NCJ Number
167670
Journal
Justice Quarterly Volume: 12 Issue: 4 Dated: (December 1995) Pages: 783-797
Date Published
1995
Length
15 pages
Annotation
The authors of two books, Crime and Everyday Life (Felson) and Crime and Its Social Context (Meithe and Meier), view routine activity theory as the linchpin explanation for crime and attempt to show how crime event theory can be linked to criminality theory.
Abstract
Even though both books focus on routine activity theory and examine opportunities for crime events and the relationships between crime opportunities and the volume of crime events, the books differ in their approaches to criminology theory building. Felson begins by discarding all criminality theories except control theory and then builds control theory into the routine activity theory. He does not make any explicit tests of his integrated theory but uses examples to demonstrate the plausibility of his approach. In contrast, Miethe and Meier keep all criminality theories, making no judgment as to their validity, and then use carefully constructed data sets to determine empirical relationships among theories. In contrast to Felon's theory first approach, Miethe and Meier take a more inductionist approach. Both books are evaluated in terms of theoretical reductionism, units of analysis, and research on crime events. 22 references