Construct · 4 names · 4 citations
Different names. Different fields. One construct. One map.
● jangle · one convergence, several names Nearest construct by meaningopportunitycompare the meaningsEvery construct on the map is compared with every other by the meaning of its definitions, and the closest one is surfaced here. The nearest construct to routine activity is opportunity.
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Cohen and Felson's 1979 routine activity approach holds that a direct-contact predatory crime happens when three things meet in the same place at the same time: a motivated offender, a suitable target, and the absence of a capable guardian. On this account crime rates track the ordinary routines of daily life that bring these elements together or keep them apart, not offender motivation on its own. Cohen and Felson used it to explain why crime rose after the war even as economic conditions improved, arguing that people spent more time away from home, that goods became lighter and easier to carry off, and that fewer people were present to watch. This is the referent construct on the map: the later names reuse the same convergence logic under different labels.[1]
Clarke's 1980 situational crime prevention takes the same convergence and reads it as a set of levers. If a crime needs an offender, a target, and a missing guardian to meet, then changing the immediate setting can prevent it: harden the target, add a guardian, or remove the opportunity. Analysts later drew the idea as the problem analysis triangle, with the offender, the target or victim, and the place on its three sides, and a controller assigned to each. The theory of crime behind it is Cohen and Felson's; what differs is the aim, which is to design a crime out of a setting rather than to explain its rate. Cornish and Clarke went on to set this inside a rational-choice account of how an offender weighs an opportunity.[2]
Hindelang, Gottfredson, and Garofalo's 1978 lifestyle-exposure theory arrived a year earlier, from the victim's side. It holds that a person's risk of personal victimization depends on their lifestyle, the daily round of work and leisure that governs how much they are exposed to offenders and risky settings. People who are out more, especially at night and in public, and who spend time around likely offenders, are more exposed and are victimized more often. The logic is close to routine activity: both explain crime through the patterning of everyday life rather than through motivation, and both turn on exposure and the presence or absence of protection. The two theories are so similar that they are frequently merged and taught together as a single lifestyle-routine activity perspective, which is the jangle this map records.[3]
Yar's 2005 assessment asks whether routine activity theory transfers to crime committed online. He keeps the three elements, a motivated offender, a suitable target, and a capable guardian, and tests each against the properties of a virtual environment. Some concepts carry over: targets still vary in value and accessibility, and guardianship still matters, now as software and moderation as much as people. Others strain, because online space lacks the fixed geography that the phrase convergence in space and time assumed, so an offender and a target can meet without sharing a place. The application works as a check on the construct: it shows where the convergence logic holds and where it was quietly relying on physical proximity.[4]
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