Situational Crime Prevention Require a Rational Choice Theory, Study notes of Criminology

Download Situational Crime Prevention Require a Rational Choice Theory and more Study notes Criminology in PDF only on Docsity!   1   DOES  SITUATIONAL  CRIME  PREVENTION  REQUIRE  A  RATIONAL   OFFENDER?       Richard  Wortley   Nick  Tilley     UCL         Corresponding  author:     Richard  Wortley   Jill  Dando  Institute  of  Security  &  Crime  Science   University  College  London   r.wortley@ucl.ac.uk               2   ABSTRACT   Opportunity  preceded  choice  and  choice  preceded  rational  choice  in  the   development  of  situational  crime  prevention  theory.  Rational  choice  was,  thus,  a   post  hoc  theoretical  supplement  to  the  initial  realisation  that  immediate   situations  furnish  key  conditions  affecting  criminal  behaviour  and  that  these   situations  could  be  modified  for  preventive  purposes.  Rational  choice  seemed  to   suggest  a  general  mechanism  that  could  link  the  situation  to  the  act.  Change  the   situation  and  the  rational  choices  about  what  to  do  will  also  change.  The   disposition  to  offend  is  not  so  strong  that  individuals’  criminal  behaviours  are   inexorable.  Choice  in  general  and  rational  choice  in  particular  filled  for  a  while  a   theoretical  vacuum  to  make  sense  of  the  influence  situations  evidently  exert  on   behaviour  and  has  been  used  to  inform  further  research.  It  also  provided  a   heuristic  for  practitioners  to  think  about  changes  to  the  situation  that  might   influence  prospective  offenders’  decisions.  Yet  there  is  growing  evidence  that   rational  choice  assumptions  are  implausible  and  unnecessary.  They  may  now  be   inhibiting  rather  than  facilitating  progress  in  research  and  practice.  Their   weaknesses  may  also  be  detracting  from  the  credibility  of  situational  crime   prevention  more  generally,  both  in  academic  and  practitioner  circles.  It  is  argued   here  that  theory  and  practice  would  both  be  improved  by  abandoning  rational   choice  as  the  sole  theoretical  foundation  for  situational  crime  prevention.  In  its   place,  we  outline  ten  tenets,  which  we  argue  more  fully  describe  the  role   situations  play  in  crime,  and  provide  a  framework  for  accommodating  a  wide   range  of  situational  theories  and  perspectives.           5   rather  to  describe  the  role  that  situations  play  in  behaviour  in  a  way  that   accommodates  multiple  theoretical  perspectives.  This,  we  suggest,  offers  a   fruitful  way  ahead  both  for  research  on  crime  and  for  policy  and  practice  to   address  crime  problems.         HOW  RCP  CAME  TO  BE  ASSOCIATED  WITH  SCP   While  RCP  and  SCP  have  become  closely  linked,  this  has  not  always  been  the   case.  The  ideas  behind  SCP  began  coalescing  into  coherent  prevention  models   from  the  beginning  of  the  1970s.  RCP  on  the  other  hand  was  first  proposed  as  a   foundation  for  SCP  some  15  years  later.  In  other  words,  RCP  was  settled  on  as  an   explanation  for  SCP  practices  that  were  already  well  established.    It  was  intended   to  add  theoretical  coherence  to  SCP  and  to  inform  a  research  programme.  It  was   seen,  therefore,  to  comprise  a  progressive  move.   The  first  proto-­‐situational  models  of  crime  prevention  were  presented  in   two  books,  with  strikingly  similar  titles,  published  within  a  year  of  each  other.   The  first  was  C.  Ray  Jeffrey’s  (1971)  Crime  Prevention  Through  Environmental   Design;  the  second  was  Oscar  Newman’s  (1972)  Defensible  Space:  Crime   Prevention  Through  Urban  Design.  As  their  titles  suggest  both  books  proposed   crime  control  strategies  that  involved  manipulation  of  the  immediate   environment.  Their  approaches  and  underpinning  assumptions,  however,  varied   considerably.     Jeffrey,  a  criminologist,  built  his  situational  analysis  of  crime  around  an   operant  conditioning  model  of  behaviour.  With  this  as  his  starting  point,  he   proposed  an  eclectic  assortment  of  interventions  designed  to  alter  the   punishment  and  reward  structures  in  criminogenic  environments.  His  approach     6   shares  some  assumptions  with  RCP,  inasmuch  as  the  performance  of  crime  was   seen  to  be  a  function  of  its  consequences.  Crime  prevention,  therefore,  was  seen   to  involve  the  manipulation  of  those  consequences  –  behaviour  that  was   rewarded  would  be  repeated  while  behaviour  that  was  punished  would  be   discouraged.  However,  Jeffery’s  was  a  Skinnerian,  black-­‐box  model  of  human   behaviour.  There  was  no  place  for  cognition,  much  less  rational  decision  making.   It  was  also  highly  deterministic.  ‘There  are  no  criminals’  Jeffrey  declared,  ‘only   environmental  circumstances  that  result  in  criminal  behaviour.  Given  the  proper   environmental  structure,  anyone  will  be  criminal  or  non-­‐criminal’  (Jeffrey,  1977,   p.  177).     In  contrast,  Newman,  an  architect,  barely  mentioned  offenders.  The  central   construct  in  his  approach  was  territoriality.  Territoriality  is  the  tendency  to  lay   claim  to  an  area  and  defend  it  against  intruders,  and  it  is  a  quality  possessed  by   territorial  possessors  not  intruders.  Thus,  Newman’s  focus  was  on  changing  the   behaviour  of  non-­‐offenders  –  the  potential  victims  and  observers  of  crime.   Operating  at  the  urban  design  level,  Newman’s  interventions  were  formulated  to   instil  a  sense  of  ownership  in  residents.  If  residents  took  a  greater  proprietorial   interest  in  their  immediate  environs,  it  was  argued,  then  they  would  also   exercise  greater  levels  of  care  and  surveillance  over  those  areas.  As  for  the   psychological  processes  acting  on  potential  offenders,  implicit  but  never  fully   fleshed  out  was  a  rudimentary  deterrence  theory.  Offenders  need  only  possess   the  capacity  to  recognise  territorial  cues  –  boundary  markers,  changes  in  paving   texture,  signs  of  occupation,  and  the  like  –  that  signalled  that  an  area  was  under   the  care  and  control  of  residents.  With  this  realisation  it  was  assumed  that  they   would  decide  that  it  was  too  risky  to  offend.       7   Early  writings  by  Ronald  Clarke,  the  chief  architect  of  SCP,  predate  those  of   Jeffrey  and  Newman.  In  1967  he  published  a  research  paper  on  absconding  from   a  residential  school  for  juvenile  delinquents.  Clarke  noted  that  the  best   predictors  of  absconding  were  aspects  of  the  environment  –  hours  of  daylight,   features  of  the  school’s  regime,  the  distance  home  –  and  not  any  individual   factors  associated  with  the  absconders.  At  this  point  Clarke  provided  little  in  the   way  of  theoretical  analysis  of  why  the  environment  was  so  important  or  how  it   interacted  with  characteristics  of  the  individual.  Further  situationally-­‐focused   papers  followed  (Clarke  and  Martin,  1971;  Sinclair  and  Clarke,  1973)  but  it  was   not  until  the  publication  of  Crime  as  Opportunity,  the  foundational  Home  Office   report  that  in  1976  marked  the  first  manifesto  for  situational  crime  prevention   (Mayhew,  Clarke,  Sturman  and  Hough,  1976),  that  the  question  of  underpinning   general  theories  arose.  Crime  as  Opportunity  emphasised  that  criminal  behaviour   is  responsive  to  situational  cues.  Gibbons  (1971)  is  quoted  approvingly  in  it,   when  he  refers  to  ‘deviance  (as)  a  temporal  response  to  provocations,  attractions   and  opportunities  of  the  immediate  situation’  (Mayhew  et  al  1976:  1,  italics   added).  A  subheading  refers  to  ‘situational  inducements  to  criminality’  (ibid:  2).   These  classes  of  cue  countenance  various  ways  in  which  situations  may   encourage  criminality.  At  this  point,  there  was  no  mention  of  ‘choice’.   Choice  –  but  not  rational  choice  –  was  central  to  Clarke’s  1980  paper  in  the   British  Journal  of  Criminology  (BJC),  which  laid  the  first  systematic  academic   foundations  for  situational  crime  prevention  theory.  Indeed,  one  of  the  headings   there  is  ‘Crime  as  the  Outcome  of  Choice’  (Clarke  1980:  161).  The  BJC  paper  is   pitched  against  common  sense  and  criminological  dispositional  theories,  which   prevailed  then  and  continue  to  thrive  in  folk  thinking  about  crime,  which     10   There  are  two  crucial  points  to  be  made  about  RCP  as  proposed  by  Clarke   and  Cornish  –  points  far  too  often  overlooked  by  subsequent  critics  and  devotees   alike.  The  first  is  that  rational  choice  was  presented  in  highly  qualified  terms.   From  the  start  Clarke  and  Cornish  understood  that  rationality  is  constrained,  and   their  approach  owes  a  particular  debt  to  Simon’s  (1957)  concept  of  ‘bounded’   rationality.  Simon  argued  that  human  decision-­‐making  was  neither  perfectly   rational  nor  wholly  irrational,  but  rather  ‘satisficing’  –  satisfactory  and  sufficient.   The  rational  decision  making  process  may  be  affected  by  cognitive  biases,  lack  of   information,  time  pressures,  emotional  arousal,  individual  values,  and  a  range  of   other  factors.  The  utility  of  an  anticipated  outcome,  therefore,  is  subjective  –   judged  from  the  decision-­‐maker’s  point  of  view  –  and  an  individual  may  not   always  pursue  a  course  of  action  that  ultimately  produces  the  greatest  benefits.   In  accordance  with  this,  Clarke  and  Cornish  conceded  that  the  rationality  of   rational  choice  in  criminal  behaviour  is  highly  circumscribed.  It  would  be   implausible,  they  acknowledge,  to  suggest  that  at  every  turn  offenders  make   calculations  on  expected  outcomes  or  that  information  is  sought  and  obtained  on   which  to  make  informed  calculations  about  whether  to  offend,  how  to  offend,   and  where  and  when  to  offend.     Second,  Clarke  and  Cornish  presented  RCP  as  a  model  for  practice:  it  was   never  intended  as  a  detailed  and  accurate  description  of  how  offenders  actually   make  decisions  (see  Wortley,  2013).  Their  aim  was  to  provide  a  simplified   account  of  the  role  of  situations  in  crime  that  would  guide  research  and  policy.   While  RCP  is  often  referred  to  as  rational  choice  theory  in  the  literature,  they   have  never  done  so;  the  term  ‘perspective’  was  chosen  advisedly.  They  regarded   RCP  as  a  heuristic  for  synthesising  existing  research,  for  giving  direction  to     11   future  research,  for  analysing  existing  policy  and  for  finding  out  fruitful  future   crime  control  initiatives.  In  other  words  it  served  to  stimulate  the  research   program  for  situational  crime  prevention  as  well  as  to  enhance  practice  in   relation  to  its  immediate  progenitors:  it  was  thus  conceived  as  a  progressive   problem-­‐shift.    Repeatedly  throughout  their  1985  paper  (and  consistently  in   later  writings)  they  refer  to  RCP  as  merely  ‘good  enough’  to  explain  the   processes  of  criminal  involvement  and  the  occurrence  of  criminal  events.  The   stripped-­‐down,  one-­‐dimensional  depiction  of  the  offender  –  ‘bereft  of  moral   scruples’  and  ‘without  any  deficits  such  as  lack  of  self  control’  –  was  also   deliberate  in  order  to  avoid  cluttering  the  model  with  unnecessary  detail  ‘that   might  get  in  the  way  of  rational  action’  (Cornish  and  Clarke,  2008,  p.  39).   Moreover,  they  explicitly  invited  further  developments  of  their  decision-­‐making   models  in  the  light  of  future  research.  Their  rational  choice  models  were   ‘tentative’  (p.  163),  ‘still  at  a  relatively  early  stage’  (p.  163),  ‘a  useful  starting   point’  (p.  178),  ‘temporary,  incomplete,  and  subject  to  continual  revision’  (p.   178),  and  to  be  ‘modified  or  discarded’  (p.  149)  when  no  longer  fit  for  purpose   (Clarke  and  Cornish,  1985).     RCP  was  seen  by  Clarke  and  Cornish  in  the  mid  1980s  as  good  enough  to   underpin  both  research  and  practice  in  SCP.  SCP  had  always  been  conceived  as  a   scientific  research  programme  and  a  policy/practice  programme.  Rational  choice   was  deemed  helpful  to  both.  It  could  inform  a  programme  of  research  better  to   understand  criminal  behaviour,  avoiding  traditional  and  dubious  assumptions   about  crime  as  a  product  of  special  pathological  people  with  aberrant   personalities,  genes  or  social  backgrounds,  and  focusing  instead  on  the  normality   of  crime  as  an  intelligible  response  to  immediate  cues  by  ordinary  people     12   pursuing  their  interests  as  best  they  can.  It  could  inform  policy  and  practice  by   steering  decision-­‐makers  to  practical  ways  in  which  they  could  alter  the  balance   of  advantage  offered  for  criminal  acts  in  the  specific  circumstances  in  which  they   occurred.         THE  PROBLEMS  WITH  RCP   It  should  be  clear  by  now  that  RCP  was  a  theoretical  port  of  convenience  for  SCP,   co-­‐opted  post  hoc  for  pragmatic  reasons  –  a  building  block  for  a  progressive   research  programme  and  policy  paradigm.  SCP  was  not  derived  from  RCP  nor  is   RCP  necessary  for  it.  Despite  this,  RCP  and  SCP  have  typically  come  to  be  viewed   as  inextricably  linked.  For  devotees  of  the  situational  perspective,  RCP  is  deemed   to  provide  a  model  of  the  offender  that  explains  how  and  why  situations  cause   crime  and  that  informs  the  development  of  situational  strategies  designed  to   inhibit  criminal  responses.  For  critics  of  the  situational  perspective,  RCP  has   provided  a  convenient  straw  man  to  be  knocked  down  in  order  to  disparage  the   field  more  generally:  SCP  depends  upon  RCP;  offenders  aren’t  rational;  therefore   SCP  is  invalid.     Until  recently,  criticisms  of  RCP  have  come  largely  from  those  antipathetic   to  the  situational  perspective  challenging  its  account  of  why  offenders  commit   crime  –  those  who  would  ditch  the  situational  paradigm  entirely.  However,  there   is  an  increasing  number  of  critiques  of  RCP  from  those  within  or  sympathetic  to   the  situational  perspective  (Bouhana,  2013;  Ekblom,  2007;  Laycock  and  Pease,   2012;  Nee  and  Ward,  2014;  Sidebottom  and  Tilley,  forthcoming;  van  Gelder,   Elffers,  Reynald  and  Nagin,  2014b;  Wikström  and  Treiber,  2015;  Wortley,  1997,   2001,  2012,  2013).  These  critiques  have  questioned  not  just  the  adequacy  of  RCP     15   rational  elements  are  treated  as  anomalous,  to  be  conceded  but  set  aside,  as   Kuhn  shows  also  occurs  in  the  history  of  the  natural  sciences.   RCP  as  a  theory  for  practice  is  similarly  to  be  found  wanting.  RCP  frames   the  crime  prevention  task  in  terms  of  opportunity  reduction.  However,  there  are   many  SCP  strategies  that  do  not  involve  plain  reduction  in  opportunity.  Indeed,   the  sequence  of  typologies  of  situational  crime  prevention  techniques  that  Clarke   and  Cornish  have  devised  have  changed  in  significant  ways  that  tacitly   acknowledge  the  limits  to  rational  choice  without  explicitly  recognising  that  they   show  the  inadequacy  of  the  supposed  rational  choice  foundations  of  situational   crime  prevention.  The  version  of  the  typology  in  Clarke’s  introduction  to  the  first   edition  of  his  collection,  Situational  Crime  Prevention:  Successful  Case  Studies,   included  columns  headed  ‘increasing  the  effort’,  ‘increasing  the  risks’,  and   ‘reducing  the  rewards’  (Clarke  1992),  whilst  the  equivalent  columns  in  the  same   table  in  his  introduction  to  the  second  edition  referred  to  ‘increased  perceived   effort’,  ‘increased  perceived  risks’,  and  ‘reducing  anticipated  rewards’  (Clarke,   1997).    These  changes  acknowledge  the  subjective  nature  of  the  judgements   involved  in  offending  decisions.    The  second  edition  also  added  a  further  column   headed  ‘removing  excuses’  (ibid),  in  recognition  that  ethical  considerations  could   modify  a  simple  cost-­‐benefit  calculation  by  the  prospective  offender.  Later  still,   the  strategy  ‘reducing  provocations’  recognised  that  situational  factors  can   precipitate  crimes  that  the  offender  may  not  have  otherwise  contemplated,  albeit   that  in  that  version  of  the  table  of  techniques  references  to  ‘perceived’  and   ‘anticipated’  in  relation  to  effort,  risks  and  rewards  are  no  longer  present   (Cornish  and  Clarke  2003:  90).  The  addition  of  excuse-­‐removal  and  provocation-­‐ reduction  can  only  be  incorporated  into  RCP  by  making  it  tautologous  and     16   depriving  it  of  its  distinctive  analytic  bite.  Moreover,  the  notion  of  provocations   undermines  the  RCP  notion  that  preferences  are  consistent.    In  economics  too,   ‘hyperbolic  discounting’  (the  systematic  tendency  of  humans  to  switch   preference  orders  as  the  moment  of  decision-­‐making  becomes  imminent)   undermines  any  expectation  of  consistent  intentions  and  preferences  in  ways   highly  relevant  to  decisions  over  the  commission  of  crimes  (see  Elster  2007:   111-­‐123).    Homo  economicus,  the  cool,  though  fallible,  calculator  of  personal   utilities,  can  no  longer  be  assumed  adequately  to  represent  the  potential   offender,  who  instead  becomes  subject  to  moral  restraint  and  emotional  drives.     Even  those  prevention  strategies  that  do  involve  opportunity  reduction  do   not  necessarily  involve  the  exercise  of  rational  choice.  In  many  cases  reducing   opportunity  does  not  affect  the  choices  that  potential  offenders  make  but   reduces  the  choices  that  are  available  to  them  (Sidebottom  and  Tilley,   forthcoming).  Taking  your  laptop  with  you  when  you  park  your  car  rather  than   leaving  it  on  the  back  seat  (‘removing  targets’)  does  not  reduce  the  perceived   rewards  of  offending  in  any  meaningful  cost-­‐benefit  sense;  it  simply  eliminates   theft  of  your  laptop  as  an  option.  The  invocation  of  any  rational  choice   deliberation  does  not  arise.  In  a  similar  way,  offenders  cannot  commit  crime,  no   matter  how  motivated  they  might  be  to  do  so,  if  they  lack  the  necessary  physical   or  personal  resources  (Ekblom  and  Tilley,  2000).  Burglary  through  a  second   storey  window  may  not  be  possible  if  there  is  no  ladder  handy  (‘controlling  tools   and  weapons’)  or  if  the  offender  is  afraid  of  heights.  There  are  countless  similar   examples  where  what  matters  is  the  supply  of  options,  rather  than  the  reasons   for  exercising  choice.       17   There  are  two  ways  of  responding  to  the  limitations  of  RCP.  The  first  is  to   retain  the  cognitive  choice  framework  but  look  to  elaborating  it  to  account  for   current  deficiencies.  In  other  words,  treat  individual,  utility-­‐maximising  rational   choice  as  the  default,  but  create  a  more  nuanced  version  of  the  offender  which  is   attentive  to  the  ways  in  which  crime-­‐commission  decisions  that  might  otherwise   be  rational  may  be  compromised  or  limited  by  the  internal  cognitive  limitations   and  external  influences  already  alluded  to  by  Cornish  and  Clarke.  This  would   preserve  RCP  as  a  core  element  of  SCP  and  try  to  sweep  in  non-­‐rational  elements   on  the  grounds  that  the  non-­‐rational  elements  comprise  challenging  ‘puzzles’  (to   borrow  a  term  used  by  Kuhn  to  describe  ‘normal  science’  occurring  under  the   auspices  of  given  ‘paradigm’),  but  do  not  furnish  grounds  for  any  fundamental   change.       A  recent  example  of  this  approach  is  the  edited  volume  Affect  and  Cognition   in  Criminal  Decision  Making  by  van  Gelder,  Elffers,  Reynald  and  Nagin  (2014a),  in   which  Clarke  has  a  chapter.  Contributors  were  invited  to  draw  on  advances  in   the  cognitive  sciences  to  provide  a  more  contemporary,  complete,  and   scientifically  rigorous  account  of  the  role  of  emotion  in  offender  decision-­‐making   than  that  provided  by  RCP.  In  their  introductory  chapter,  the  editors  clearly   indicate  that  they  have  no  intention  of  abandoning  a  choice  model  of  offending.   They  frame  their  task  in  terms  of  giving  due  attention  to  the  ‘bounded’  nature  of   rationality,  which  has  been  neglected  over  the  years.  “Rather  than  referring  to   the  ‘introduction’  of  affect  into  rational  choice  theory  and  models  of  criminal   decision  making”  they  write,  “it  would  perhaps  be  more  accurate  to  refer  to   ‘reinstating’  the  role  of  affect  in  criminal  decision  theory”  (van  Gelder  et  al,   2014b,  p.  12).       20   reasoning  are  ordinarily  the  rule  not  the  exception,  while  under  conditions  of   emotional  arousal  decision-­‐making  processes  are  overwhelmed  by  feelings.   Decision-­‐making  is  not  just  prone  to  error  but  in  many  cases  rationality  may  not   even  play  a  meaningful  role  in  behaviour.  Cognitive  theorists  acknowledge  that   we  are  aware  of  just  a  tiny  fraction  of  the  neuronal  activity  that  occurs  within   our  skulls.  A  great  deal  of  our  behaviour  occurs,  not  as  a  result  of  conscious   deliberation,  but  routinely  and  reflexively  as  the  result  of  cognitive  processes   that  occur  automatically  below  the  level  of  conscious  awareness.  Moreover,   there  is  more  to  human  behaviour  than  decision  making.  RCP  is  fundamentally   limited  by  the  restricted  pallet  of  human  processes  it  provides  to  account  for  the   impact  of  situational  forces.  It  pays  little  consideration  to  the  broader  spectrum   of  the  attributes  that  define  humans  –  their  desires,  beliefs,  emotions  and  moral   understandings.   At  best,  then,  RCP  can  provide  no  more  than  a  partial  account  of  the  impact   of  the  immediate  environment  on  the  offender.  Only  the  offender’s  instrumental   cognitions  come  into  play.  There  is  little  recognition  of  the  power  of  situations  to   affect  individuals  in  ways  of  which  they  may  not  be  fully  aware  or  over  which   they  may  have  limited  control.  Nor  is  there  any  sense  in  RCP  that  offenders  are   changed  in  any  fundamental  way  by  their  encounters  with  the  immediate   environment.  We  can  contrast  this  narrow  rendering  of  situational  effects  with   the  far  richer  accounts  given  elsewhere  in  the  social  sciences.  Solomon  Asch   (1951),  for  example,  showed  how  simple  expressed  judgements  of  line  length  are   affected  by  those  expressed  by  others  even  when  clearly  contrary  to  fact.   Participants  not  only  offered  incorrect  answers  in  order  to  avoid  social  censure,   many  convinced  themselves  that  their  incorrect  response  was  correct.  In  the     21   famous  Stanford  prison  experiment  (Haney,  Banks  and  Zimbardo,  1973;   Zimbardo,  2007),  college  students  randomly  allocated  to  the  role  of  guards  in  a   mock  prison  quickly  became  brutal  and  authoritarian  towards  those  allocated  to   prisoner  roles.  The  situational  press  caused  the  guards  to  lose  a  sense  of   themselves  as  individuals  as  they  submerged  their  identities  within  the  group.  In   the  equally  notorious  obedience  to  authority  studies  (Milgram,  1974),  the   authority  exuded  by  the  experimenter  induced  nearly  two  thirds  of  participants   to  deliver  what  they  believed  to  be  life-­‐threatening  electric  shocks  to  a   confederate  participant  who  was  purportedly  being  punished  for  giving   incorrect  answers.  Participants  were  able  to  shift  the  moral  culpability  for  their   actions  onto  a  third  party  enabling  them  to  engage  in  what  they  would  normally   recognise  as  reprehensible  behaviour.  Wortley  (1997;  2001)  summarised  some   of  the  alternative  mechanisms,  apart  from  rational  choice,  through  which   situational  factors  may  influence  behaviour.  Situations  can:  prime  latent   thoughts  and  emotions;  elicit  reflexive  responses;  trigger  habitual  behaviours;   stimulate  sexual  arousal;  create  expectancies  about  how  to  behave;  provide   examples  to  emulate;  pressure  individuals  to  conform;  pressure  individuals  to   obey;  prompt  defiance;  create  a  sense  of  anonymity;  reduce  the  capacity  to  self-­‐ monitor  one’s  behaviour;  obscure  moral  rules;  obscure  the  consequence  of   actions;  obscure  personal  responsibility  for  actions;  depersonalise  and   dehumanise  victims;  induce  frustration;  generate  stress  and  heightened   emotion;  threaten  status  and  esteem;  and  provoke  retaliation.   The  person-­‐situation  interaction  as  a  reciprocal  process  is  an  extension  of   the  situationalism  model  described  above.  Again  there  is  generally  little  interest   in  variations  among  individuals.  However,  this  approach  recognises  that  the     22   person  and  the  situation  engage  in  a  bi-­‐directional  and  often  iterative  exchange.   Individuals  are  affected  by  the  situation  but  they  can  also  alter  those  situations   in  an  unfolding  sequence  of  responses.  Person  A  bumps  person  B  spilling  his   drink;  person  B  verbally  abuses  person  A;  person  A  responds  in  kind;  person  B   pushes  person  A;  and  so  on.  The  focus  on  the  bi-­‐directionality  of  causation   emphasises  the  agency  of  the  actor.  The  individual  is  portrayed,  not  as  a  passive   pawn  subject  to  capricious  environmental  forces,  but  as  an  active  and  purposive   agent  capable  of  changing  environments  in  order  to  achieve  behavioural  goals.   The  iterative  nature  of  the  person-­‐situation  interaction  invites  us  to  consider   behaviour,  not  as  an  atomised  blip  in  time  and  space,  but  in  molar  terms  as  the   product  of  a  complex  series  of  inter-­‐related  events.       It  is  in  the  sense  of  a  reciprocal  relationship  that  Cornish  and  Clarke  have  in   more  recent  years  come  to  use  the  term  person-­‐situation  interaction  to  describe   the  underpinning  rationale  for  RCP  (e.g.,  Cornish  and  Clarke,  2003,  2008).  And   up  to  a  point  RCP  is  consistent  with  this  model.  The  immediate  environment   affects  the  offender’s  assessment  of  the  opportunity  structures  and  this  in  turn   determines  how  he/she  will  act  upon  the  environment  (i.e.,  by  committing  or  not   committing  crime).  Moreover,  from  the  start  Clarke  and  Cornish  have   emphasised  the  purposive,  goal-­‐directed  nature  of  offending  (Clarke  and   Cornish,  1985;  Cornish  and  Clarke,  2003,  2008).  The  default  offender  is  the  anti-­‐ social  predator  who  seeks  out  and  creates  crime  opportunities  in  order  to   maximise  returns  and  minimise  risks.  The  portrayal  of  behaviour  as  an  iterative   sequence  of  behaviours  is  also  well  captured  in  RCP  in  the  form  of  crime  scripts,   prototypes  of  which  were  outlined  in  the  original  Clarke  and  Cornish  (1985)   paper  and  later  elaborated  upon  by  Cornish  (1994).       25   walk  passed  an  open  window  before  someone  decides  to  climb  through  and   commit  burglary.  Indeed,  the  focus  in  RCP  on  the  antisocial  predator  as  the   default  offender  implicitly  recognises  this  fact.  But  offenders  are  by  no  means  all   antisocial  predators.  Once  again  RCP  provides  us  with  a  partial  explanation  and   does  not  offer  the  structural  capacity  to  bridge  personal  and  situational   contributions  to  crime.  As  such,  it  is  out  of  step  with  contemporary  attempts  to   understand  behaviour  as  a  combined  consequence  of  personal  and  situational   factors  (Kahle,  1984;  Mischel,  2004;  Mischel  and  Shoda,  1995:  Ross  and  Nisbett,   2011),  a  research  direction  that  might  provide  a  more  nuanced  and  realistic   picture  of  the  relationship  between  offenders  and  settings  of  their  crimes.     TEN  TENETS  UNDERPINNING  SITUATIONAL  CRIME  PREVENTION   Rational  choice  was  only  ever  ‘good  enough’  for  some  explanatory  purposes.   Both  in  theory  and  in  practice,  notably  in  regard  to  crime,  it  is  clearly  insufficient.   Any  adequate  theory  needs  to  account  for  diverse  ways  in  which  individuals  and   situations  interact  to  generate  patterns,  and  for  crime  prevention  what  matters   most  is  their  potential  to  suggest  practical  intervention  possibilities.  Moreover   the  cost  of  the  unnecessary  identification  of  rational  choice  theory  with   situational  crime  prevention  has  led  many  to  assume  that  weaknesses  in  the   former  entail  weaknesses  in  the  latter.  This  is  a  mistake,  but  remedying  it   requires  some  reconceptualisation  of  the  theoretical  foundations  of  SCP.     Given  the  diversity  of  mechanisms  that  may  be  involved  in  processing   situational  inputs,  and  the  different  ways  that  the  person-­‐situation  relationship   may  be  conceptualised,  we  do  not  believe  that  it  is  possible  to  settle  on  a  single   theory  for  SCP  that  will  satisfy  everyone.    Instead,  in  this  section  we  set  out  in     26   programmatic  terms  what  we  take  to  be  the  basic  tenets  of  situational  crime   prevention  theory  –  propositions  that  are  by  and  large  accepted  by  most   researchers  in  the  field  and  that  provide  a  framework  for  accommodating  a  wide   variety  of  theoretical  perspectives,  including  RCP.  They  are  intended  both  to   provide  a  more  realistic  foundation  for  research  on  situational  influences  on   criminal  behaviour  better  to  analyse  problems  with  a  view  to  identifying   potential,  realistic  crime  preventive  strategies.  There  are  ten  tenets,  namely:   1. The  potential  to  commit  crime  is  widely  distributed  in  the   population     Human  beings  have  the  capacity  for  a  wide  repertoire  of  behaviour.  All  are   liable  to  act  in  ways  that  have  been  defined  as  criminal  and  almost  all  adults   will  commit  some  criminal  acts  at  some  time.  It  is  unhelpful  (and  inaccurate)   to  think  that  the  population  can  be  neatly  divided  into  criminals  and  non-­‐ criminals.     2. There  is  variation  in  the  potential  to  commit  crime  across   individuals       Notwithstanding  tenet  1,  individuals  differ  in  the  strength  of  their  potential   to  commit  crime.  Some  individuals  are  strongly  predisposed  to  commit   crime;  most  people  are  weakly  predisposed.  There  may  be  many  reasons  that   individuals  differ  in  their  potential  to  commit  crime,  including  the  nature  of   their  genetic  makeup,  developmental  influences,  and  the  socio-­‐cultural  world   in  which  they  are  enmeshed.  These  distal  causes  of  crime  are  generally   beyond  the  remit  of  situational  interventions,  but  the  fact  of  these  variations   among  individuals  may  have  implications  for  the  implementation  of  SCP.       27   3. The  potential  to  commit  crime  varies  over  time  for  the  same   individual     The  individual  potential  to  commit  crime  involves  both  relatively  stable   characteristics  and  more  transient  psychological  states.  Thus,  crime  liability   is  not  constant  across  time  for  the  same  person,  either  in  terms  of  their  stage   of  life  or  within  any  stage  of  their  life.  The  age-­‐crime  curve  suggests  that  the   potential  to  commit  crime  peaks  in  late  adolescence.  Similarly,  potential  may   fluctuate  across  smaller  time  scales  such  that  there  may  be  spurts  of   offending  interspersed  with  periods  of  non-­‐offending.     4. The  likelihood  that  a  given  individual  will  engage  in  crime  varies   across  situations     Crime  liability  is  not  constant  across  situations  for  the  same  person.   Situations  vary  widely  in  their  potential  to  activate  (or  suppress)  a  given   individual’s  crime  potential.  Even  habitual  offenders  do  not  commit  crime  in   every  situation  they  encounter  while  a  normally  law-­‐abiding  individual  may   commit  an  occasional  crime  under  certain  circumstances.  Crime  occurs  when   an  individual  meets  a  situation  that  activates  his/her  liability  to  offend.   5. The  relationship  between  an  individual  and  the  situation  is  bi-­‐ directional  and  iterative     Situations  affect  individuals  but  individuals  also  affect  situations.  A  situation   may  activate  a  criminal  liability  and  an  individual  may  manipulate  the   environment  to  maximise  the  potential  to  commit  crime.  A  particular  crime   event  may  involve  an  iterative  sequence  of  person-­‐situation  interactions.   6. The  likelihood  that  a  given  situation  will  activate  a  criminal   response  varies  across  individuals       30   situational  measures  which  focus  on  cues  that  lie  behind  behaviour,  which  do  not   operate  through  rational  decision-­‐making  or  utility  maximisation.       CONCLUSION   We  have  argued  in  this  paper  for  a  Lakatosian  progressive  problem-­‐shift  for  the   situational  analysis  of  crime  events  and  for  situational  crime  prevention.  Bolting   on  rational  choice  was  intended  to  do  the  same  at  an  earlier  period,  but  has   backfired.  While  ritually  invoked  in  teaching  and  while  functioning  as  an  Aunt   Sally  for  hostile  critics,  it  has  lost  its  ability  to  drive  a  research  agenda  or  to   inform  thinking  about  new  practical  ways  to  address  many  crime  problems.  We   have  argued,  therefore,  that  it  has  now  become  a  fetter.  Instead  we  have  argued   that  in  line  with  much  other  research  in  the  social  sciences  a  far  wider  range  of   causal  mechanisms  be  drawn  on  in  theory  and  practice.     What  we  would  wish  to  retain  is  the  broader  situational  approach:  the   concern  with  crime  events  rather  than  criminality,  the  focus  on  near  causes   rather  than  distant  (so-­‐called  ‘root’)  cases,  the  commitment  to  efforts  to  reduce   crime  by  changing  near  causes  including  opportunities,  a  primary  pragmatic   interest  in  reducing  crime  harms  in  the  short  as  well  as  long  term,  and  inclusion   of  action  research  as  a  major  way  of  learning  about  criminal  events  and  their   prevention.  Hence  this  is  not  advocating  a  fundamental  paradigm  change.   Indeed,  far  from  it.  Situational  crime  prevention  comprises  a  relatively  rare   example  on  the  social  sciences  where  clear  cumulation  in  theory,  research  and   practice  can  be  discerned  (Tilley  2009).  Our  intention  in  writing  this  paper  is  to   help  ensure  that  that  cumulation  continues.       31   REFERENCES   Becker,  Gary.  1957.  The  Economics  of  Discrimination.  Chicago:  University  of   Chicago  Press.   Blau.  Peter  M.  1964.  Exchange  and  Power  in  Social  life.  New  York:  Wiley.   Bouhana,  Noemie.  2013.  The  reasoning  criminal  vs.  Homer  Simpson:  conceptual   challenges  for  crime  science.  Frontiers  in  Human  Neuroscience,  7:  682   Clarke,  Ronald  V.G.  1967.  Seasonal  and  other  environmental  aspects  of   abscondings  by  approved  school  boys.  British  Journal  of  Criminology,  7:   195-­‐206.   Clarke,  Ronald  V.  1980.    “Situational’’  crime  prevention:  Theory  and  practice.     British  Journal  of  Criminology,  20:  136-­‐147.   Clarke,  Ronald  V.  1992.  Introduction.  In  Situational  Crime  Prevention:  Successful   Case  Studies,  ed.  Ronald  V  Clarke,  Albany  NY:  Harrow  and  Heston.   Clarke,  Ronald  V.  1997.  Introduction.  In  Situational  Crime  Prevention:  Successful   Case  Studies,  ed.  Ronald  V  Clarke,  Albany  NY:  Harrow  and  Heston.   Clarke,  Ronald  V.  2005.  Seven  misconceptions  of  situational  crime  prevention.  In   Handbook  of  Crime  Prevention  and  Community  Safety,  Nick  Tilley,  ed.   Cullompton,  UK:  Willan.   Clarke,  Ronald  V.  and  Cornish,  Derek  B.    1985.    Modeling  offenders’  decisions:  A   framework  for  research  and  policy.    In  Crime  and  Justice:  An  Annual   Review  of  Research,  Vol.  6,  Michael  Tonry  and  Norval  Morris,  eds.  Chicago:   University  of  Chicago  Press.   Clarke,  Ronald  V.  and  Homel,  Ross.  1997.  A  revised  classification  of  situational   crime  prevention  techniques.  In  Crime  Prevention  at  the  Crossroads,   Steven  P.  Lab  ed.  Cincinnati,  OH,  Anderson.     32   Clarke,  Ronald  V.  and  Martin,  D.N.  1971.  Absconding  from  Approved  Schools.   Home  Office  Research  Study  no.  12.  London:  H.M.  Stationery  Office.   Coleman,  James  S.  1973.  Mathematics  of  Collective  Action.  Chicago:  Aldine   Cornish, D.B. 1994. 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