Rational Choice and Situational Crime Prevention

Theoretical Foundations

Graeme Newman, Ronald V. Clarke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781351906760
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Criminologia

A collection of original papers examining the theoretical and philosophical bases of the perspective of situational crime prevention. Among issues examined are: the status of situational crime prevention as a theory; the theoretical traditions and context of SCP; the relationship of rational choice to SCP; utilitarianism and SCP; and the ethical./policy implications of SCP.

1	Introduction: Towards a Theory of Situational Crime Prevention
	Graeme Newman, University at Albany, New York

Preamble

The chapters in this volume represent a first attempt to identify the philosophical and theoretical roots of situational crime prevention theory as they may be found in past and present works of social science and social theory. This means that some of the chapters cover particular aspects of philosophy, such as the concepts of utility and rationality, as well as the more modern aspects of social theory, such as rational choice and motivation. Some would hold that all concepts in social science and social theory necessarily arose out of older philosophical ideas, often assumed to be less sophisticated than their modern counterparts. Whether this is so, thankfully, is not a topic for this book to answer. However, we have skirted close to the issue, by including a chapter (Chapter 7, by Marongiu and Newman) that addresses the origins of utilitarian thought, a philosophical and theoretical concept which some of the chapters (and critics of situational crime prevention) suggest distinguishes situational crime prevention from other ‘modern’ theories of crime causation.

The majority of the chapters examine situational crime prevention as a theory of the late 20th century, and attempt to identify its essential theoretical premises, philosophical significance and, in some cases, political or moral implications. While each is an independent chapter, standing on its own ideas and constructs, this introduction seeks to identify a number of themes and issues that are common to all chapters, or most chapters, depending on their chosen topic.

The Criminological Tradition

Modern criminology is generally thought to have originated in the 18th century, Europe’s enlightenment, culminating with the famous paper of Caesare Beccaria, ‘On Crimes and Punishments’. Although there is much controversy concerning the particular influence that Beccaria’s treatise had on the direction taken by criminology for the two centuries following his work, there is little disagreement that utilitarian philosophy dominated the thinking of many of the great social commentators of the time. Indeed, utilitarian thinking in regard to crime prevention emerged at a point in the history of ideas when utility reached the giddy heights of a widely received truth. The chapter by Marongiu and Newman reviews the origins of utilitarian thought and attempts to indicate some of the ways in which situational crime prevention displays these ancient roots. It also demonstrates that utilitarian philosophy includes several different types of theory, some of which are applicable to situational crime prevention and others that may be less so. It is particularly important, according to Marongiu and Newman, to distinguish between hedonism and utilitarianism, because in the 20th century these have often been equated, and in the case of situational crime prevention may be easily confused (see McCord, 1995) because of the structure of explanation adopted by situational crime prevention theory, as we will see below.

The writer who perhaps did most to introduce a confusion between hedonism and utilitarianism was Jeremy Bentham, who nevertheless also did most to apply utilitarian philosophy to a theory of society and of human behaviour. According to Newman and Marongiu (Chapter 8), Bentham was probably the first ‘modern’ theorist to develop a singular theory of both human behaviour and social organization. His explanation of motivation developed out of his commitment to hedonism, and his explanation of social organization owed much to his utilitarian principles.

However, the distinguishing feature of both Beccaria and Bentham which sets them apart from modern theories of crime causation is their clear commitment to the prevention of crime, and in the case of Bentham, as shown in Chapter 8, the incorporation of the idea of prevention into the very nature of his explanations about the causes of crime. Newman and Marongui argue that situational crime prevention also begins with an explicit value, the prevention of crime (usually a very specific category of crime), and develops its explanation of that crime from that point. This attribute of situational crime prevention sets it apart from modern theories of crime causation which, in their attempts to achieve ‘scientific status’ (that is, ‘objectivity’ or ‘value-free’ status) shy clear of taking a stance concerning the ‘value’ of crime. One could argue that, in this respect, situational crime prevention has returned modern criminological theory to its roots.

Bentham’s advocacy of social engineering, or reorganization of society to achieve greatest efficiency and least harm for the greatest number of people, also has direct relevance to situational crime prevention, as demonstrated in Chapter 8. This strand of utilitarian thought emerged again in Europe in the early 20th century as the social defence concept, and has become part of the criminological tradition in Europe. The concept of social defence largely originated in Italy as a result of the work of Enrico Ferri (Ferri, 1967 [1917]), whose work approached the explanation of crime explicitly from a prevention point of view. Although his crime causal view was complex – seemingly relegating much of serious crime to deep seated dispositions, yet at the same time identifying causes of crime in typically Marxist factors (poverty, class and so on) – the main object of social defence was that of the utilitarian ethic of preventing crime from hurting the majority of a society’s citizens. The use of the word ‘defence’ is not coincidence. It literally meant, to Ferri, the need for society to defend itself against the actions of criminals by all means necessary, no matter how severe.

The spectre of an authoritarian state implementing Draconian crime prevention strategies has been raised in opposition to the social defence school, and the danger of its being applied to situational crime prevention is also apparent. In Chapter 10, we see identified attributes of situational crime prevention that seem compatible with a social defence ethic, but, in total, Russo concludes that situational crime prevention does not easily fit within the social defence school. It is also apparent from that chapter that situational crime prevention may be applied to a wide variety of crime types and situations heretofore dealt with in traditional ways, such as through psychological treatment.

It is the general applicability of situational crime prevention that also makes it such an interesting theory. In fact, the structure of explanation and the levels of explanation of situational crime prevention are important topics that are dealt with in many of the chapters in this volume.

Master Concepts in Situational Crime Prevention Theory

In identifying the master concepts underlying situational crime prevention theory, one must be mindful of introducing an epistemological hegemony of concepts. The main criterion for this selection is that the concepts have general significance for the explanation of all behaviour, whether criminal or not. Other concepts employed in situational crime prevention, though important, are not quite as generally employed as cornerstones in any theory that seeks to explain human action. One might quibble with the assignment of status, but the reason for making this selection is to demonstrate the general relevance of situational crime prevention to explanations of human action and, by so doing, to suggest that situational crime prevention is indeed a theory, and not merely a technique, or collection of techniques. It may be surprising to the reader that two concepts important to situational crime prevention, displacement and opportunity, are not included as master concepts, but the reasons for this are explained below.

The Concept of Causation

The focal point of the situation in situational crime prevention theory sets it apart from other traditional theories of crime causation. Chapter 8 shows how Bentham identified the specific end point of action and worked back from that end point, but at the same time his general theory of action was applied to take into account the various dispositions he saw as acting upon human behaviour. As Shoham notes in Chapter 5, the interactionist approach to violence assumes a different theory of causation that is situation-bound. One might call it a concept of ‘limited causation’. The difficulty with this approach is that it seems to exclude, or at least relegate to the background as causes, such factors as poverty, social class and even family, allowing them to enter into the causal formula only as giving form or context to human behaviour, but not as direct causal agents. (This is analogous to the way that situational factors are treated in conventional criminological theory.) The important causes of crime, according to situational crime prevention, are much closer to the interactionist view of causation, as exemplified in Shoham’s chapter. That is to say, the cause of a particular behaviour is tied closely to the immediacy of the situation or, to put it yet another way, the situation is seen as the primary or foreground agent in crime causation. However, it is precisely because this view of crime causation in situational crime prevention is so time-bound and specific to the situation that, in Chapter 6, Tilley argues that it is so effective as an intervention between the distant causal factors of crime and the immediate factors of the specific situation. Following Ekblom (1994), Tilley notes: ‘The distal conditions [background factors], so far as they are understood, are far harder to alter than the proximal ones. In realist terms, situational crime prevention is about intervening in proximal crime situations to inhibit the operation of crime event generating causal mechanisms or to trigger new mechanisms which will counter the criminogenesis of the situation.’ The focus upon the proximal conditions is remarkably similar to the approach followed in the wartime operational research described by Wilkins in Chapter 9, though the notion of the ‘cause’ of flying accidents was firmly rejected and ‘was replaced by the concept of “system(s) involved” and time sequence’. For Wilkins, this ‘systems’ approach is an important strength of situational crime prevention, but Tilley is concerned to make a closer link between situational crime prevention and traditional causal theory. For him, it seems the difference is a matter of emphasis. However, the difference in emphasis arises from situational crime prevention’s adoption or rejection of other key concepts in the explanation of crime, and human behaviour.

The Concept of Disposition

From the very beginning of modern situational crime prevention theory, the concept of disposition has been used as an important reference point to demonstrate how situational crime prevention departs from traditional crime causation theory. However, in many of the chapters in this volume (especially those of Tilley, Opp, Shoham and Wortley) disposition has been recognized as playing a role, albeit a distant one, in the situational approach to crime causation. Taken together, these chapters continue to emphasize that the most effective way to intervene in crime is at the point of crime itself, not at the point of hypothesized causal (and usually dispositional) factors such as family background and social class. However, these dispositional causes of crime are seen as factors that set individuals into fixed states of ‘readiness’,¹ according to Tilley. Thus, because of their backgrounds, whether hereditary or environmental, different individuals, and even groups of individuals, may be more able or ready to commit particular crimes than others.

The traditional literature also recognizes special kinds of dispositions sometimes called drives and, in some theories, called instincts. Many of these dispositional drives may appear similar to hedonistic views of behaviour. Or, if we conceive of dispositions as instinctual as they appear in animal species, such as the mating behaviour of birds, the flocking of birds and seasonal migration, such behaviours are not so much driven as they are programmed patterns of behaviour which are invoked by certain environmental conditions. This conception is illustrated in Chapter 5 that examines the situational aspects of violence, noting clearly the cultural and environmental cues that may invoke violence in particular interpersonal settings. The language here is important. That violence is invoked by environmental cues suggests that a disposition to violence lies within particular individuals, awaiting the appropriate environmental cues.

However, one can see that this explanation is not quite sufficient. It does not explain why some individuals will in fact seek out certain situations and not others that will be conducive to their crime readiness. It is in its solution to this problem that situational crime prevention departs from the types of dispositional theory advanced by Bentham and other early personality theorists. The solution is to revise another master concept in psychology, that of motivation, a concept that is often treated in the psychology literature as though it were another way of describing disposition.

The Concept of Motivation

While Opp points out that motivation is a concept of considerable breadth beyond that of mere egoism or self-interest tied to drives, it is clear that situational crime prevention does view behaviour as goal-oriented. However, as all the chapters in this volume assert, situational crime prevention sees behaviour as organized in a quite specific sense: directed towards the accomplishment of a specific task, usually a specific crime. The motivation (drive) that lies behind the accomplishment of this task is an immediate one, not a generalized drive in the hedonic sense. In this respect, situational crime prevention departs radically from Bentham, as noted by Newman and Marongiu in Chapter 8: the actor seeks to satisfy an immediate (that is, situation-bound) need, such as holding up a liquor store to get some money for drugs. In this sense it sees behaviour as organized within a single segment of action, that is, motivation is limited or situation-bound. A more generalized drive may lie behind the immediate demand for money to buy drugs, but for situational crime prevention the effective cause of the crime is the immediate need. In a recent article, Clarke (1995) has attempted to draw a clearer distinction between the situational crime prevention approach to motivation and that of traditional crime causal theory by distinguishing motives (that is, specific needs of the moment oriented to specific targets) from motivation (that is, a generalized need or drive that seeks consummation, but that does not identify specific targets).

But it can also be seen that the concept of motivation, where limited or general, does not explain why this particular liquor store was chosen as the target by this particular actor. Other concepts are needed to tie together motives, disposition and the final act of accomplishing the task, and that employed by situational crime prevention is rational choice.

The Concept of Rational Choice

All chapters in this volume have, for various reasons, avoided even attempting to define rational choice. Indeed, it is noted that situational crime prevention literature has also avoided any serious attempt to define specifically the concept of rational choice. Opp in particular argues that to develop a formal definition of rationality is irrelevant; rather, it is more important to identify what kind of rationality is appropriate to the explanation of particular crime phenomena.

Clarke and his colleagues in their various writings have preferred, like Opp, to employ the term ‘limited rationality’ or ‘bounded rationality’ (Simon, 1978) in order to soften the idea of rationality as hard-nosed fully conscious action. In so doing, they have recognized that the actor may not always be fully aware of his situation or have complete information (Cornish and Clarke, 1986). More recently, it has also been recognized that the actor may behave ‘rationally’ according to his perceptions of the world and situation around him, and that these perceptions may or may not be accurate. In this sense, then, the actor is ‘limited’ in his rationality, although he is goal-oriented; that is, his behaviour is instrumentally organized to achieve a specific task.

Much confusion can arise with this form of explaining behaviour, particularly because at first impression, it seems to be constructed in an identical fashion to the concept of rationality as used in the criminal law where, typically (though depending on the legal system and legal code) it is assumed that the actor intended the consequences of his act. As Niggli points out in Chapter 2, the similarity is only that. Rather, he argues, the criminal law employs two types of rationality, instrumental rationality and value rationality, and these are constantly confused. It is instrumental rationality, of course, that is similar to the concept of rational choice in situational crime prevention. Value rationality – the process of affirming broader societal values and of imputing blame to the offender – has little to do with situational crime prevention’s concept of rational choice.

As if this were not enough confusion, Russo argues that background factors, such as inequality, limit choice and thus must be considered as feeding into the situational crime prevention view of rational choice theory. This raises challenging questions for situational crime prevention since its focus on situations rather than distant causes, as noted above, tends to relegate such factors as affecting choice to a place of secondary importance. But we can also see that what Russo here means by ‘choice’ is quite different from that meant by situational crime prevention. One’s life choices may indeed be conditioned by inequality, but here is meant more opportunities in the broader sense (availability and type of jobs, and quality of schools, for example), not opportunity in the narrower sense – being in a particular place at a particular time, for example, in order to carry out a particular act. The concept of routine activities goes a long way towards solving this problem, as demonstrated by Pease in Chapter 14. Again, however, we can see that this is a different use of the word ‘choice’. What is being referred to here is li...