The Behavioral Code: The Hidden Ways the Law Makes Us Better . or Worse

by Benjamin van Rooij

Cohen and Felson called their idea routine activity theory. This is the idea that people’s everyday activities—where they live, with whom they live, what they buy, whether they work outside the home, and whether they take vacations—affect crime. The researchers thought that three core elements play a role in how routine activities lead to crime. First, there has to be a motivated offender. Clearly, little crime would occur if people were not motivated to commit it. So, for the spike in burglaries in the 1960s and 1970s, there had to have been people who wanted to steal from other people’s homes. Second, there has to be a valuable target. That would have been the houses filled with lightweight valuable goods such as the radios, smaller color TVs, or the tiny but expensive diamond turntable needles. Finally, the target should not be well-guarded.