Street Robbery Patterns: A Mixed Method Test of Situational Action Theory and Crime Pattern Theory

Abstract

According to current scholarship on offender decision making, choosing to rob another is based on a variety of individual and situational characteristics. Explanatory models often invoked within environmental criminology include routine activity, rational choice and crime pattern theories. Situational action theory’s suggestion that this decision depends, at least in part, on the interaction between offender criminal propensity and the setting’s moral context has yet to be examined. This investigation tests this idea by conducting structured interviews with active probationers and parolees centered on their decoding of streetscapes to clarify offenders’ perceptions of street robbery opportunities (Part I). These results inform an agent-based simulation contrasting the merits of assumptions made in the previously stated theories to learn how well each generates realistic concentrations of street robbery (Part II). Support emerges for both environmental criminology and situational action theory, but the results differed by the method employed. Implications follow for clarifying the theoretical processes driving these incidents and for promoting public safety.