Opportunity Makes the Thief Practical theory for crime prevention

The Policing and Reducing Crime Unit (PRC Unit) was formed in 1998 as a result of the merger of the Police Research Group (PRG) and the Research and Statistics Directorate. The PRC Unit is now one part of the Research, Development and Statistics Directorate of the Home Office. The PRC Unit carries out and commissions research in the social and management sciences on policing and crime reduction, broadening out the role that PRG played. The PRC Unit has now combined PRG's two main series into the Police Research Series, continuing PRG's earlier work. This will present research material on crime prevention and detection as well as police management and organisation issues. Research commissioned by PRG will appear as a PRC Unit publication. Throughout the text there may be references to PRG and these now need to be understood as relating to the PRC Unit. C Forewor d Along with personal and social factors that are usually thought of as causes, this report makes the case for seeing opportunity as a third principal cause of crime. Combining the wisdom from several recent and converging opportunity theories, this report is timely in view of the local crime and disorder strategies that will have to be developed over the next few months. It improves our understanding of how opportunities to commit crime contribute to criminal motivation, and provides a perspective for developing workable solutions to prevent specific crime problems. Acknowledgements We owe an intellectual debt of gratitude to many colleagues whose work has had a mojor impact on our own. We have also been influenced by the work of Johannes Knutsson and Eckart Kuhlhorn in Sweden and Ross Homel in Australia. Many others have changed our thinking in small ways and large. Lastly, we would like to thank Wes Skogan, professor at Northwestern University in Chicago for agreeing to referee this report. of Illinois. He is best known as a criminological theorist, specifically as an originator of routine activity theory. In recent years, he has turned his attention to crime prevention. His most recent book is Crime and Everyday Life , of which the second edition was published in 1998. Ronald V. Clarke is Professor and Dean at the Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice, posts he has held for more than ten years. He was previously Head of the Home Research and Planning Unit where he played a significant part in the …