factors in considerations about the causes of crime presents a much more dynamic view of offender motivation, one which more accurately reflects the person-situation interaction as it is presented in the psychological literature" (Wortley, 1998:183). If this is the case, the question may be asked whether the rational choice perspective is the most appropriate conceptual framework for expressing the complexity and dynamism of these interactions. It is certainly true that, although it can accommodate the influence of precipitators, the rational choice approach tends to downplay their effects. Except in the cases we have discussed earlier, such situ- ational variables are seen as having only a limited role to play, at least over the short-term, in the construction or reduction of offender motivation. This viewpoint flows from the assumptions of the rational choice perspective and is illustrated by the way its three involvement models have been developed. It is these considerations that explain any preference for prioritizing the default approach to situational prevention over more recent developments. But although the present authors favor this point of view, they are well aware that, powerful though the perspective is, it has the limitations and blind spots common to all such metatheories and sensitizing concepts. One of these concerns the procrustean nature of all such perspectives, which seek to assimilate or accommodate all phenomena to them- selves. While the notion of the motivated offender is a basic tenet of situational crime prevention, some offenders may, indeed, be pre- cipitated into offending, though it is difficult at this point either to estimate the size of these subgroups, the frequency of their offending, or their significance in terms of crimes generated. The power of situational prevention, after all, is that it is driven by crime problems, not by issues of theoretical comprehensiveness. If predatory offending by proactive offenders is the most important source of these problems, then time spent on trying to modify or de- - 8 7 - A Reply to Wortley's Critique of Situational Crime Prevention ~06- if Table 2: Twenty-five Techniques of Situational Prevention Increase the Effort Increase the Risks Reduce the Rewards Reduce Provocations Remove Excuses 1. Target harden: 6. Extend guardianship: 11. Conceal targets: 16, Reduce frustrations and | 21. Set rules: « Steering column locks » Take routine precautions: go » Off-street parking stress: + Rental agreements and immobilisers out in group at night, leave * Gender-neutral phone + Efficient queues and » Harassment codes * Anti-robbery screens signs of occupancy, carry directories polite service + Hotel registration + Tamper-proof packaging phone + Unmarked bullion + Expanded seating + “Cocoon” neighborhood watch trucks * Soothing music /muted lights 2. Control access to facilities: | 7. Assist natural surveillance: 12, Remove targets: 17. Avoid disputes: 22. Post instructions: + Entry phones + Improved street lighting * Removable car radio * Separate enclosures for « “No Parking” * Electronic card access + Defensible space design + Women's refuges Tival soccer fans * “Private Property” + Baggage screening + Support whistleblowers » Pre-paid cards for pay * Reduce crowding in pubs + “Extinguish camp fires” phones + Fixed cab fares 3. Screen exits: &. Reduce anonymity: 13. Identify property: 18. Reduce emotional 23. Alert conscience: + Ticket needed for exit + Taxi driver IDs + Property marking arousal: » Roadside speed display + Export documents + “How's my driving?” decals * Vehicte licensing and « Controis on violent boards * Electronic merchandise « School uniforms parts marking pornography « Signatures for customs tags * Cattle branding « Enforce good behavior on declarations soccer field * “Shoplifting is stealing” + Prohibit racial slurs 4, Deflect offenders: 9. Utilize place managers: 14, Disrupt markets: 19. Neutralize peer pressure: | 24, Assist compliance: + Street closures + CCTV for double-deck buses * Moniter pawn shops + “Idiots drink and drive” + Easy library checkout « Separate bathrooms for + Two clerks for convenience + Controls on classified + “It’s OK to say No” « Public lavatories women stores ads + Disperse troublemakers. + Litter bins * Disperse pubs + Reward vigilance + License street vendors at school 5. Contral tools/ weapons; 10. Strengthen format surveillance: 15, Deny benefits: 20. Discourage imitation: 25, Controt drugs and + “Smart” guns » Red light cameras + Ink merchandise tags + Rapid repair of alcohol: + Disabling stolen cell + Burglar alarms * Graffiti cleaning vandalism + Breathalyzers in pubs phones « Security guards * Speed humps * V-chips in TVs + Server intervention » Restrict spray paint sales « Censor details of modus * Alcohol-free events to juveniles operandi A Reply to Wortley's Critique of Situational Crime Prevention situational prevention, and one that promises new ways of thinking about manipulating situational factors for crime control. The fact that the techniques are directed at the motivational side of the per- son-situation interaction rather than the opportunity side offers an expanded role for the field. Whether such techniques truly comple- ment conventional situational ones and provide the missing half of a fully articulated situational response, or should be seen, rather, as supplementing them is a more difficult judgment to make at this time. Although there has been an increase in available techniques over the last few years, this does not necessarily entail a parallel in- crease in the effectiveness of situational crime prevention. This only follows if the additional techniques are truly distinguishable from existing ones and as effective. The susceptibility of much offending to being accounted for in both proactive and reactive terms, and ac- cording to the theoretical orientation of the observer, makes the task of determining why a particular technique worked a difficult one. This may be one reason why classifications of techniques remain so much one of judgment. Many of our arguments and caveats have al- ready been raised by Wortley himself (especially, Wortley, 1996, 1997, 1998), so there is much agreement about the points at issue, and substantial agreement on many. Divergence occurs mainly on matters of emphasis, and these may well flow from differences in the problems which situational prevention is now being used to address. Leaving aside for now its intrinsic value as a new contribution to the theory underlying situational crime prevention, the strongest claims for the future utility of precipitator-control may lie not so much in the promise of increased control of situational factors, as in the implications for crime control in respect of the way in which this control is achieved. Two interesting claims have been made for some of the newer techniques which, if substantiated, offer interesting in- sights into the nature and impact of situational measures on offend- ers. First, a better understanding of issues concerning the relative "hardness* and "softness" of the different available techniques might, for example, offer a more nuanced use of situational prevention in relation to particular settings and types of offender. Although hard- ness and softness are probably not coterminous with opportunity control and precipitator control, respectively, they do, as Wortley points out, suggest possibilities for avoiding counterproductive re- sponses to situational techniques. Wortley's argument is developed in relation to precipitated offenders, and therefore may not apply with the same force to already motivated ones, who are, after all, ready to offend and looking for opportunities. But it is certainly the case that some forms of opportunity reduction (and, indeed, precipitator con- trol) are more obtrusive than others, and may be more likely to pro- - 9 1 - Derek B. Cornish and Ronald V. Clarke duce counterproductive effects. Second, there may be benefits to be gained from using softer techniques in order to avoid giving the of- fender extra incitement to displace offending. But here, as elsewhere, techniques of precipitator control assume an unmotivated or unready offender in whom the desire to offend may as yet be a weak one. When applied to motivated offenders looking for opportunities, these techniques — while not further inciting the offender — may merely suggest the need to move on to greener pastures. Address correspondence to: Derek B. Cornish, Wichita State University, School of Community Affairs, 1845 N. Fairmount, Wichita, KS 67260- 0135. E-mail: <100341.2151@compuserve.com>. REFERENCES Bennett, T. (1986). "Situational Crime Prevention from the Offenders' Perspective." In: K. Heal and G. Laycock (eds.), Situational Crime Prevention: From Theory into Practice. London, UK: Her Majesty's Stationery Office. Birkbeck, C. and G. LaFree (1993). "The Situational Analysis of Crime and Deviance." Annual Review of Sociology 19:113-137. Brantingham, P.L. and P.J. Brantingham (1993). "Environment, Routine and Situation: Toward a Pattern Theory of Crime." In: R.V. Clarke and M. Felson (eds.), Routine Activity and Rational Choice. (Advances in Criminological Theory, vol. 5.) New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press. Briar, S. and I. Piliavin (1965). "Delinquency, Situational Inducements, and Commitments to Conformity." Social Problems 13:35-45. Chenery, S., C. Henshaw and K. Pease (1999). Elegal Parking in Disabled Bays: A Means of Offender Targeting. (Briefing Note 199.) London, UK: Policing and Reducing Crime Unit, Home Office Research, De- velopment and Statistics Directorate. Clarke, R.V. (1997). "Introduction." In: R.V. Clarke (ed.), Situational Crime Prevention: Successful Case Studies. Guilderland, NY: Harrow and Heston. (1992). "Introduction." In: R.V. Clarke (ed.), Situational Crime Preven- tion: Successful Case Studies. Guilderland, NY: Harrow and Heston. - 9 2 - A Reply to Wortley's Critique of Situational Crime Prevention grating Crime Prevention Strategies; Propensity and Opportunity. Stockholm, Sweden: National Council for Crime Prevention. Wortley, R. (2002). Situational Prison Control: Crime Prevention in Correc- tional Institutions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. (2001). "A Classification of Techniques for Controlling Situational Precipitators of Crime." Security Journal 14:63-82. (1998) "A Two-Stage Model of Situational Crime Prevention." Studies on Crime and Crime Prevention 7:173-188. (1997). "Reconsidering the Role of Opportunity in Situational Crime Prevention." In: G. Newman, R.V. Clarke and S.G. Shohan (eds.), Rational Choice and Situational Crime Prevention. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing. (1996). "Guilt, Shame and Situational Crime Prevention." In: R. Homel (ed.), The Politics and Practice of Situational Crime Prevention. (Crime Prevention Studies, vol. 5). Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press. NOTES 1. In 1998, Wortley (1998:175, note 1) replaced the term "readying" by that of "precipitating" — perhaps in order to emphasize the motivational aspects of the immediate situation as opposed to those provided by the demands of the offender's lifestyle. 2. Furthermore, the particular form that a situational strategy takes will be geared to the nature and strength of that motivation, since these are important indicators both of the lengths the offender will go in trying to commit a crime and of the measures required to disrupt these intentions. 3. For the predatory offender, the scruples are vestigial, or suppressed by long-standing and well-developed strategies for permanently holding them in check. Either way, he or she is assumed to be relatively impervi- ous to appeals to the pangs of conscience. 4. Many of Wortley's own cues — especially his "prompts" — also provide information to offenders about opportunities, whatever their additional functions for some criminals may be. 5. The term "opportunistic" is probably better regarded as a defining feature of offending. 6. The concepts of permissibility and excusability overlap sufficiently to be treated as referring to broadly similar aspects of situations. Some - 9 5 - Derek B. Cornish and Ronald V. Clarke prompts, like "expectancy cues," and pressures, like the anonymity con- veyed by being part of a crowd, may also function in a similar way. 7. Garland (1997:190), however, uses the term "situational man" to de- scribe the default rational choice concept of the offender — what we termed above, the "predatory offender." 8. Since this could suggest someone "easily provoked" or "looking for trouble," however, these conditions have to be distinguished from that of the offender who was simply not motivated or ready enough to commit the crime until provoked by situational stimuli. 9. Cornish and Clarke (1986:168-9) briefly noted that under certain cir- cumstances the usual process of involvement, followed by event decision making, may sometimes be intertwined, curtailed, or telescoped. 10. A fuller understanding of the logistics of the offender's use of situa- tions would, of course, have to relate this to their relative availability. This would entail studying the offender's routine activities and movement patterns (see, for example, Brantingham and Brantingham, this volume; Davies and Dale, 1995). 11. Indeed, provocation has long been recognized by the criminal law as a mitigating factor under certain circumstances. 12. This will be especially likely where, as is often the case, a number of different techniques may be being used simultaneously. - 9 6 -