Can we improve security risk assessments by understanding why people commit crime? Part Four.

Part four: Situational Crime Prevention

May 17, 2025

Greed is not a new human phenomenon. The real issue is the opportunity that the economic system gives to businesses to reap from wily greed. If risks from imprudent decisions taken by firms can be passed on to others… the penalty for incompetence is borne by others.

- Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize winning economist

Hi friends,

4/5 weeks done in this series. One to go. Thank you for reading these and for providing your comments.

This series has been super helpful to me in understanding the various theories about why people commit crimes. I hope they have been helpful to you as well.

Let’s get started.

Why do people commit crimes?

Does the environment create the criminal?

If you had an individual that was somehow ‘predisposed’ (biologically, psychologically, sociologically, or otherwise) to steal, but could not find an asset worth stealing, would a crime take place?

As discussed in last week’s post, crime was increasing during the 1970s, despite parallel growth in economic living conditions. This was at odds with traditional criminological and sociological thought, which said that improved conditions should result in less crime.1

This makes sense, right?

If I have more money, more assets, and therefore more to lose, would I feel the need to steal something?

So, with what I’m sure was considerable pressure at the time, Ron Clarke (UK Home Office) developed Situational Crime Prevention (SCP) in response to this paradox. And, I’m glad he did because it is an incredibly influential theoretical framework that is incredibly helpful.

SCP is a framework to help security professionals and police officers control crime. This marked a stark pivot towards a new direction for crime prevention. Conventional criminology said that in order to prevent crime, you needed to understand the criminal so that you can understand the cause(s) of crime.2 But SCP says don’t worry about the criminal, just focus on the opportunities to commit crime that are found in the environment. This is invaluable in information security (cyber security) because we often don’t know much about the social conditions of cyber criminals and therefore can’t take a traditional approach to controlling crime.

To help you get your head around SCP, we need to take a step back and reflect on two key theories, which underpin SCP:

The rational choice perspective (RCP); and,
The routine activity approach (RAA)

Let’s start with RCP. RCP was developed by Cornish and Clarke in 1968 when they published a book titled The Reasoning Criminal.3 In it, they argue that offenders make rational decisions about the pros and cons of offending. They called it “bounded rationality” and it was this idea that while criminals don’t write out the pros and cons on a piece of paper with full information, they do make at least split-second decisions about whether committing an offence might be worth it.4 This is true for the smaller guy in the pub sizing up a larger guy to see if he can take him. It is also true for the bank robber.

There are five areas that run through this bounded rationality:

What is the risk?
What might be the rewards?
How much effort is involved?
Can I readily excuse the behaviour?
Was I provoked?

Thus, to reduce the crime, we need to:

Increase the risk
Reduce the rewards
Increase the effort
Remove excuses
Reduce provocations

Now, put a pin in RCP. Let’s talk about the routine activity approach or RAA.

In 1979, Cohen and Felson published an article called Social Change and Crime Rate Trends: A Routine Activity Approach.5

In essence, RAA says that crime happens when a likely offender, a suitable target, and a lack of a capable guardian converge in space and time.6 Simple right. Three variables in the equation:

(likely offender) + (suitable target) - (capable guardian) = criminal opportunity

Of course, this presents a few questions:

what makes an offender likely?
what makes a target suitable?
what makes a guardian capable?

Great questions! Let me try to answer them.

A likely offender is ‘explained’ by theories like classicism, biological, psychological, or sociological positivism, critical criminology, or a hand full of other theories. If those are unknown to you, please check out my previous posts on this.

A suitable target is something that is VIVA7:

Valuable
Inertia (weight, size, and features that make the target removeable or resistible)
Visible
Accessible

A capable guardian isn’t necessarily a security professional or police officer. It might be a parent, a facility manager, a firewall, a virtual private network (VPN), a forced entry rated door, or a friend that discourages the offending behaviour.8

Now, let’s bring it together, Situational Crime Prevention (SCP) is the:

“Art and science of reducing opportunities for crime - “science” because a large body of theory and research now supports situational prevention, and “art” because, despite this research, practitioners still have to rely heavily on their own judgement or experience in implementing projects. In fact, situational prevention is now almost a synonym for opportunity reduction”.9

Now let’s revisit our initial question: if you had an individual that was somehow ‘predisposed’ (biologically, psychologically, sociologically, or otherwise) to steal, but could not find an asset worth stealing, would a crime take place?

According to SCP, the answer is no. You see, crime requires all three variables:

(likely offender) + (suitable target) - (capable guardian) = criminal opportunity

If you change one (in the right direction), you control crime.

In security, we can’t control for bad parenting, malnourishment, poverty, or inadequate social controls (religion, education, police, etc.), but we can influence the suitability of the target and certainly the capability of a guardian.

What do I like about this theory?

First, it’s pragmatic. It’s about finding a problematic situation and fixing it. It doesn’t require a 10-year social program, though we certainly need such initiatives. I don’t want to push a negative connotation on social crime prevention efforts. Rather, for the security professional, we have a limited span of control, which makes situational crime prevention ideal.

Second, there is a large consensus that the global decline of crime in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, wasn’t caused by great policing (though there was that), it wasn’t caused by reducing poverty (though there was that), and it wasn’t caused by psychological help (though there was that as well). It was because the security industry reduced the opportunities for crime to occur.10 A quick Google Scholar search with terms like security and robbery, security and car theft, security and fraud, security and waste crime, will demonstrate that the global decline in crime was caused by the private security industry quietly reducing criminal opportunities.

What do I think about this theory?

First, there is insufficient evidence to suggest that SCP works in the long run.11 Which is why I am not pushing for SCP over social crime prevention, like educational programs, parenting training, nutrition training, sport programs, etc. In fact, there is a plethora of evidence that demonstrates that many of these programs are incredibly effective.12

Second, it falls short of addressing structural issues in our society (i.e. power, consumerism, and profit maximization). See my post on right vs left realism for further reading.

What are the takeaways for a security professional?

Source: Center for Problem-Oriented Policing (www.popcenter.org)

SCP has evolved to include 25 techniques to prevent crime. The picture above gives you a bunch of examples of how you might employ these techniques for any crime or risk of crime that you are dealing with.

Let’s try an example: shoplifting.

Say you love chocolate almonds. But not just any chocolate almonds. You love the double roasted milk chocolate covered almonds. For an afternoon snack on Fridays, you walk into a store and you take three double roasted and milk chocolate covered almonds. Technically, it’s stealing. But you also know that three almonds are probably not worth the attention of a loss prevention team. So, you take them anyways.

How might we use SCP to save the almonds?

You could try a few things:

Alert conscience - post a sign over the confectionary shelf that says “shoplifting is stealing”
Assist natural surveillance - stock the almonds in eye sight of an employee counter
Target harden - place the almonds in serving size packages rather than bulk containers

I know it’s a silly example, and I’m not a loss prevention professional. But I appreciate the solid theoretical underpinning and the useability of SCP’s 25 Techniques to think about how to mitigate risk/crime. And, I love chocolate almonds. Though, I am not confessing to absconding with them.

Next week, I’m going to bring everything together. I’m going to focus on Paul Ekblom’s (UK Home Office) Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity, which lets us reduce crime through situational and social crime prevention techniques.

Stay tuned.

I hope this helps!

Shawn

Thanks for reading Evidence Informed Security! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Cohen L. and Felson, M. (1979) ‘Social Change and Crime Rate Trends: A Routine Activity Approach’, American Sociological Review, 44(4), 588-608.

Clarke, R. (1980) ‘“Situational” Crime Prevention: Theory and Practice’, British Journal of Criminology, 20(2), 136-147.

Cornish, D. and Clarke, R. (2014) The Reasoning Criminal, New York: Transaction Publishers.

Cohen L. and Felson, M. (1979) ‘Social Change and Crime Rate Trends: A Routine Activity Approach’, American Sociological Review, 44(4), 588-608.

Laycock, G. (2024) Crime, Science and Policing, New York: Routledge.

Clarke, R.V. and Bowers, K. (2017) ‘Seven Misconceptions of Situational Crime Prevention’, in Tilley, N. and Sidebottom, A. (eds.) Handbook of Crime Prevention and Community Safety. Oxford: Taylor & Francis Group, pp.167-205.